DURING THE MANY 25th anniversary celebrations of the Stonewall Riots in 1994, I was somewhat surprised to hear so many people saying they had been there that night in June, 1969. I remember once adding them up and concluding that, if everyone who said they were there, actually had been present, they not only would have taken over Sheridan Square completely, but possibly taken down the municipal government of New York City altogether.
We all want to be part of something historic; it’s human nature. And let’s face it, there really haven’t been that many truly positive and exulting events for LGBT people to want to absorb and make their own. Usually we’re commemorating a death, a disease, something awful. So possibly these hundreds of people mean that they took part in the demonstrations that occurred in and around Sheridan Square on the nights and days following that first night, when gays fought back against the police raiding a bar in Manhattan. And let’s remember there had been raids of gay bars before in which people fought back in one way or another—in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even in the small town of Pacifica, California.
But for some reason, this particular incident stuck, with the result that a routine bar raid developed into something far larger. A new minority came together in the weeks that followed, and out of that arose an active political movement. First came the Gay Liberation Front, which would be followed by the more active and successful Gay Activist Alliance. Today, we can trace the LBGT political movement in the U.S. back to that one night. We recognize it as, in effect, the Big Bang that created our gay universe.
I realize that these days “history” itself has become a suspect and at times even a moot item of terminology. Like others I’ve heard that histories are “what the winners tell you it is” and that “everyone has a different idea of what a historic event is” and other such truisms. While granting all that, I still believe that trying to discover what actually happened is not a worthless enterprise. True, many who were at or around the Stonewall that night are missing or dead. But others, like myself, are still alive, and over the years some people who happened to be in, at, or in the vicinity of 35 Christopher Street have been generous enough to tell me of their experience. In addition, for this essay, I’ve been lucky enough to hear from other people I did not know, who were in, at, or near the bar that night. Their strong voices speak for themselves.
I’m always a writer, which means that I’m also often a journalist. So here is my Journalism 101 attempt to get at the truth about Stonewall. My “sample” includes three gay men, a transgendered person of color, a lesbian, and a heterosexual woman who lived a few doors away—which I think pretty much matches the population of the area that night. The witnesses are, in alphabetical order: Tom Baker, Rita Mae Brown, “Miss Majors,” Felice Picano, Victoria Roth, and Edmund White.
Some background on my interlocutors:
- Tom Baker worked for years for Grey Advertising in New York and Los Angeles on the Ford account. He was for a short period of time a bartender at the Village gay bar Julius’. Since retiring, he has written and published three books relevant to the Stonewall period: The Sound of One Horse Dancing, Full Frontal, and Paperwhite Narcissus.
- Rita Mae Brown is the celebrated author of the groundbreaking lesbian novel Rubyfruit Jungle, as well as Six of One, both of which deal with that early period of feminist-lesbian America; she is also the author of many beloved mystery novels.
- Miss Majors is a transgender African-American woman who now lives and works in Oakland, California.
- Victoria Roth is a classical pianist, chamber musician and music teacher.
- Edmund White is the renowned author of novels, memoirs, plays, and biographies, including the memoir My New York and the novel The Beautiful Room is Empty, both of which deal with this era.
- My own books relevant to 1960s New York include the memoirs Men Who Loved Me and True Stories: Portraits from My Past.
I’ve asked these five people, and myself, five basic questions. 1. How did you happen to be there that night? 2. What did you think was happening at the time? 3. Did you have any idea that history was being made? 4. What did you think in the days after it happened? and 5. Does any detail stand out for you, even now, years later?
— Felice Picano
How did you happen to be there that night?
Rita Mae Brown: I was walking home with a friend. We did a newsletter for a feminist group of the time called “Redstocking” (i.e., radical Bluestockings) in a building near NYU. It may have been the same building as the Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed so many young women workers many decades before. We were headed to my little hole-in-the-wall apartment at Charles Street in the West Village, and Christopher Street was my usual crossing place.
Edmund White: I was just walking past Sheridan Square with my close friend Charles Burch the night of the raid. I had stopped going to the Stonewall because it had been taken over by drag queens, whereas before it had been a simple gay cruise bar where people danced to jukebox tunes.
Tom Baker: I had just moved to New York after being released from the Army and was living in a sublet, rent-controlled apartment at 72 Barrow Street. I had just started my job as a media trainee at Grey Advertising making $5,000 a year. I was also still pursuing my acting career, going to auditions, and working with the newly formed Roundabout Theatre Company with Gene Feist. That night I was out walking the streets looking for a quick blow job.
Miss Majors: I’d had a tough day, and I heard that that singer Judy Garland had died. I wasn’t a fan of hers, but I didn’t feel like being alone, so I went down to the Stonewall. That was our club, where the other T’s and I could hang out and relax and be ourselves. Sure, there were gay boys there and some dykes. But it was an easy mix, and that’s where we used to go. It was tough being a transgender person and a black person in those days, tougher than today. And a lot of us were “working girls” too—you know, hustling, but I’d been working at the Jewel Box Revue as a dancer.
