Stonewall 1969

STONEWALL RIOTS OF 1969

Some Memories About, and By, Those Who Were There

Warren Allen Smith
Greenwich Village
New York City
Updated May 2006

In 1969, "Stonewall" took on an entirely new meaning. On Friday, June 27th, late in the evening, New York City police made a planned raid on The Stonewall Inn, which was rumored to be a Mafia-owned dance bar at 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village (although an Italian-American dentist who knew the two that were renting the place say they were only young Italian entrepreneurs, that all young Italians obviously are not connected with the Mafia). What began simply for the police department as a routine "fag-bar" raid quickly escalated into five inconsecutive nights and early morning hours disturbances during which gays, lesbians, and transgenders decided literally to fight back.

On the first night, employees began being arrested. Some customers were told to leave. Others were detained. But the raid turned ugly around 2 a.m. Saturday morning (June 28th) when angry gay patrons, several transgenders, and others started yelling "GAY POWER!" and throwing stones, coins, and bottles.

There are many versions of what happened next. When ultimately the cops barricaded themselves inside on one of the nights, the place was attacked from outside by as many as 300 people, maybe 400. The police, trapped inside, called for reinforcements. Not all onlookers were pleased, and some threw items back at the gays. When police reinforcements arrived, some of the rioters dispersed for awhile but regrouped. For the next several evenings, and after the media reported the eye-catching, escalating incident, they and hundreds of others returned. The word got around fast. The last week of June 1969 became known as the time of the Stonewall Rebellion or the Stonewall Riots, later inspiring Gay Pride Week.

Among the descriptions of the event and time is historian Martin Duberman's Stonewall (1994), which became the basis for a 1996 movie by the same title. Now available on video, it has an opening sequence which features "live" interview excerpts with actual members of a Stonewall veterans' association, such as Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt and Randy Wicker.

Over the years and continuing to the present, many instances have occurred during which the rights of gays, lesbians, and transgenders have been abused by police departments, elected officials, and legislabors: not only in New York but throughout the United States and in various international cities.

In 1969 it was illegal for men to dance with men, although women could dance with women. To gay teenagers, The Stonewall Inn was a favorite place of refuge, a site where they could dance with whomever they wanted and could choose whatever music they wished. At the same time, however, the Mafia-owned and operated bars in the city were places where possible violence was always present. Gay bars were seedy and the drinks were watered. At least, they were there.

Since 1969 it has been an uphill struggle for gays to be accorded the rights of other citizens. Before The Stonewall, there were other brave gay, lesbian, and transgenders who courageously fought the system, making in-roads here and there. However, the Stonewall disturbances made the public, and more importantly "us," realize that we are a people, that we must demand our rights as American citizens and as human beings. At long last we symbolically had achieved "minority status."

Following are some recorded memories of individuals who were there during that week in June 1969.

SOME REMINISCENCES

Sylvia Rivera and Stephen van Cline

The 1969 sign at the Stonewall

       Concerned about historical accuracy, I invited some of the members in the two veterans' groups I was in that I believed were present during the Stonewall riots to go on record.
        A key person, Sylvia Rivera, was not a writer and I never got around to tape-recording her. However, she and I were among those who headed several of the parades, and she attended several association meetings at my apartment (leaving a pint bottle of gin, which I still have). Danny Garvin and I never had doubts about her memories of the period. My concern was that some who claimed to have been involved did not remember her. Also, I was concerned when she openly denied that William Henderson was involved, a major reason that I attended only one of his meetings (at which only two people attended, and he insulted me for no good reason within a minute of my having arrived).
        A few provided some information that I began to question and have not included. How many people could the Stonewall bar have held on any of the nights that disturbances occurred - even allowing as many as 100, thousands claimed to have been on the site. They may have been there over the years, but logically they could not have been there during all or some of the disturbances.
        One, for example, I taped in Queens but was told by others including Sylvia Rivera that he had plied them with questions about the bar, implying he was not there and wanted to make it look as if he had been. When asked if he knew specific individuals, he gave weak responses. He also stated that drinks cost $5., which was not the case. He claimed to have been there the second night, that he was severely hurt by the cops and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, then that he fled the city in fear of retaliation by the police.
        Rivera also questioned who owned a particular 1969 car that was featured in later news stories, saying it was bought at a later date and she did not think that the person who claimed to be the owner had anything to do with the disturbances. Others suggested the car was a 1970 model - I took a photo to the major Cadillac dealer in the city but was unable to ascertain whether it was a 1969 or a later model.
       One, a waiter whose employer told me had been arrested and taken away in the paddy wagon, refused to go on record.

