History in Focus: The Stonewall Riots

The only photo actually taken during the Stonewall Riots

Gay Pride this year has become very important - not only due to the rising bigotry against LGBTQ+ communities across the world in recent years - but also due to it being the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. On June 28 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York, a noted gay bar, causing a riot after crowds witnessed police brutality. This sparked LGBTQ+ communities to begin the fight for their rights in the United States. Since then Stonewall and Pride has served to inspire resistance against bigotry over the last fifty years.

LGBTQ+ Rights Before Stonewall

Unlike in other countries, such as the UK, homosexuality was never illegal across the United States, however, LGBTQ+ communities were far from accepted. Several states had a history of banning same-sex male sex, such as Virginia. The Comstock Laws in 1873 which aimed to suppress, 'Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use', including pornography, sex toys, and contraception. It also included literature on sex and sexuality, especially LGBTQ+ literature, meant that LGBTQ+ Americans were practically erased from written history. One of the first gay rights advocates, Harry Hay, stated that homosexuals were 'the one group of disadvantaged people who didn't even think of themselves as a group'. Colonialism further wiped out LGBTQ+ identities. Many Native American cultures had concepts of a third gender, but colonialism forced a Euro-Christian view of gender onto Native American cultures. Periodically, laws would be passed further persecuting LGBTQ+ individuals - in 1917 Congress passed an Immigration Act which barred mentally ill and openly homosexual individuals from entering the United States. It would take until 1973 for homosexuality to stop being seen as a mental illness. Open, sate-sanctioned bigotry boomed in the 1940s and 1950s thanks to the Red Scare. US Senator Joseph McCarthy whipped up fears that the US government, media, and society were being infiltrated by communists causing the US to crack down heavily on suspected communists. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) interviewed suspected communists and got significant figures to testify before the committee. Most famously, Walt Disney gave evidence of individuals with communist sympathies in Hollywood before HUAC causing those accused of being blacklisted. With the Red Scare came the Lavender Scare. Homosexuals were seen as being mentally ill, depraved, and susceptible to blackmail making them stooges for communists, or actively working for them. McCarthy and other anti-communists, like Richard Nixon, used homophobia to attack the LGBTQ+ community. Between 1947 and 1950 420 federal government employees had been fired for being homosexual; 91 were fired the night after McCarthy's infamous 'Wheeling Speech' which sparked the Red Scare. The Red Scare would impact other oppressed groups - African-American, women, and Puerto Rican rights movements were also targeted for being possible allies of communists.

The Mattachine Society

Despite persecution gay communities did emerge, mainly in the big cities where the anonymity allowed the flourishing of identities outside of hegemonic power. American branches of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) offered a way for men to explore their own sexualities with them existing in male-only atmospheres. The Sloane House YMCA in New York became renowned in the early-1900s proved to be a fertile ground for a gay community. When Prohibition was implemented during the 1920s this saw the origins of the modern gay bar. Prohibition drove alcohol underground into 'speakeasies' and illicit bars - this allowed a persecuted minority to explore their identities safely. They could not be reported to police as that would expose the speakeasy. The 1920s saw the Harlem Renaissance where African-Americans could produce a new wave of culture including poetry, novel writing, and jazz. It was also a time of flourishing LGBTQ+ culture. Of course, the Harlem YMCA was a focal point of the gay scene, but there were many other sites, such as the Gumby Book Studio. The 'Empress of the Blues' Bessie Smith was an open bisexual woman who regularly performed in Harlem, Ethel Waters performed for guests, and Langston Hughes wrote his poetry. When the Lavender Scare hit it also allowed the seeds of the gay rights movement to be planted. According to Linda Hirshman, 'It took a Communist to start the revolution. After 1914, it almost always has.' The emancipatory aspect of socialism meant that civil rights activists, and their allies, were either socialists or allied to them: Martin Luther King's close friend Bayard Rustin was a Communist Party member; the Communist Party defended the Scottsboro Boys, a group of African-American accused of the rape of a white woman in an unfair trial; feminist Betty Friedan had engaged in left-wing politics; and gay veteran Chuck Rowland joined the Communist Party when he felt that they were doing something. A key figure is Harry Hay. Hay was a gay communist who would go on to co-found the first gay rights movement in the US. Supporting the Progressive presidential candidate in the 1948 election, Henry Wallace, he founded 'Bachelors for Wallace' which would evolve into a group for gay rights in 1950 called the Mattachine Society. As most leaders of the Mattachine Society were communist, by 1955 the Red Scare had dinted the group's mobility. However, that same year, a lesbian couple, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, in San Francisco wanted to organise lesbians in a support group. This evolved into the Daughters of Blitis, the first lesbian rights group, and quickly formed a newsletter called The Ladder. It would take over another decade for the gay rights movement to come into effect.

