[INTRO MUSIC]
This video is part of a series for Everyday Feminism. A website dedicated to helping you stand up to and
breakdown everyday oppression.
2015 has been an amazing year for the LGBTQIA+ community: With the national passing of marriage
equality and the growing representation of trans people in film and television, I think
it's fair to say that while we still may have a long way to go, we've come very far.
But in order to understand JUST how far we've come, we have to understand
where we used to be.
At the turn of the 20th century, the low rent and ethnic diversity of Greenwich Village,
New York made it a haven for artists of all types
The Village, as it's called, is in the lower part of Manhattan between Houston and 14th
Streets and from the Hudson River to Broadway.
Non-conformity was en vogue, radicalism was tolerated, and experimental theater thrived
alongside large Broadway productions.
However, while the Village flourished, the state of New York was struggling to keep up.
Sodomy laws made homosexual acts illegal, and they overwhelmingly targeted homosexual
men, who at that point were called homophiles.
Sodomy laws in New York have been consistently reformed since the 19th century, and by the
1950s, the punishment for sodomy had been reduced to a misdemeanor.
However, anti-gay policies and the raiding of known gay establishments were still commonplace.
The Mattachine Society is the earliest homophile organization in the United States.
In 1966, the New York Mattachine Society hosted a sip-in at the Julius Bar on West 10th Street
in Greenwich Village to protest the New York State Liquor Authorities’ anti-gay laws.
The law stated that it was illegal for homosexuals to congregate and to be sold alcoholic beverages.
These laws resulted in the closing of several gay bars in New York, and in order for them
to stay afloat, they had to rely on paying bribes to the police and the mafia.
The Mattachine Society's sip-in led to the end of the SLA laws, and there was a shift
in the landscape of New York, and people began to express their sexualities and genders more
openly.
However, the police and the fire department did not comply with the change in laws, and
unfortunately several gay bars were still raided.
While there were many legal gay bars selling alcohol, there were also places like the Stonewall
Inn that technically was illegal and unlicensed.
The Stonewall Inn was known as a bar that really no one liked, but everyone frequented.
It was where you went if you were too young or too poor to go anywhere else.
It was a seedy little bar with no fire exits, no plumbing, and watered down liquor.
Stonewall was a haven for queer runaways, and it was one of the few places where you
could go and express yourself freely in the Village.
At that point in time, not only were there liquor restrictions, but you also couldn't
be seen even appearing to be in a homosexual relationship.
That meant dancing was out of the question, but Stonewall was known to have the best dance
floor in town.
Drag queens ran the jukebox, and the crowd was working-class people of various genders,
racial backgrounds, and sexualities.
One of most well-known patrons was Greenwich Village icon, Marsha P. Johnson, who was a
drag performer, sex worker and trans woman.
Her close friend was Sylvia Rivera, a 17 year old Puerto Rican trans woman who was also
a sex worker who performed drag.
Storme DeLarverie could also be found in the dingy bar at 53 Christopher Street.
She was a mixed black woman, drag king, and self-identified dyke who was often referred
to as “the guardian of the lesbians in the Village.”
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy was a community leader for transgender rights, specifically for trans
women of color.
Most bars at the time denied entry to trans women, but as Miss Major established herself
in the community, she no longer had to explain herself.
Stonewall was run by the mafia and relied on police bribes to keep the regular raids
at bay.
Sometimes, however, the bars would be raided because the police simply wanted a larger
paycheck. And Seymour Pine was a Deputy inspector with the NYPD and he was determined to have
the bar closed down.
On June 24, 1969, he raided the bar, confiscated the alcohol and arrested several of the personnel.
The bar's owner had yelled at him defiantly that they would be open again tomorrow.
On June 28 at 1 AM, he returned on Saturday morning around 1AM he returned with a search
warrant
He was accompanied by representatives of city and federal agencies to observe the raid.