       Following are interviews that I obtained in 1998 in order to document views that had not been obtained in 1969:

HOWARD CRUSE, cartoonist of "Wendel" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Cruse]

I was there only on Friday night (27 June 1969), when I would characterize the crowd as of moderate size but very agitated. I can't comment on Christopher Street activities on the following nights, but I knew something important was going on because of all the Gay Pride and Gay Power fliers that appeared immediately throughout the Village. (September 1998)

DANNY GARVIN

I went in the Navy when I was 17, my mother was dead, and my father decided to retire back home to Ireland. He gave me the choice of going with him or going into the Navy. I had been to Ireland as a kid and it was no New York. I was born and raised here in the Big Apple. I started to get in touch with being gay while in the Navy and had a slight breakdown, being given an honorable discharge. I was 18! I went down to Julius's Bar (that is the gay bar that the movie in which the "Boys in the Band" starts off), a very uptight older gay bar with straight bartenders. You could not stand at the bar with your back to it, or they said it would be considered soliciting and they could be shut down.

I was in Julius's on March 18, 1967, and some older person about 50 or so said to me, "Why aren't you around the corner at that new gay bar with all the chicken?" I didn't even know what "chicken" meant! So I walked around the corner to the Stonewall and was aghast to see guys dancing with each other. I said to myself this will never last. I was still coming out to myself and thought that sex with men was just a passing phase. I left New York two days later for Chicago and stayed there about two months, then came back home to New York and came out.

Back in 1969 I was a hippie on my way to the Stonewall to go dancing with my friend Keith Murdock (who was home from college for summer break). Keith and I were talking about the revolution that would be coming along some day. We thought that the Young Lords, or the Black Panthers, would start it. We had no idea of gay rights. We were both 20 and the world was changing so fast. There was now a women's movement, and Vietnam was still going on. Early that year in March there was the first "be-in" at Grand Central Station, with about 400 to 500 young people smoking pot and singing folk songs and anti-war songs. The police raided the be-in and hit many a young person with their clubs, pulling us by our long hair into the paddy wagons. Many of the people there were gay. Because of the times and the anti-war movement, most young gay people had experiences with demonstrations. The only gay movement that I knew of at the time was the Mattachine Society, and those people were over 30 . . . and most of us didn't trust anyone over 30!

As Keith and I arrived, the police cars and paddy wagon were already at the bar. It was not uncommon for gay bars to be raided. The people started yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at them. Around the corner on Seventh Avenue was a new building being constructed, and someone ran and got bricks from there and started throwing them at the police. The cops went wild! There was no way to contain the crowd because of the location of the bar. You could run down West 4th, Seventh Avenue, Waverly Place, or Christopher Street, and still end up back at the bar.

The second night (Saturday, June 28th) a lot of people did not know about the raid the night before. So a larger crowd was there. We decided to liberate the bar and reopen it so we could dance. I really don't think any of us thought that this was the start of the gay rights movement. Someone got a parking meter and smashed open the bar doors. More cops were called in. The riot started again and garbage cans were set on fire, Molotov cocktails were thrown, and it was like a war zone! The thing was that because of the night before we as gay people discovered that we would stand up and fight together, something we never knew before. We were so fragmented when it came to our own rights.

I don't recall if anything took place on Sunday night (June 29th). The first night could have been late Friday or early Saturday, and the second riot late Saturday or early Sunday. It all depends on how you look at it as to whether it was two or three days.