New York and the Stonewall Inn

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera

With New York being one of the largest cities in the world, never mind the US, it naturally developed a vibrant gay community. The New York drag scene, even today, could only be rivalled by the San Francisco drag scene. Late-night clubs accompanied the anonymity of the big city allowed individuals to challenge and explore gender identities. A large African-American and Latino community meant that the New York drag scene was incredibly diverse - it was for this reason why RuPaul Charles moved to New York. However, discrimination, especially racialised bigotry, meant that New York's LGBTQ+ community was very politicised. Kimberlé Crenshaw defined intersectionality as how different forms of oppression overlap, and New York's LGBTQ+ community definitely experienced it. It was not uncommon for an individual to face classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and trans-misogyny. It is not surprising that many activists for gay, Latino, African-American, and women's rights came from New York. Audre Lorde describes in I am Your Sister (1985) how lesbian rights activists did not emerge from nowhere - she herself had marched for black rights with Martin Luther King. One of the key figures in the gay rights movement was already prominent in the New York gay community long before Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson. Originally from New Jersey Marsha P. Johnson was an African-American trans-woman who performed drag. Before moving to New York she thought that being gay was 'some sort of dream' and officially came out when waiting tables in Greenwich Village in 1966. Performing drag cheaply she explored nonconforming gender identities, and became involved in the early movements against police brutality and homophobia.

The Stonewall Inn in September 1969

Gay clubs were regularly subjected to raids by police throughout the 1960s, except for one: the Stonewall Inn. The reason for this was that it was mafia owned - the mafia used Stonewall for their activities and bribed the local police to turn the other way. Located in Greenwich Village, the heart of New York's gay community, it became the largest gay club for its mafia connections. The mafia had no love for the gay community; instead, it was through pragmatic reasons. Bribing the police kept them away, or made them come early evening when no-one was there, and by turning Stonewall into a gay bar it allowed a clientele openly persecuted by police to come without fear that one would rat them out. Mafia signs were all over Stonewall: it lacked running water, the alcohol was heavily watered, and for a while women, non-conforming individuals, and drag queens/kings were barred. When this ban was lifted one of the first new costumers was Marsha P. Johnson. Despite poor conditions in the bar it was well loved. It was a place where the LGBTQ+ could be free to be themselves without the fear of persecution and police brutality - as long as they arrived after the early evening raids. 

The Stonewall Uprising

June 1969 was an election period which was always a precarious time for the gay community, and this coincided with the ruthless Lieutenant Seymour Pine being transferred to the Manhattan vice squad with orders to clean up the mafia in Greenwich Village. Within three weeks five gay bars had been raided, some of them permanently closed, and on June 23 Stonewall had been raided. Pine wanted to hurt the owners of Stonewall, who had given him abuse, so the police made an unexpected raid at 1.20 AM on June 28 when over a hundred people were at the bar. The police made a few degrading arrests - New York law required you to wear at least three garments of clothing which corresponded to your genitals or face arrest. Being in a bar where drag queens/kings, trans-women and men, and gender non-conformists frequented this meant many were subjected to abuse. People refused to give them IDs and to enter bathrooms for their genitals to be checked - this was actually legal for police to do, so much were the LGBTQ+ community persecuted back then. The police had not brought back-up so they had to wait for paddy wagons to arrive to take away those who had been arrested, but tonight, unlike normally, the crowd did not disperse. Onlookers rang their friends from pay phones who came to join those already there. Braver individuals taunted, jeered, shouted 'Gay Power', sang the song of the Civil Rights movement 'We Shall Overcome', and performed camp dances as a means of protest. By the time the wagons arrived over 150 had gathered at Stonewall. Pine stated that:

Instead of the homosexuals slinking off, they remained there, and their friends came, and it was a real meeting of homosexuals.

When the wagons arrived the police they continued brutalising those arrested to an increasingly angered crowd. Some through coins yelling 'Let's pay them off' while others shouted 'Pigs' as they threw beer cans. What sparked the violence was when the police forcibly tried to arrest someone, possibly the mixed-race butch lesbian Stormé DeLarverie, who shouted 'Why don't you guys do something?'. A brick/stone was then thrown at the police; now widely believed to be by Marsha P. Johnson. The crowd then fought with the police. Quickly, the police radio broke so they could not call for backup, and they opted to barricade themselves in the Stonewall Inn. Decades of persecution spilled out and the crowd put the bar under siege throwing rocks through the windows, making Molotov cocktails using cigarette lighters and cans, and even using an uprooted parking meter as a battering ram. Sylvia Rivera, a Latino transgender woman, remembered thinking that: You've been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now it's our turn!... It was one of the greatest moments in my life.' The crowd started chanting 'We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls' in protest of the arriving riot police. To the police's surprise they got into a small scale guerrilla skirmish with unorganised gay groups; they would chase off rioters, who would then regroup and chase off the police. 

The rioting continued into the next day. As the gay community had been so downtrodden the papers initially could not believe that it was done on their own volition - instead they tried to argue that the Black Panthers or the anti-Vietnam War Students for a Democratic Society had been behind the riot. Sylvia Rivera even saw Marsha P. Johnson climb a lamppost to drop a heavy bag onto a police car. Beat poet Allen Ginsburg said that 'Gay power! Isn't that great!...It's about time we did something to assert ourselves' and 'You know, the guys there were so beautiful—they've lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago'. Graffiti emerged declaring 'Drag Power!', 'Gay Power!', and 'Legalize Gay Bars!' emerged across Greenwich Village in solidarity. By 4 AM on June 29 the rioters had dispersed ending the riot, but beginning the gay rights movement.

