by Evelyn Bailey
All over the world, gay pride parades, picnics and festivals are held – to remember, to celebrate an event that changed the course of history – Stonewall!
What really happened that Friday night? What follows are excerpts from an eyewitness account given by Morty Manford taken from Making Gay History by Eric Marcus.
In the Fall of 1968 Morty Manford began his freshman year at Columbia College. One of the first things he did after arriving was to call the Student Homophile League. Morty attended a meeting but was not “terribly inspired by what I saw, and nothing they were doing really interested me.”
By this time Morty had already discovered the bars. He said, “I suppose my gay life pretty much revolved around going to the bars. There was always the threat of bar raids. Everyone heard about them. But the only raid where I was actually inside the bar was at Stonewall.”
Mort continued saying, “ The Stonewall was a dive. It was shabby, and the glasses they served the watered-down drinks in weren't particularly clean. The place attracted a very eclectic crowd: some transvestites, a lot of students, young people, older people, businessmen. I met friends at the Stonewall regularly. There was a dance floor and a jukebox. There was a back room area which in those days meant there was another bar in back. There were tables where people sat.”
Continuing, on the night of June 27, 1969 Mort said, “Some men in suits and ties entered the place and walked around a little bit. Then whispers went around that the place was being raided. Suddenly the lights were turned up and the doors were sealed, and all the patrons were held captive until the police decided what they were going to do. Everybody was anxious, not knowing whether we were going to be arrested or what was going to happen. I was anxious, but I wasn't afraid.”
Mort continued, ”It may have been 10 or 15 minutes later that we were all told to leave. We had to line up and our identification was checked before we were freed. People who did not have identification or were under age and all transvestites were detained. Those who didn't meet whatever standards the police had were incarcerated temporarily in the coat room. The coat closet. Little did the police know the ironic symbolism of that. But they found out fast.
As people were released they stayed outside. They didn't run away. They waited for their friends to come out. People who were walking up and down Christopher Street, which was a very busy cruising area, also assembled. The crowd in front of the Stonewall grew and grew. And the tension started to grow.”
Mort recounts, “As some of the gays came out of the bar, they would take a bow, and their friends would cheer. It was a colorful scene. After everybody who was going to be released was released, the prisoners – transvestites, bartenders, and the bouncers – were herded into a paddy wagon parked right on the sidewalk in front of the bar. The prisoners were left unguarded by the police. They simply walked out of the paddy wagon to the cheer of the throng.”
Mort clearly stated, “There is no doubt in my mind that those people were deliberately left unguarded. I assume there was some sort of a relationship between the bar management and the local police, so they really didn't want to arrest these people. But they had to at least look like they were trying to do their jobs.
Once all of the people were out and the prisoners went on their merry ways, the crowd stayed. I don't know how to characterize the motives of the crowd at that point except to say there was curiosity and concern about what had just happened.”
People in the crowd then began to throw coins at the Stonewall. A rock was thrown breaking a second floor window. Mort said, “It was a dramatic gesture of defiance. For me there was a slight lancing of the festering wound of anger that had been building for so long over this kind of unfair harassment and prejudice. It wasn't my fault that the bars where I could meet other gay people were run by organized crime. Because of the system of official discrimination on the part of state liquor authorities and the corruption of the local police authorities, these were the only kind of bars that were permitted to serve a gay clientele. None of that was my doing.”
“More rocks went flying. From inside the bar, someone opened the door and stuck a gun out. Yelling for people to stay back, he withdrew the gun closed the door and went back inside. Someone took an uprooted parking meter and broke the glass in the front window and the plywood board behind it broke. Somebody else took a garbage can, one with wire mesh, set it on fire and threw the burning garbage into the premises. The area that was set afire is where the coat room was.” Mort continues, “They had a fire hose inside, and they used it. It was a very small trash fire. Then they opened the front door and turned the hose on the crowd to try to keep people at a distance. That's when the riot erupted.”
Mort recounts, “Apparently a fire engine had been summoned because of the trash fire. As it came down the block, uniformed police started to arrive. They came down the street in a phalanx of blue. They had their riot gear on. In those days the New York City police and a girl of prone cadre known as the Tactical Police Force the TPF. Who knows whether the violence would have escalated in the way that it did if the TPF had not come in? That's what they always looked for; they wanted confrontation. Chasing after people and hitting them with their billy clubs, I think, provoked a greater response than there would have been otherwise. One way or the other, though, gay people had stood up and rebelled.”
This is why we celebrate Gay Pride! The call to be free and equal went out from Stonewall – it was heard and lives on in us!
Come, join the festivities and be out, be alive, and BE PROUD