The Stonewall was a great place if you were young and gay. Many nights I did the Jerk or the Boston Monkey or some latest line dance craze till the bar closed. I hung out with a lot of people who worked there. Barbara Eden who worked the coat check was a good friend of mine, and I dated Frankie who worked the front door and was sometimes a bartender there.

The Stonewall changed with the times. As the 60s progressed they put in black lights and day-glow posters. The lover I had at the time, George Wright, sold Acid there. Let's face it: the place was Mafia owned!

One myth that seems to have grown about the riot was that drag queens started it. That's not true. There were what we called a lot of Flame Queens there. A Flame Queen wore hip huggers, Tom Jones shirts, and maybe eye make-up. They would tease up their hair and were very effeminate, like Emory in "Boys in the Band." Most young people's clothes at the time had become pretty asexual. You could not be in full drag at the time. You had to have three (3) articles of men's clothing on or you would be arrested for impersonating a woman. Most people were into dressing the new style, unisex. You will find that most of the Vets that are still alive will agree with me on this. David Carter, incidentally, has been interviewing many of us vets, so look for his book.

We Stonewall vets were just a bunch of kids, not heroes. We simply wanted to dance and not be harrassed. No one knew that that night would be thought of as the start of the gay movement. It's kind of like the Boston Massacre being the start of the American Revolution. My own heroes are people like you who started GLF and GAA. You people were the real movers and shakers. (September 1998)

Warren Allen Smith

I wish the June 1969 rebellion had been photographed and documented in a professional way. First, I'm going to write some background history, then discuss the disturbances.

Background: The first gay bar I had ever entered was Mary's on 8th Street, and I did so as if I was an outsider disapproving of all the "nelly-talk." The most memorable, also on 8th, was a boite called Bon Soir, where I heard Barbra Streisand and Mae Barnes sing, actually saw Senator Richard Nixon slumming there one time, saw Marlon Brando applauding his boyfriend Mr. Peepers's comedy act, constantly eyed guitarist Tiger Haynes's crotch, all the while being groped at the dark bar by the guys who packed the bar but not the room where drinks and food were served by waiters. Also, I had a crush on Warren the pianist and got to know m.c. Billy Daniels somewhat (but was unaware at the time of his importance to the Harlem Renaissance). Other spots I finally got up the to attend were the Blue Angel (great for groping and it was always crowded) and the Blue Pheasant (the name, I think, of the gay place at which I dined--could have been the Blue Parrot; "blue" appears to have been a code word at the time). A teacher, I was mortified upon finding that the gay Cork Club on 72nd Street I drank at from time to time was run by a father of one of my students, so I never returned! In other words, places did exist to meet other gays. Private parties held in rich people's apartments inevitably stopped because people who attended lifted valuables. It was a time when danger was everywhere and, perhaps, life is more intriguing if dangerous. Riding a packed subway car was a special sport, as well as visiting the subway toilets and peering through glory holes. In at least two movie theatres (the Metropolitan on 14th Street and The Varieties, around the corner on Third Avenue) if the projector stopped no one complained, because everyone was wandering the hallways or having sex in the men's room or the balcony. Many straights found themselves being fondled in movie houses (particularly on 42nd Street), and from time to time they did quietly, or not-so-quietly, complain. It was a time when cruising Riverside Drive, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Central Park, public events, etc., was a sport, and going home with a complete stranger was not at all uncommon. After all, penicillin took care of many of the resultant problems. In short, it was a unique time.

A gal teenage student needing a ride home in the early 1950s, incidentally, once took me into a Greenwich Village lesbian bar, and I still don't know why she needed to go inside - I was nonplussed at all the beauties and confused even then as to what was going on. And, yes, I do remember having seen some gals from time to time at the Stonewall.

In those days there were no gay guide books, the police raided places regularly, a gay bar was one place you could feel relatively relaxed (always mindful that the other guy might be an undercover cop), the American Psychiatric Association convinced most of us we were sick, and the various organized religions assured the psychiatrists they were on God's side and we should repent our ways and become heterosexuals. (Some did just that, had a kid or so, then left their wives for their boyfriend!) Little wonder that I became a Unitarian and, in one of the first issues of One, wrote an article that Unitarians were the most gay-friendly society I had ever come across.

