I guess they're deviates. I mean does anyone know what that is? The windows were always cloaked. Jimmy knew he shouldn't be interested but, well, he was curious. It was nonsense, it was nonsense, it was all the people there, that were reacting and opposing what was occurring. Jerry Hoose:I mean the riot squad was used to riots. That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And I keep listening and listening and listening, hoping I'm gonna hear sirens any minute and I was very freaked. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? The Underground Lounge But the before section, I really wanted people to have a sense of what it felt like to be gay, lesbian, transgender, before Stonewall and before you have this mass civil rights movement that comes after Stonewall. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." But you live with it, you know, you're used to this, after the third time it happened, or, the third time you heard about it, that's the way the world is. Raymond Castro:Incendiary devices were being thrown in I don't think they were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. Martha Shelley:I don't know if you remember the Joan Baez song, "It isn't nice to block the doorway, it isn't nice to go to jail, there're nicer ways to do it but the nice ways always fail." Martha Shelley Tom Caruso People could take shots at us. The term like "authority figures" wasn't used back then, there was just "Lily Law," "Patty Pig," "Betty Badge." Narrator (Archival):We arrested homosexuals who committed their lewd acts in public places. I mean it didn't stop after that. I didn't think I could have been any prettier than that night. Susan Liberti In 1924, the first gay rights organization is founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. Before Stonewall 1984 Unrated 1 h 27 m IMDb RATING 7.5 /10 1.1K YOUR RATING Rate Play trailer 2:21 1 Video 7 Photos Documentary History The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose. The idea was to be there first. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. Colonial House And, it was, I knew I would go through hell, I would go through fire for that experience. If there had been a riot of that proportion in Harlem, my God, you know, there'd have been cameras everywhere. Danny Garvin:There was more anger and more fight the second night. In a spontaneous show of support and frustration, the citys gay community rioted for three nights in the streets, an event that is considered the birth of the modern Gay Rights Movement. BBC Worldwide Americas Historic Films Narrator (Archival):This is one of the county's principal weekend gathering places for homosexuals, both male and female. Your choice, you can come in with us or you can stay out here with the crowd and report your stuff from out here. All the rules were off in the '60s. I learned, very early, that those horrible words were about me, that I was one of those people. And I raised my hand at one point and said, "Let's have a protest march." The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. The men's room was under police surveillance. This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all. Urban Stages To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. They really were objecting to how they were being treated. Alexis Charizopolis It must have been terrifying for them. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:What they did in the Stonewall that night. John O'Brien:Cops got hurt. It was terrifying. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:Gay rights, like the rights of blacks, were constantly under attack and while blacks were protected by constitutional amendments coming out of the Civil War, gays were not protected by law and certainly not the Constitution. One was the 1845 statute that made it a crime in the state to masquerade. They could be judges, lawyers. You know. Daniel Pine Robin Haueter National Archives and Records Administration The documentary shows how homosexual people enjoyed and shared with each other. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. The groundbreaking 1984 film "Before Stonewall" introduced audiences to some of the key players and places that helped spark the Greenwich Village riots. Before Stonewall - Trailer BuskFilms 12.6K subscribers Subscribe 14K views 10 years ago Watch the full film here (UK & IRE only): http://buskfilms.com/films/before-sto. And so we had to create these spaces, mostly in the trucks. Virginia Apuzzo:What we felt in isolation was a growing sense of outrage and fury particularly because we looked around and saw so many avenues of rebellion. Raymond Castro:Society expected you to, you know, grow up, get married, have kids, which is what a lot of people did to satisfy their parents. If that didn't work, they would do things like aversive conditioning, you know, show you pornography and then give you an electric shock. Lilli M. Vincenz The medical experimentation in Atascadero included administering, to gay people, a drug that simulated the experience of drowning; in other words, a pharmacological example of waterboarding. And it was fantastic. New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. There may be some here today that will be homosexual in the future. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:We would scatter, ka-poom, every which way. Revisiting the newly restored "Before Stonewall" 35 years after its premiere, Rosenberg said he was once again struck by its "powerful" and "acutely relevant" narrative. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:The mob raised its hand and said "Oh, we'll volunteer," you know, "We'll set up some gay bars and serve over-priced, watered-down drinks to you guys." Jerry Hoose:I was afraid it was over. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt Fred Sargeant:Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:That night I'm in my office, I looked down the street, and I could see the Stonewall sign and I started to see some activity in front. Chris Mara And the people coming out weren't going along with it so easily. First Run Features Martin Boyce:And I remember moving into the open space and grabbing onto two of my friends and we started singing and doing a kick line. We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox." I was celebrating my birthday at the Stonewall. Beginning of our night out started early. This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other parts of America. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. Jerry Hoose:I remember I was in a paddy wagon one time on the way to jail, we were all locked up together on a chain in the paddy wagon and the paddy wagon stopped for a red light or something and one of the queens said "Oh, this is my stop." Raymond Castro:So finally when they started taking me out, arm in arm up to the paddy wagon, I jumped up and I put one foot on one side, one foot on the other and I sprung back, knocking the two arresting officers, knocking them to the ground. And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." It was a 100% profit, I mean they were stealing the liquor, then watering it down, and they charging twice as much as they charged one door away at the 55. Other images in this film are This 19-year-old serviceman left his girlfriend on the beach to go to a men's room in a park nearby where he knew that he could find a homosexual contact. Eric Marcus has spent years interviewing people who were there that night, as well as those who were pushing for gay rights before Stonewall. Seymour Wishman And it's interesting to note how many youngsters we've been seeing in these films. Getting then in the car, rocking them back and forth. Because as the police moved back, we were conscious, all of us, of the area we were controlling and now we were in control of the area because we were surrounded the bar, we were moving in, they were moving back. And I think it's both the alienation, also the oppression that people suffered. We knew it was a gay bar, we walked past it. Obama signed the memorandum to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. Slate:Boys Beware(1961) Public Service Announcement. But as we were going up 6th Avenue, it kept growing. It was as bad as any situation that I had met in during the army, had just as much to worry about. Danny Garvin:We were talking about the revolution happening and we were walking up 7th Avenue and I was thinking it was either Black Panthers or the Young Lords were going to start it and we turned the corner from 7th Avenue onto Christopher Street and we saw the paddy wagon pull up there. Creating the First Visual History of Queer Life Before Stonewall Making a landmark documentary about LGBTQ Americans before 1969 meant digging through countless archives to find traces of. I was in the Navy when I was 17 and it was there that I discovered that I was gay. That night, we printed a box, we had 5,000. Suzanne Poli On this episode, the fight for gay rights before Stonewall. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a weeknight, they took place early in the evening, the place would not be crowded. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. We ought to know, we've arrested all of them. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:There were no instructions except: put them out of business. Martin Boyce:For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering hole on the savannah. The mob was saying, you know, "Screw you, cops, you think you can come in a bust us up? Transcript Aired June 9, 2020 Stonewall Uprising The Year That Changed America Film Description When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of. Every arrest and prosecution is a step in the education of the public to the solution of the problem. There may be some girls here who will turn lesbian. Doric Wilson:There was joy because the cops weren't winning. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. The Laramie Project Cast at The Calhoun School TV Host (Archival):Are those your own eyelashes? The severity of the punishment varies from state to state. A sickness that was not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious. Barney Karpfinger Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:But there were little, tiny pin holes in the plywood windows, I'll call them the windows but they were plywood, and we could look out from there and every time I went over and looked out through one of those pin holes where he did, we were shocked at how big the crowd had become. And a whole bunch of people who were in the paddy wagon ran out. The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It really should have been called Stonewall uprising. And then as you turned into the other room with the jukebox, those were the drag queens around the jukebox. I made friends that first day. You were alone. This time they said, "We're not going." Hugh Bush It was fun to see fags. Eventually something was bound to blow. Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies. Martha Shelley:If you were in a small town somewhere, everybody knew you and everybody knew what you did and you couldn't have a relationship with a member of your own sex, period. Eric Marcus, Recreation Still Photography Abstract. It's the first time I'm fully inside the Stonewall. The events that took place in June 1969 have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement, but that's only partially true. Danny Garvin:We became a people. Yvonne Ritter:It's like people who are, you know, black people who are used to being mistreated, and going to the back of the bus and I guess this was sort of our going to the back of the bus. Alfredo del Rio, Archival Still and Motion Images Courtesy of And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality and you looked it up. Andrea Weiss is a documentary filmmaker and author with a Ph.D. in American History. And we had no right to such. I told the person at the door, I said "I'm 18 tonight" and he said to me, "you little SOB," he said. Doing things like that. Virginia Apuzzo: I grew up with that. They didn't know what they were walking into. They would not always just arrest, they would many times use clubs and beat. Dick Leitsch:And I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. Martin Boyce:I wasn't labeled gay, just "different." We had been threatened bomb threats. It was a down at a heels kind of place, it was a lot of street kids and things like that. They pushed everybody like to the back room and slowly asking for IDs. The documentary "Before Stonewall" was very educational and interesting because it shows a retail group that fought for the right to integrate into the society and was where the homosexual revolution occurred. At least if you had press, maybe your head wouldn't get busted. We didn't expect we'd ever get to Central Park. Geoff Kole We'd say, "Here comes Lillian.". Mafia house beer? And then they send them out in the street and of course they did make arrests, because you know, there's all these guys who cruise around looking for drag queens. John O'Brien:I was with a group that we actually took a parking meter out of theground, three or four people, and we used it as a battering ram. John O'Brien Danny Garvin:It was the perfect time to be in the Village. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:Saturday night there it was. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . Getty Images Even non-gay people. 'Cause I really realized that I was being trained as a straight person, so I could really fool these people. The film brings together voices from over 50 years of the LGBTQ rights movement to explore queer activism before, during and after the Stonewall Riots. I entered the convent at 26, to pursue that question and I was convinced that I would either stay until I got an answer, or if I didn't get an answer just stay. Doric Wilson:When I was very young, one of the terms for gay people was twilight people, meaning that we never came out until twilight, 'til it got dark. Leaflets in the 60s were like the internet, today. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And by the time the police would come back towards Stonewall, that crowd had gone all the around Washington Place come all the way back around and were back pushing in on them from the other direction and the police would wonder, "These are the same people or different people?". For the first time, we weren't letting ourselves be carted off to jails, gay people were actually fighting back just the way people in the peace movement fought back. Slate:The Homosexuals(1967), CBS Reports. In the sexual area, in psychology, psychiatry. Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries . Martha Babcock Because if they weren't there fast, I was worried that there was something going on that I didn't know about and they weren't gonna come. Dr. Socarides (Archival):Homosexuality is in fact a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. We didn't want to come on, you know, wearing fuzzy sweaters and lipstick, you know, and being freaks. And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble. Dick Leitsch:And the blocks were small enough that we could run around the block and come in behind them before they got to the next corner. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. There's a little door that slides open with this power-hungry nut behind that, you see this much of your eyes, and he sees that much of your face, and then he decides whether you're going to get in. Well, little did he know that what was gonna to happen later on was to make history. Because he was homosexual. Daily News Richard Enman (Archival):Present laws give the adult homosexual only the choice of being, to simplify the matter, heterosexual and legal or homosexual and illegal. A lot of them had been thrown out of their families. And so there was this drag queen standing on the corner, so they go up and make a sexual offer and they'd get busted. Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included: Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967 Black Night Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961. ", Martin Boyce:People in the neighborhood, the most unlikely people were starting to support it. We heard one, then more and more. I could never let that happen and never did. It was done in our little street talk. And I had become very radicalized in that time. The first police officer that came in with our group said, "The place is under arrest. ITN Source They frequent their own clubs, and bars and coffee houses, where they can escape the disapproving eye of the society that they call straight. Based on For the first time the next person stood up. There was all these drags queens and these crazy people and everybody was carrying on. They put some people on the street right in front ofThe Village Voiceprotesting the use of the word fag in my story. W hen police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969 50 years ago this month the harassment was routine for the time. Not even us. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:And then the next night. Eric Marcus, Writer:It was incredibly hot. Synopsis. I really thought that, you know, we did it. You see these cops, like six or eight cops in drag. I was proud. The scenes were photographed with telescopic lenses. Dana Gaiser Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, I had to act like I wasn't nervous. I mean, I came out in Central Park and other places. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. I grew up in a very Catholic household and the conflict of issues of redemption, of is it possible that if you are this thing called homosexual, is it possible to be redeemed? Raymond Castro:We were in the back of the room, and the lights went on, so everybody stopped what they were doing, because now the police started coming in, raiding the bar. We could lose our memory from the beating, we could be in wheelchairs like some were. You see, Ralph was a homosexual. That was our world, that block. Dan Martino [1] To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 2019, the film was restored and re-released by First Run Features in June 2019. But we couldn't hold out very long. Geordie, Liam and Theo Gude But I was just curious, I didn't want to participate because number one it was so packed. Doug Cramer The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world. Leroy S. Mobley Because to be gay represented to me either very, super effeminate men or older men who hung out in the upper movie theatres on 42nd Street or in the subway T-rooms, who'd be masturbating. The lights came on, it's like stop dancing. Before Stonewall, the activists wanted to fit into society and not rock the boat. It was narrated by author Rita Mae Brown, directed by Greta Schiller, co-directed by Robert Rosenberg, and co-produced by John Scagliotti and Rosenberg, and Schiller. The mayor of New York City, the police commissioner, were under pressure to clean up the streets of any kind of quote unquote "weirdness." To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. We could easily be hunted, that was a game. In addition to interviews with activists and scholars, the film includes the reflections of renowned writer Allen Ginsberg. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Ed Koch who was a democratic party leader in the Greenwich Village area, was a specific leader of the local forces seeking to clean up the streets. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Raymond Castro:I'd go in there and I would look and I would just cringe because, you know, people would start touching me, and "Hello, what are you doing there if you don't want to be touched?" William Eskridge, Professor of Law:In states like New York, there were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Gay people who were sentenced to medical institutions because they were found to be sexual psychopaths, were subjected sometimes to sterilization, occasionally to castration, sometimes to medical procedures, such as lobotomies, which were felt by some doctors to cure homosexuality and other sexual diseases. John O'Brien:Whenever you see the cops, you would run away from them. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. Before Stonewall. America thought we were these homosexual monsters and we were so innocent, and oddly enough, we were so American. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We were looking for secret exits and one of the policewomen was able to squirm through the window and they did find a way out. Windows started to break. Martin Boyce:We were like a Hydra. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We told this to our men. Virginia Apuzzo:It's very American to say, "This is not right."