Aftermath

Martin Boyce remembered the Riot, 'When it was over and some of us were sitting exhausted on the stoops, I thought, My God, we're going to pay so desperately for this, there was glass all over. But the next day we didn't pay. My father called to congratulate me. He said, "What took you so long?" The next day we were there again. We had had enough. Every queen in that riot changed.' Immediately, things did not change - raids on gay bars would continue until homosexuality was decriminalised in New York in 1980 - but things started to move. The Mattachine Society on July 4 marched holding hands in Washington; tame today but very taboo in 1969. One of Stonewall's main militants, Craig Rodwell, on June 28 1970 organised the first New York Pride march to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riot while others cropped up in other cities. He could only have achieved this thanks to a bisexual woman called Brenda Howard who planned the march and organisation of the march itself. The initial Pride marches were very radical being called 'Gay Liberation' and 'Gay Freedom' marches, as well as 'Gay Pride', to openly state their rights. Gay activism - although very divided along gender, sex, sexuality, class and race - did manage to make notable marks on society. The feminist National Organization of Women (NOW) had expelled lesbian activists through fear of opponents using homophobia to discredit the group. Lesbian activists managed to force NOW to admit lesbians in 1970 and fight for lesbian, and bisexual, rights. Importantly, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed in 1969 to campaign for equal rights by figures including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Not only battling LGBTQ+ bigotry, it adopted an anti-capitalist platform, solidarity with the Third World and Black Panthers, and attacked traditional gender roles. It was very important as it was the first gay rights group to have 'gay' or 'lesbian' directly in its name. The GLF would inspire gay rights movements to emerge in Canada, Brazil, and Europe, and it had smaller split-offs to focus on specific issues. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera formed the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to support drag queens and transgendered youths on the street or prison, and Lavender Menace by  Martha Shelley, Lois Hart, and Michela Griffo to fight for lesbian rights. The gay rights movements would have peaks and troughs - homosexuality was slowly destigmistised and accepted, but bigotry prevailed. During the AIDS crisis the US government purposefully dragged its feet about fighting the epidemic as it largely affected poor, LGBTQ+, and non-white communities costing thousands of lives in a wilful act of neglect. In 1992 Marsha P. Johnson was murdered and the police did little to investigate the murder; the murder case was only reopened in 2012 and her murder is still unresolved. 

Conclusion

Edinburgh Pride 2019

As someone who identifies as pansexual, and is currently questioning their gender identity, the Stonewall Riots is a personal important piece of history for me. It marked the day when the LGBTQ+ community said 'enough is enough' and decided to fight back. Since the 1980s Pride has started to lose its radicalism, and is increasingly being taken over by companies - the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall this year has tempered that in some areas. Since 1969 the situation for LGBTQ+ communities have been improving. Gender and sexuality is slowly being decolonised as Native Americans have brought back the Two-Spirit identity, South Asia has started recognising hijras, and African countries are starting to reverse the anti-gay colonial era laws, most recently Botswana. In many regions of the world gay marriage is legal, people can get sex changes, and intersex peoples are now being recognised. However, a lot of work is still needed. Uganda, Brunei, and Tanzania have recently instituted harsher laws criminalising homosexuality, in 2018 Romania tried to issue a referendum to ban gay marriage, and hate crimes against LGBTQ+ peoples are on the rise. In the UK, where I live, within the last year a lesbian couple was attacked by a group of teenagers on public transport when they refused to kiss in front of them; following a recent transphobic article by the BBC hate crimes against trans-people rose by 81%; and at Edinburgh Pride transphobes attacked an 11-year old non-binary individual after a good year of transphobic stickers being plastered around the city. This is why we must remember Stonewall. The fight was not won in 1969, it only began. To liberate ourselves we must look to the fights of the past. At Edinburgh Pride I saw a group of transphobes, ironically one was wearing a shirt depicting Marsha P. Johnson, but were roundly booed, despite the claims in the media. Bigotry may be growing in strength, but Stonewall's legacy means that it won't remain unchallenged.

Your LGBTQ+ author at Edinburgh Pride 2019

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Linda Hirshman, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution; How a Despised Minority Pushed Back, Beat Death, Found Love, and Changed America for Everyone, (New York, NY: 2013)

-Michael Kasino, Pay it No Mind - The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson, (2012)

-Eric Marcus, Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Rights, (New York, NY: 2009)

-David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked a Gay Revolution, (New York, NY: 2010)

-David Eisenbach, Gay Power: An American Revolution, (New York, NY: 2006)

-Audre Lorde, I am Your Sister, (New York, NY: 1985)

-Naoko Shikusawa, 'The Lavender Scare and Empire: Rethinking Cold War Antigay Politics', Diplomatic History, 36:4, (2012), 723-752

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