In retrospect, and with Danny Garvin's descriptions in mind, I have few additional comments. I was there the 2nd night, a Saturday that lasted into Sunday morning. Stephen van Cline's recollections were that the incident which caused the police department so much trouble lasted from Friday (June 27th) through Thursday (July 3rd).

Following are the September 1998 recollections that I wrote on 31 March 1996.

The Night: On Friday night, 27 June 1969, I was in the Sheridan Square area. A closeted schoolteacher who taught 180 days a year in Connecticut and who spent the other 185 days as co-owner of a Manhattan recording studio, I looked forward to the summer vacation and also to spending more time with Fernando Vargas, my Costa Rican lover. We had met August 1948 in the Upper West Side's Riverside Drive Park my first week after hitch-hiking here to attend Columbia University, and he was to remain my significant other for 40 years until his death from KS in 1989. Our philosophy: the family that strays together stays together . . . and it worked!

(Parenthetically, Fernando and I founded Variety Recording Studio in 1961. He was the engineer who recorded Liza Minnelli's first demonstration record with her friend Marvin Hamlisch on the piano. When Fernando mastered her tape and cut the several acetate records she ordered, she kissed him, all giggly, like the Scarsdale High School student she was. The kissing made her then current boyfriend, an actor in "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (just across 46th Street from our studio), quite jealous; and it made me a trifle jealous, too, unable as I was to kiss my lover in public or even in our own business. But we laughed it off, hearing later that her parents were not at all pleased with the guy. Fernando was the engineering specialist in charge of recording matters. I was in charge of billing and accounting, so I distinctly recall sending the statement to her parents not only for her work but also those of Lorna and her little brother, also their first recording sessions. What Fernando and I had hoped was that Judy would come by to pay. Alas, Mr. Minnelli simply mailed the check.)

I previously had gone to the Stonewall. But in those dangerous days - I was a public school teacher - I was legitimately concerned about being seen in such a place. Fernando had introduced me to Mary's on 8th Street, I had with trepidation gone to the Blue Pheasant and the Blue Angel, but it was a time and era when friends did not discuss gay matters with me nor did I volunteer to speak of such . . . except they might have guessed I was gay because of our living together living at 425 West 45th Street in Hell's Kitchen for so long. My ingenuous story was that we were business partners. He, who worked mainly with showbiz types (and, to my shock and displeasure also slept with them), did not have the need nor desire to be closeted.

Until reminded recently, I had forgotten that customers "signed in" at the Stonewall, then paid $3 which covered two $1 drinks. Although in Iowa I had had my own college dance band, I never became a good dancer and generally avoided dances. In our 40 years together, unlike heterosexual couples, Fernando and I were unable to dance in public. In pre-Stonewall days it was against the law for two men to dance; also, we took turns covering the studio and seldom went to gay bars together. The few times we danced were at private gay parties held on holidays when the studio was not open (gracious hosts who all too often had to complain afterwards that their valuables were missing).

What I remember about the Stonewall was that I was very much afraid I might be seen in such a place, that cops might haul everyone out and my name and picture would be published, that I would have to pay hush money, and that some fellow faculty members or students would find out. To be gay was to be ever exposed to danger. Also, I was 47, much older than many who congregated there. Just the same, I remember the Stonewall for having been picked up that same year by a young Mexican chap, Guillermo, a star of "Los Olvidados." The Mexican actor and I had gone to the Stonewall, he had insisted that I move to Mexico City to share his house, his pet monkey, his parrots, and his life, but I had declined because I had book reviews to write for Library Journal, had the business responsibilities and ties to Fernando, and had for five or so years been personal agent for and part-time lover of Gilbert Price, who had been a phenomenal success in Tony Newley's "Roar of the Greasepaint." Also, I wondered what would happen if I were to catch Fernando there, for he was anything but monogamous. And what would I say if he were to catch me there! Such a possibility would not have ended the relationship, I knew, for he had his dozens of outside sex partners . . . and I had mine. But anyone who grew up after the 1980s will likely have difficulty appreciating the sheer terror, as well as the diabolical excitement, of being gay in the 1940s through the 1970s.

