You throw into that, that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night. Gay people were told we didn't have any of that. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The federal government would fire you, school boards would fire you. Somehow being gay was the most terrible thing you could possibly be. And there was like this tension in the air and it just like built and built. Do you want them to lose all chance of a normal, happy, married life? 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. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them. They were the storm troopers. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It was getting worse and worse. Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. They'd go into the bathroom or any place that was private, that they could either feel them, or check them visually. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to. [2][3] Later in 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5][6]. 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. All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. He may appear normal, and it may be too late when you discover he is mentally ill. John O'Brien:I was a poor, young gay person. I say, I cannot tell this without tearing up. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:So you're outside, and you see like two people walking toward these trucks and you think, "Oh I think I'll go in there," you go in there, there's like a lot of people in there and it's all dark. Before Stonewall. 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. Every arrest and prosecution is a step in the education of the public to the solution of the problem. You see, Ralph was a homosexual. Narrator (Archival):This involves showing the gay man pictures of nude males and shocking him with a strong electric current. And I had become very radicalized in that time. Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it. We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to. John DiGiacomo Long before marriage equality, non-binary gender identity, and the flood of new documentaries commemorating this month's 50th anniversary of the Greenwich Village uprising that begat the gay rights movement, there was Greta Schiller's Before Stonewall.Originally released in 1984as AIDS was slowly killing off many of those bar patrons-turned-revolutionariesthe film, through the use of . Because he was homosexual. And the Village has a lot of people with children and they were offended. And you will be caught, don't think you won't be caught, because this is one thing you cannot get away with. Once it started, once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to go back in. Louis Mandelbaum Queer was very big. 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. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films I mean does anyone know what that is? But I had only stuck my head in once at the Stonewall. And the harder she fought, the more the cops were beating her up and the madder the crowd got. It was fun to see fags. Danny Garvin:He's a faggot, he's a sissy, queer. Hunted, hunted, sometimes we were hunted. Narrator (Archival):Do you want your son enticed into the world of homosexuals, or your daughter lured into lesbianism? What finally made sense to me was the first time I kissed a woman and I thought, "Oh, this is what it's about." And today we're talking about Stonewall, which were both pretty anxious about so anxious. Jerry Hoose:And I got to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, crossed the street and there I had found Nirvana. This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all. John O'Brien:They had increased their raids in the trucks. They pushed everybody like to the back room and slowly asking for IDs. Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown and so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969. Diana Davies Photographs, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Revealing and. 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. 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. 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. ITN Source Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an email, or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805. Jerry Hoose:I was chased down the street with billy clubs. Martha Shelley:When I was growing up in the '50s, I was supposed to get married to some guy, produce, you know, the usual 2.3 children, and I could look at a guy and say, "Well, objectively he's good looking," but I didn't feel anything, just didn't make any sense to me. Ed Koch, mayorof New York City from1978 to 1989, discussesgay civil rights in New York in the 1960s. Yvonne Ritter:I did try to get out of the bar and I thought that there might be a way out through one of the bathrooms. 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. It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. Dick Leitsch:We wore suits and ties because we wanted people, in the public, who were wearing suits and ties, to identify with us. NBC News Archives The Stonewall had reopened. Jeremiah Hawkins I mean they were making some headway. 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. You gotta remember, the Stonewall bar was just down the street from there. It meant nothing to us. View in iTunes. I first engaged in such acts when I was 14 years old. The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable. Dana Kirchoff It was done in our little street talk. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar and when she came out of the bar she was fighting the cops and trying to get away. Sophie Cabott Black To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. And in a sense the Stonewall riots said, "Get off our backs, deliver on the promise." 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. I was proud. Martin Boyce:It was another great step forward in the story of human rights, that's what it was. Barak Goodman Martin Boyce:Mind you socks didn't count, so it was underwear, and undershirt, now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit. Getting then in the car, rocking them back and forth. That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. Available on Prime Video, Tubi TV, iTunes. It was terrifying. Pamela Gaudiano And the Stonewall was part of that system. I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. Like, "Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words 'fire,' you will be walking a beat on Staten Island all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. Chris Mara, Production Assistants Maureen Jordan Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:And they were, they were kids. If there had been a riot of that proportion in Harlem, my God, you know, there'd have been cameras everywhere. Urban Stages Dick Leitsch:You read about Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal and all these actors and stuff, Liberace and all these people running around doing all these things and then you came to New York and you found out, well maybe they're doing them but, you know, us middle-class homosexuals, we're getting busted all the time, every time we have a place to go, it gets raided. I said, "I can go in with you?" Yvonne Ritter:"In drag," quote unquote, the downside was that you could get arrested, you could definitely get arrested if someone clocked you or someone spooked that you were not really what you appeared to be on the outside. Where did you buy it? Susana Fernandes Martin Boyce:I had cousins, ten years older than me, and they had a car sometimes. But it was a refuge, it was a temporary refuge from the street. Colonial House My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". I met this guy and I broke down crying in his arms. And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality and you looked it up. We didn't necessarily know where we were going yet, you know, what organizations we were going to be or how things would go, but we became something I, as a person, could all of a sudden grab onto, that I couldn't grab onto when I'd go to a subway T-room as a kid, or a 42nd street movie theater, you know, or being picked up by some dirty old man. Remember everything. Jorge Garcia-Spitz The ones that came close you could see their faces in rage. TV Host (Archival):And Sonia is that your own hair? One of the world's oldest and largest gay pride parades became a victory celebration after New York's historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage. Patricia Yusah, Marketing and Communications The events of that night have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement. Things were just changing. Dick Leitsch:New York State Liquor Authority had a rule that one known homosexual at a licensed premise made the place disorderly, so nobody would set up a place where we could meet because they were afraid that the cops would come in to close it, and that's how the Mafia got into the gay bar business. I mean I'm only 19 and this'll ruin me. And these were meat trucks that in daytime were used by the meat industry for moving dead produce, and they really reeked, but at nighttime, that's where people went to have sex, you know, and there would be hundreds and hundreds of men having sex together in these trucks. 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. Amber Hall Before Stonewall (1984) - full transcript 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.
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