Viki Roth: I’m willing to tell you what I remember from that night. The dinner to which my husband Gene’s father and his wife had been invited was at our apartment at 45 Christopher Street. I think it was their first time visiting us in our new apartment, and I remember Gene’s father asking about the neighborhood, which we loved. Nice restaurants, food shops—the original Jefferson Market and Balducci’s, and all the great little shops along Bleecker Street, and a phenomenal record shop on Eighth Street that was open evenings until way past midnight.
Felice Picano: I’d been invited to a birthday party of a friend of a friend: James Mathis, a concert pianist from Texas (I think) who lived on the south side of Sheridan Square opposite the Stonewall. I met my pal Joseph Mathewson, who lived on Hudson and Jane Street, and we walked down to Christopher Street. It was a nice summer night and we noticed a lot of people out and around, but as we went into the party, it seemed like any other typical Saturday night in the Village.
What did you think was happening at the time?
RMB: We’d passed the Stonewall and had reached Seventh Avenue when we heard the police sirens. We were waiting for the light, and we saw the police go into the bar. We figured that it was the usual “clean up” by the vice squad. You know, the cops would go into a bar and take people out in a paddy wagon. Back at the police station they would call up their lawyer buddies to come arrange bail. A corrupt system was in place. It was a real racket.
EW: We could tell it was a raid, since there was a “Black Maria”—a paddy wagon—out front on Christopher Street. Once it was filled, it took the detainees off (mostly the bar staff and belligerent drags), and some cops stayed behind until it returned.
MM: Well, usually when there was a raid, the police would be outside the place hitting the door jambs with their sticks. You would hear that and you would know to move away from another person if you were too close or something. But that day just didn’t go down right at all. I’d been at Sing Sing [prison]before that, and the “girls” there had told me that if I ever got into a confrontation with a cop, I should do something small like swear at him or spit in his face. That way he’d knock you out with his nightstick instead of them all beating you up and injuring you for life. So when I heard one of the “girls” outside the bar screaming, and then I heard a big crash like glass breaking, that’s what I did. I spit at this cop and he knocked me out. I don’t remember a thing after that. I woke up in a paddy wagon.
FP: I was on the top floor in the back of the building and had no idea anything at all was happening at the Stonewall Bar or Sheridan Square. Jimmy was playing piano, people were drinking and smoking grass and singing and making a lot of noise. I’d just met the cute bartender and decided he would be my date that night. Someone who left earlier than we did came back upstairs and told Jimmy something. But if it was about the raid, I never heard it.
RMB: We saw the police go in and then we saw the police come flying out again, being pushed out by the people inside the bar. It was at night, and that area was tree-lined and badly lit, so we couldn’t actually see who was fighting the police. All we could make out were figures; it wasn’t clear if they were guys or transgender people. But right away we knew that they weren’t being docilely rounded up as usual. They were fighting and screaming, and then more and more people started coming out of the bar. We got out of there in time to see some guys trying to tip over a Volkswagen that was parked on the street.
By the time I came back to Sheridan Square, there were wooden police horses set up and police paddy wagons and police cars. They’d cordoned off the area, so you couldn’t get near. So I walked around and over to Sixth Avenue, where the Women’s House of Detention was. Word must have reached them too, because the noise coming out of there was incredible and it was clear that they were rioting too.
VR: What we witnessed was upon exiting our building to get a taxi to take his father home. It was always hard to get a cab in front of 45 Christopher, so we would walk over to Sixth Avenue. As we walked down Waverly Street, there were phalanxes of police in riot gear making their way to Christopher Street—and to the Stonewall.
TB: I came across all this commotion on Seventh Avenue. Sheridan Square was mobbed with people and police in riot gear. It was very noisy and chaotic, and I could only get to see from the outer fringes of the crowd.
MM: I don’t remember a thing after that cop knocked me out. I actually think it was those hustlers, those young white boys that used to hustle out of Sheridan Square Park, who initiated the provocation. They’d be out there every night, and they were troublemakers. Only they didn’t stick around, because I didn’t see any of them being arrested.
Did you have any idea that history was being made?
VR: Not at all. When we got back to our building, we weren’t able to get in. I think we were kept on the other side of Sheridan Square. Later in the evening, we were permitted back into our building. I don’t recall how long the wait was, but in addition to police, I recall there were also fire engines and ambulances.