In my dim memory, I remember The Stonewall as a dark place, a cold place, a dirty place filled with kids that were out for kicks, not at all like my honor students back in Connecticut (one of whom, for all I knew, might catch me there!). Gay life in the 1960s was part adventure, part danger, part subculture, part mystery. Sex was easy to find, but so was trouble. On that particular night, I had not gone in for a drink. Someone told me the airconditioner was not working, and it was just too hot to spend my money there. Other dives were available, and anywhere around the Christopher Street area was great for guy-watching. Also, Judy's untimely death at this very time was a conversation-starter with anyone who looked interesting. "Heard about Judy? What's going on over there at the Stonewall? Wanna go to my place and, uh, watch TV to see what's being reported?"

Although $1 drinks sound like a bargain today, I remember resenting having to pay $3 just to go in to the Stonewall. The drinks were watery, and I was concerned about rumors that the Mafia owned or controlled the place - no documentation, however, has ever been produced to prove that the building's co-owner, a Mr. Lauria, had any link whatsoever to the Mafia; my dentist, who was a childhood friend, said the guy was simply an entrepreneur. (Another reason I worried about going into any bar was that a student when I taught in a Manhattan private school once bragged that his father paid the police off weekly. When I learned he was talking about the Cork Club on 72nd, I certainly never returned there.)

The trouble actually started early Saturday morning (June 28th) when the police arrived.

The Next Night: On Saturday, June 28th, I heard about yesterday's problem at the Stonewall. This time the raid had been challenged, and the news reports seemed to smile that the perverts with limp wrists were lashing back (some with their pretty little eyelashes). Perverts we were then, not proud gays - in fact, I don't recall hearing anyone then who was proud of being gay. One was just gay. It was a time when psychiatry held that homosexuality could be cured - it was a time when homosexuals may have felt inwardly they had not chosen to be homosexuals but were somewhat convinced that they had. This led to feelings of guilt (a "guilt" which theologians had invented and described in Dante-esque detail), to feelings of having let one's parents down. And to one's parents' guilt feelings, also, as if they had done wrong and were being punished by having a homosexual for a child. Perverts were fair game, because they would not dare fight back.

So that night I went down to the Sheridan Square area, had dinner at the oldest gay restaurant in the area, my favorite to this day (Fedora's, with the same breadsticks for decades, Fedora's own unforgettable panache and her homemade pies, and her husband Henry Dorato's well-mixed cocktails - how naughty for a well-known writer recently to have referred to the place as a "wrinkle" bar because of its older clientele), heard gossip about what had happened, and joined what appeared to be rabble-rousers having fun defying authority. Whether it was that Saturday night, or the preceding or following night, I specifically remember setting fire to a garbage can and, with a stranger, hurling it into the fracas. When one cop eyed me and started to run in my direction, this 47-year-old businessman took off (OK, so I always deducted a decade from my age), scared shitless of the consequences. Besides, what would Fernando say if I ended up in the Tombs (the way he had when the person he had started to touch, but didn't, in a subway restroom near 50th Street turned out to be a cop - that cost us, besides the lawyer's fees, $400 to be placed in a plain envelope and given to the cop just before the court convened, at which time the officer suddenly found that he could not absolutely identify Fernando). On the one hand, I was a responsible, strait-laced CEO who wouldn't think of breaking a law; on the other hand, I was a "homo" guilty of being part of a seamy subculture.

In short, I was the radical bystander during the riotous Stonewall Rebellion, a Columbia grad with extremely liberal political views but a business person with much at stake and unwilling to get arrested, fingerprinted, photographed.

Certainly the Stonewall veterans I have met have been colorful ones.   Randy Wicker, the "atheist priest" and humanitarian, is gung-ho about cloning. He co-authored with Kay Tobin The Gay Crusaders, which contains interviews with many Stonewallers. His homepage is a hoot. Storme DeLarverie, the subject of a 1987 film, "Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box," is seen in an open convertible during many of the gay parades and is a hit with the crowds - she, however, was in the Williamson Henderson group, not in the Sylvia Rivera groups, so I never got to know her.

