Excerpts from an article by Michael Robertson in the Empty Closet, June 1975
“We have fled from blackmailing cops, from families who disowned or ‘tolerated’ us; we have been drummed out of the armed services, thrown out of schools, fired from jobs, and beaten by punks and policemen. Straight cops patrol us, straight legislators govern us, straight employers keep us in line, straight money exploits us. We have pretended everything is OK because we haven't been able to see how to change it – – we've been afraid.”
Out of this intolerable reality and the struggle of all peoples to be treated as human beings was born the gay liberation movement. In this article I want to focus on the event that catapulted gay liberation into the 20th century full-blown, and specifically its effect on Rochester, New York.
It was this month 39 years ago that some thing unremarkable happened. On June 27, an event which had occurred a thousand times before across the United States over the decades took place. THE POLICE RAIDED A GAY BAR! The very first public response to overt harassment was demonstrated. The Stonewall Riots mark the conscious organized beginning of the gay liberation movement. They also mark the beginning of Gay Pride.
For those for whom the Stonewall riots are just a name and for those who have never heard of them, let me try to recall for you the year 1969. This was the year that Richard M. Nixon was inaugurated the 37th president of the United States. The year Senator Edward M. Kennedy plead guilty to being at the scene of a fatal accident at Chappaquiddick. The year that Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. take the first walk on the moon.
In 1969 the life expectancy of Americans was 70.5 years. The cost of a first-class stamp was six cents. This was the year that the New York Jets won the Super Bowl, and the New York Mets won the World Series. This was the year that Majestic Prince won the Kentucky Derby and that Texas won the NCAA Football Championship. This was also the year of Oscar-winning film Midnight Cowboy, of Woodstock, of the introduction of Sesame Street to children all over the United States.
This was the year that Oliver won the Academy award for best picture. This was the year that Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson was record of the year, and that Glen Campbell's By theTime I Get To Phoenix was the album of the year. In 1969 the first in vitro fertilization of the human egg was performed in Cambridge England. Dwight David Eisenhower and Joseph P. Kennedy died in 1969.
Now what was it like to be gay in 1969? New York gay bars were legal. In 1969, it was common all over the United States for police to raid gay and lesbian bars. While they were purportedly looking for liquor law or other violations, patrons were arrested and dragged off to jail with no legitimate charges made against them. The names of those arrested were often published in the papers and many of those people were fired from their jobs as a result.
At this time homosexuals were perceived as immoral and undesirable characters who brought ill-repute and disorder to any drinking establishment. In 1969 bars were about the only places gays and lesbians could gather in public. Most times when the police would raid a bar, the gay and lesbian clientele would try to slip out the back or cower in the corners. In fact at this time raids were conducted regularly without much resistance.
Against this backdrop, the event that would become known as the Stonewall Rebellion or Stonewall Riots took place. The Stonewall Inn was located at 53 Christopher St off Sheridan Square. It was an after hours private club for members only. Anyone who could scrounge up three bucks could become a member for the evening.
The place was reputed to be Mafia owned (as were most of the gay bars in those days) and liquor was sold on the premises without benefit of a liquor license. This made it a perfect target for the authorities. On Friday evening June 27, 1969 at 3 a.m., eight plainclothes officers (including two women) raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
The employees were arrested for selling liquor without a license. The customers were allowed to leave one at a time. They waited outside for their friends. Many had been in such raids before. One observer referred to the gathering as festive with those exiting the club striking poses swishing and camping. Then there was a sudden mood change when the paddy wagon arrived and the bartender doorman three drag queens and a struggling lesbian were shoved inside.
There were cat calls and cries to topple the paddy wagon. Once the paddy wagon left the police moved quickly back into the Stonewall Inn and locked themselves in. The butch lesbians and drag queens fought back. The bar patrons threw bottles and rocks at the police. They chanted, “Gay Power!” and “Liberate Christopher St.!”
One person threw a rock through a window and eventually garbage cans, bottles, and even a parking meter were used to assault the building. New York's Tactical Police Force arrived on the scene. The crowd was disbursed.
Later that night and into Sunday morning a crowd again gathered in front of the ravaged bar. Many young gay men showed up to protest the flurry of raids, but they did so by hand holding, kissing, and forming a chorus line. “We are the Stonewall girls,” they sang kicking their legs in front of the police. “We wear our hair in curls./ We have no underwear./ We show our pubic hair.” Police cleared the street without incident this time, but another street altercation occurred a few days later.
Even more significant though was what happened later in the summer. At the end of July, gay activists circulated copies of a flyer calling for a mass “homosexual liberation meeting.” The headline of the flyer read, “Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are!” The alliance that formed from the meeting held on July 24 adopted the name Gay Liberation Front (GLF); among its demands were not only an end to police harassment, but job protection for gay employees, the repeal of sodomy laws, and local and national anti-discrimination laws.
In Rochester, inspired by these events several members of the University of Rochester community proceeded to organize a gay group for students faculty and staff. The burgeoning organization soon attracted and welcomed members of the city gay community. The group received funding and office space in the student union from the University. With a base from which to work, the Gay Liberation Front soon began staffing its office, sending out speakers into the community, holding large dances, providing weekly programs, organizing consciousness raising groups, and publishing a monthly newsletter, the Empty Closet.
In their desire to grow not only as lesbians but also as women, many of the women members decided to leave the University group in order to form their own organization. Thus, in the fall of 1972, was born the Gay Revolution of Women, later to become the Lesbian Resource Center.
In April of 1973 a decision was made by the nine student members of the GLF to become a community organization not affiliated with the University. A new organization, the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley began in March of 1974. The Gay Alliance moved to the Genesee Co-op building, already housing the Gay Revolution of Women and other organizations.
This growth brought with it a realization that the Alliance was not really an “alliance” but had become a collective of gay men. In an effort to reunite gay men and women on common goals, the then Gay Alliance of gay men voted to share its corporation and to rename itself the Gay Brotherhood of Rochester. Joining together, the Lesbian Resource Center, the Rochester Gay Task Force and the Gay Brotherhood of Rochester formed a new Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, Inc. Since January of 1975, this “Alliance” has become a reality fighting “the intolerable reality.”
Photo Credit: Back to Our Future, A Walk on the Wild Side of Stonewall by Robert Amsel.The Gay Militants