EW: Word of mouth spread quickly that the cops had raided a gay bar. We were angry because earlier in the 1960s Mayor Wagner had constantly raided gay bars in an effort to “clean up” the city for the World’s Fair. But we thought those days were over, and we considered Mayor Lindsay a liberal, although he was a white shoe Republican and an enemy of organized labor. I returned to Sheridan Square the next two nights, where there was a growing demonstration, some violence. The police cordoned off Sheridan Square for a while. So, yes, I did think history was being made. But a funny, ironic revolution. When we would chant “Gay is Good” in imitation of “Black is Beautiful,” we would all laugh. When we called ourselves the Pink Panthers in an echo of the Black Panthers, we were just being silly.
RMB: No, it took me a good year or two to see that my brothers were not backing down, not going back to the old way. I got a hint of how that evening sort of became like nuclear fission when I saw its effect on the Women’s House of Detention. That gave me hope.
MM: I didn’t know at all. You know it was hard enough being a transgender black person and trying to get through the day and pay the rent without bothering to think about politics. So the significance was lost on me and on most of the other “girls” at the Stonewall too.
TB: I knew it was a raid of some sort but had no idea history was being made. I was, if anything, a distant observer, not a demonstrator. And, as I recall, I did not get my blow job.
FP: Not until the next morning. I was awakened by a phone call from my friend Douglas Brashears, who had not been at the party, though he’d been invited, and he wanted to know if I and the others had been arrested, and I said no. Then Douglas said something odd for him. He was the loudest and funniest and femmiest guy in our set, but he got really serious and said, “The queens have begun revolting. And they aren’t going to stop now.”
What did you think in the days after it happened?
RMB: Stuff would be happening around Sheridan Square each night. I would dip in and dip out to see what was going on. Before that, we had been trying to organize women at the bars. We were what people later called the “Lavender Menace” of the women’s movement. But a lot of gay and lesbian people even in the Village were content with their duplicitous lives. They’d made their peace with that. But once the Stonewall riots happened, people sort of woke up, including women.
EW: Although I was basically a middle-class prig, afraid everyone would go too far, even I felt a strange exaltation. What changed that night was that gays, who’d long thought of themselves as a sin, a crime, or an illness, suddenly saw themselves as a minority.
MM: Nothing then. But a year later I heard that there was going to be an anniversary parade for the Stonewall raid, and I wanted to know what that was all about, and I went there not bothering to get all dressed up [as a woman].
FP: We went down there the next day and people were protesting as close as they could get to the bar, which was still blocked off, so they were out in the streets off Seventh Avenue and at the subway station exits, handing out flyers that read “We’re not going to take it anymore!” Monday evening there were a half dozen guys at each of the four station exits walking around with posters and megaphones, shouting “What Do We Want?” To which people would answer: “Gay Rights.” Megaphones: “When do we want them?” Crowd: “Now!” Any one coming out of the subways would instantly be in the center of this protest. Some would leave and others would stay and join. These protestors were all gay guys around my age, including some of my friends. I joined them if I knew someone coming by. Over the next week, it became the place to go to hang out and meet people. As in: “See you at the protest tomorrow; then we’ll go have dinner.”
EW: Revolutions are always started for the wrong reasons in less than ideal circumstances. The Boston Tea Party was tax resisters; when the Bastille was stormed there was only a handful of prisoners in it. The Stonewall was an unhygienic Mafia bar that profited on our oppression. No matter, it was one of the first times we didn’t run away from the cops.
Does any detail stand out for you, even now, years later?
TB: The one vivid image I remember was that of a parking meter that had been ripped out of the sidewalk.
RMB: We saw guys picking up a Volkswagen parked on the street and trying to overturn it. We left then because it seemed pretty violent. I always wondered what happened. That was such an extraordinary sight.
VR: Those phalanxes of police in riot gear, making their way up to our little Village street!
EW: The sound of inmates in the women’s prison at the Sixth Avenue end of Christopher Street banging their tin cups against the bars and shouting their encouragement to the rioters.
FP: Coming out of that building two hours or so after the riot had happened, the bartender and I thought we were hallucinating. Sheridan Square was transformed and almost unrecognizable. There were large black NYPD buses all around the square blocking it off from other streets. There were wooden horses set up inside the park itself like a maze. You couldn’t see the Stonewall at all. There were wood panels over the window and doors. The place was filled with policemen and firemen in full gear. Everywhere you stepped there were big black fire hoses snaking along the ground. There was a Volkswagen knocked over onto its back. A taxicab was halfway up a fireplug. It had knocked the cap off and water was gushing twenty feet into the air. Stepping out of the building, we were immediately escorted by cops over to Seventh Avenue and told to go up to Bleecker Street, as the area was closed off. We couldn’t figure out what happened. It was like a meteorite had hit or something equally catastrophic.
RMB: I leave you with the words of my mother: Make Hell with what you have.
Felice Picano’s latest book is a memoir titled Nights at Rizzoli (OR Books, 2015).