Mo Colarusso is an activist with many vivid tales of what she remembers about the week of the rebellion and about the people as well as the Christopher Street area. Sheri Clemons isn't old enough to have been there during the riots, but she has been an extremely helpful individual to many of the veterans, both in helping them individually and in helping one of the veterans' groups.

Without the support of a great number of us who egged others on and pleaded with the cops not to be lackeys of the Mafia and certainly not to beat people up in front of our eyes, the Stonewall Rebellion would not have been so successful. The occasion could simply have been the usual visit by the police and the hauling away of some of the more outlandish patrons. This night, however, those of us were sufficiently curious to yell out. The more the commotion, the more tense the scene. One thing led to another and, like playful sophomores, the bystanders became more and more serious as well as more and more numerous. As people wandered toward the scene to determine what was going on, the crowd swelled and it became obvious that the police had a major problem on their hands.

Had I realized at the time that I was playing a small part in a historical event, I would have reacted differently. I didn't have the benefit then of all the progress in civil rights which since has been made. Today's gays are no longer perverts, except, apparently, for those who are not from urban areas and possibly have not heard. On the one hand, today's gays cannot really know how fortunate they are. On the other hand, however, I'm glad I lived in that pre-AIDS era when subways were not for sleeping but for groping; when movie balconies could be places for wild, wild sex; when public toilets could be wholly glorious and secret places to obtain a sexual release; when parks were not only for viewing flora and fauna but for gay-watching; and when it wasn't dangerous to take a stranger home for a few hours. If six times a week in the 1960's was great (for even we non-theists have to rest on the 7th day), how better for a sybarite to combine business with pleasure with escapades! In fact, the only possible thing better would have been being a teenager on Christopher Street in the 1920s rather than the 1960s.

Yet, and in spite of my near-perfect seven decades of existence, there is a downside. I was programmed in my youth, courtesy of apparently well-meaning Judeo-Christians, to regard sex as something dirty, and it has been an almost daily task to rid the super ego of such nonsense. My research in philosophy, not religion (for few realize religion's close connection with evil!), has provided valuable knowledge so that I could overcome my feelings of guilt about sex and to understand that celibacy is the sexual perversion, not homosexuality. Secular humanists - such as Isaac Asimov, Paul Cadmus, Arthur C. Clarke, John Dewey, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Gore Vidal (with all of whom I have corresponded or have known personally) - have shown how the individual can through free inquiry develop a humanistic philosophy that is rational, not irrational; naturalistic, not supernaturalistic; scientific, not creationist; humanistic, not theistic.

Now in my 70s, I often write under a pseudonym, Allen Windsor, still concerned that ex-students or friends in my past will be unhappy if they find out about my double life (as they will if they check Who's Who in America and see my affiliations with Stonewall 1969 Veterans and ACT UP). On the other hand, when I do risk informing friends and ask, "When did you know?" I am amazed that they knew all along, that it really made no more difference than had they discovered, for instance, that I was a Libertarian rather than a Democrat (and uncircumcised instead of genitally mutilated). This is all the more reason that I am proud of those much braver, more courageous vets who risked their lives and reputations by literally getting beaten up by the cops that June of 1969. May they never be forgotten!

Stephen van Cline

In September 1998, Andrew Thomas, conductor of the Honolulu Men's Chorus and the Honolulu Women's Chorus, wrote members of Stonewall Riot Veterans (SRV), saying he proposed writing a composition, "The Story of Pride," and asking for some individuals' reminiscences. He noted the differing accounts that have the riots lasting for 3 and 5 days and requested specifics as to whether the crowd was small or massive. He also inquired if a teacher had escaped from a police station but was impaled when he jumped from the second floor. As SRV's president, I responded:

Greetings to the Honolulu Choruses from the Stonewall Riot Veterans! We are very proud of your work and of the choruses, as well as the brave stand of our Hawaiian brothers and sisters in the matter of universal marriage rights. We first demanded these rights in the early '60s, and the demand was voiced loudly at the Stonewall riots.