That night Marsha was celebrating her birthday with Sylvia and she was disappointed at the
lackluster turn out for her celebration.
When the police entered, Slyvia shrieked, beliving that she had forgotten her ID, but
her friend Gary had brought it with him.
The way that these raids went is that they'd ask the bar's patrons to line up and one by
one, they'd check identification.
The police would basically look for any excuse possible to arrest a patron inside of the
bar.
A common infraction that specifically targeted trans people and drag perfomers was the rule
that you had to have at least four pieces of gender appropriate garb.
Sylvia was nervous, but she wasn't expecting any harassment, afterall she only had a little
bit of makeup on.
The polce came and grabbed her ID out of her hand and asked her with a smirk on his face
if she was a boy or a girl.
It was at that point where Sylvia had had it and almost swung on an officer, but was
held back by her friend Gary.
The patrons of the Stonewall Inn had become so accustomed to these raids that at this
point, were taking them in jest.
As drag queens some of the more colorful patrons left, they began to strike poses in front
of the bar for the people passing by.
But when a paddy wagon pulled up and the police started moving arrested patrons into it, the
mood changed.
People started pushing the paddy wagon and the police yelled at them to get back.
The mood kept shifting and there was a foreboding presence like something was about to happen.
The definitive turning point of the night is when Storme DeLarvarie was taken out of
the bar and put into a control wagon after fighting with four police officers.
She screamed to the onlookers, “Why don't you do something?” desperately wondering
how clear acts of police brutality could go without uproar.
From that point, the crowd erupted. Marsha P Johnson is said to have been the first person
to throw a shot glass at police.
Some Stonewall veterans refer to that as “the shotglass heard around the world.”
Syliva Rivera is said to have thrown a bottle at police officers.
Bar patrons and the people in the community started pelting the police with stones, and
civil disobedience erupted into Christopher Street.
Most famously, a kickline of drag queens formed and sung “We are the Stonewall girls, we
wear our hair in curls, we don't wear underwear, we show our pubic hair” before assaulting
officers with any piece of the bar they could find.
The Stonewall Riot meant many things to many people.
People that were there describe it as an event that allowed them to finally vent their anger.
Street kids who had nothing to lose and gender variant people were largely responsible for
the uprising.
Miss Major was later arrested after being intentionally knocked out by a police officer
to further avoid injury – a strategy she had learned from other queens.
The Stonewall Riots continued for a few days after that night and sparked the foundation
for the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and activism.
Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson went on to create STAR, Street Transvestite Action
Revolutionaries, a group dedicated to helping homeless drag queens and trans women.
A militant group called The Gay Liberation front was formed and stood in contrast to
the non-violent approach of The Mattachine society.
Miss Major became an advocate for incarcerated transgender women, and to this day still advocates
for that cause.
Storme DeLarvarie became an active member of the Stonewall veterans and had a film about
her life released in 1987 about her life in America's first integrated drag revue.
The Stonewall Riots were celebrated every year on June 28th on the Christopher Street
Liberation Day.
And this became the start of what we now call Gay Pride.
Four years after the riots, Sylvia Rivera got on the stage during the Gay Liberation
Rally during Gay Pride to represent STAR.
She was heckled and booed while trying to speak out about trans women and gender variant
individuals who are often targeted for sexual violence in prison.
While she gave an empowering speech, she left feeling disempowered, and she slipped away
from activism for the next twenty years.
While accounts of that evening vary, there is one consistent part of the narrative: that
trans women, drag queens, and people of color played a large part of the events that evening.
In September of this year, a movie directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Jon Robin
Baitz about Stonewall will be in theaters.
And the star of the film isn't Sylvia or Marsha, or Storme or Miss Major, but a fictional cis,
white male protagonist named Danny Winters who is credited as the man who threw the first
brick at Stonewall.
In part two, I'll be giving my criticism of that trailer – and they may or may not be
what you think.
So for now, Kat Blaque for Everyday Feminism, signing out.