Park and Sheridan Square, and the area around the Stonewall

Inn, is a place where the LGBT community gathered

to celebrate our victories, to mourn our losses.

But mostly, to protest.

It was a place where the community felt

comfortable and safe, because we were all among ourselves.

Well, the 1960s, it was a city sport

to attack gay people.

We were the lowest of the scum

of the Earth at that time.

You're sick.

You're a sinner.

And some therapists said, well, if you get married,

it’ll go away.

We were thrown into a general category

of people who needed to be cleaned up out of New York

City.

Well, I understand that we’re being picketed

by a group of homosexuals.

[laughter] The policy of the department

is that we do not employ homosexuals knowingly.

And if we discover homosexuals in our department,

we discharge them.

Homosexuality is a problem.

And these people are really advocating that we

don’t solve the problem.

They’re advocating that we tolerate the problem.

And I think these people are a fit subject

for a mental health program.

Our life was kind of isolated and secret.

But everyone knew that Greenwich Village

was where we hung out.

Every type of gay person that existed in the city,

at one night could really be found there.

In this particular area here, it

was kind of liberating to be myself.

People who are younger may not

remember what it was like to go to a gay bar in the 60s.

It was a very special thing to go to a bar.

Bars always were dark on the outside, in some kind of way,

so people couldn’t see in.

They never had names.

Christopher Park was a touch seedy.

It was a park across from Stonewall,

so was occupied by the street kids, the drag queens,

or whoever was around.

It wasn’t glamorous.

It wasn’t beautiful.

It was just a rest stop for people

to talk and take a break from the bars, sometimes.

There were always stories coming out of Stonewall.

It was a dancing bar.

At first, it was just a gay men’s bar,

and they didn’t allow no women in.

And then they started allowing women in,

and then they let drag queens in.

I was one of the first drag queens to go to that place.

This area was the only real turf we had in the city.

At the time, gay bars could not serve legally.

So it was run by the mafia, and they paid off

the police.

But the police raided the bars all the time.

We were afraid we would be arrested.

But we went because we had no other place to go.

June 28, 1969.

It was a weekend.

The neighborhood cops came in and they

started pushing people.

There was some commotion inside.

Then there was the raid.

Everybody just like, why the fuck

are we doing all this for?

I don’t know if it was the customers

or it was the police.

It just [makes snapping sound] everything clicked.

We just was saying, no more police brutality,

and we had enough police harassment in the village.

Things escalated in different areas at the same time.

A riot has movement and energy,

and you’re not in one place to observe.

What you ever observe is the place you’re in.

And where you’re in, in two minutes could change.

A drag queen had kicked a cop in the shoulder.

The cop turned to us and did what they always

did, and said, all right, you fags saw enough.

The show’s over.

Now get the fuck out of here.

But for some reason, all of us,

without telling each other, without communicating, even

bodily, moved forward.

All of a sudden, things were flying all over the place.

The cops, they just panicked.

We knew the land.

They could not catch us.

They could not trap us.

They couldn’t arrest the leaders because we had none.

They could do nothing but chase us.

Two queens pulled a parking meter out of the ground,

concrete and all, used it as a battering ram.

Oh, it was so exciting.

It was like, wow, we’re doing it.

We’re doing it.

The riot lasted for hours and hours.

Finally, the first hint of dawn was coming.

I sat down on a stoop.

And I looked across and there was this other queen sitting

on a stoop, exhausted.

And six feet away on the fence was a cop, exhausted.

No longer enemies, just exhausted people.

And the first beginnings of the sun

were catching all the smashed glass.

It’s like diamonds lit up.

It was one of most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

Well, the next few nights really

were a repetition of the rioting.

All of a sudden, a lot of gay people

appeared on the streets, in this whole area,

not just in front of Stonewall.

This was our neighborhood, and we

weren’t going to let them take it away from us.

We knew this is it.

This is what we’ve been waiting for.

After the uprising, the bar closed.

And activists realized that this was a really important

turning point.

A year after the riots, that whole area by the Stonewall

became the gathering point of the kickoff

for the first gay pride parade.

Craig Rodwell of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop

putting up a sign in his window and saying,

hey, kids, let’s put on a show.

And they were going to commemorate

Stonewall as an event.

For lack of a better term, they branded it.

It was our desire not to let any of this be forgotten.

Sticking our torches in the ashes of the Stonewall,

to say, we are walking away from the darkness

of the bars.

And we can have another life together.

The remarkable first march I think brought a lot of us

to our senses as to what we could do.

And then, all of a sudden, everything

seemed to be in place.

[crowd noises]

Everybody was into changing the system.

But, there were a lot of drag queens behind the scenes

that could not be seen in front, like myself

or Marsha.

The community is always embarrassed

by the drag queens.

It was always, we have to look part of their world.

And that’s what really hurt.

In many ways, the Stonewall became an icon and a beacon

for the LGBTQ movement.

People would head to Sheridan Square

and gather in front of the Stonewall

with their anger, their love, their concerns.

And in the latest chapter of her war on homosexuals,

Anita Bryant says she’s in favor

of having homosexual acts treated as felonies,

even though that might mean prison terms of as

much as 20 years.

We thought Anita Bryant was a threat to us,

and we only became stronger.

[crowd noises]

Dan White has been found guilty of one count

each of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death

of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

The jury chose the least serious crime of the options

given to them.

Some 200 gays marched to Sheridan Square

in the Village to stage a rally.

[crowd noises]

It will be a demonstration that