The riots kept recurring throughout the weekend of June 27th, and that is normally interpreted as Friday (27th), Saturday (28th), and Sunday (29th) nights, each night lapsing into the early morning hours.

As for your question about a person who was impaled on the fence: that was a year later, not at Stonewall. A raid took place at a bar called the Snakepit on 10th Street, an after-hours bar. The young man was an illegal alien, scared that he would be deported, so he jumped out of the second story window of the Police Station on Charles Street. He landed on the iron fence which had spikes. They got him off with a blow torch and took him to St. Vincent's Hospital. He did not die and was not deported.

So what is the chance of your work ever being performed by the Gay Men's Chorus here in NYC? I would like to hear it when it is done. I was very happy to read that you are involved in the same-gender marriage law movement in Hawaii. We still have to fight for a place at the table, but it is so different now than it was then and yet we still have far to go.

Concerning the man impaled on the police department rail, his name was Diego "Tito" Vinales, an Argentine national and a soccer player. Tito was falsely arrested at the Snake Pit bar on his first visit to a gay bar and panicked because he had an expired visa, the discovery of which could have led to his deportation. He did survive the nightmarish experience. This occurred a year after the riots, but it galvanized us in our determination. We were outraged by the stories that, while Tito was screaming and moaning, the cops were calling him a faggot and telling the firemen not to hurry because the faggot was going to die anyway. That anger pushed the rights effort forward. The rumor that he died started with a false raio report on March 8th, 1970. It was picked up by patrons of the Stud Bar and spread like wildfire.

We look forward to seeing your Hawaiian programs. Might you need a sponsor for a program in New York?

The first night was probably the most dramatic and the most meaningful to me, because that was the night I was directly involved. My lover and I were stunned and thrilled to see our own kind talking back, berating the cops, and throwing pennies. After seeing the gratuitous bloody beatings in front of us and being called names, we began throwing bricks and cobblestones at the bar, which suddenly became the symbol of our oppression. The second night, Saturday, which we observed from the relative safety of the Rivera Café, was more violent and chaotic with more people, including outsider agitators. The third night was reported to be less violent. I got up early Monday morning (June 30th) in my apartment, a few blocks away on 15th Street, to the sound of heavy rain. I returned to my other art gallery in the country and the rain continued through Tuesday (July 1st). Many say the rain kept people from returning to riot. It is my opinion that we were going about getting the week rolling and involved in endless discussions of the meaning of what had happened. We did not get angry again until word got around and the newspaper reports about the riots had widely circulated. Quite a few people returned on Wednesday (July 2nd). My only direct experience with activities that night was seeing bloodied people lying on the 7th Ave. sidewalk and against the buildings around the corner form the bar. There was action on Thursday night (July 3rd) .

The riots occurred in the midst of a chaotic era in which people were examing their lives, searching for dignity as individuals, and demanding their rights. My lover and I had opened Portfolio Gallery on 10th Street in the next block directly behind the Stonewall two months before the riots. It was our first experience of a gay community and became a kind of gay center where news and gossip was shared. In that gallery I designed and published the first Gay Rainbow as limited edition prints, posters and very daring greetings cards with the inside caption "Gay is Good." (We also had blank rainbow cards on top of the counter for the straight customers.) A month after the riots there was a rally in Washington square and we marched over to Sheridan Square for more speeches. Technically, this was the first gay march. Gay human rights was a need whose time had come. We were weary and angry about the constant fear and harassment we had suffered for many years. (September 1998)

VAN CLINE'S Aprl 2006 CONFESSION ABOUT THE ABOVE LIES:

12 April 2006 - Stephen van Cline sent a letter to Warren Allen Smith, completely surprising Smith and confessing that he had lied about his involvement with Stonewall activities in the mid-1990s. Smith could not get through to him by telephone or e-mail but snail-mailed him to the addresses of vanCline & Davenport, Ltd., 1581 Route 202 Suite 179, Pomona, NY 10970; and to 3257 Route 10, Ashland, NY 12407 (518) 734-4357, asking him to phone or write. The letter to Ashland was returned, "not known."

15 April 2006 - Stephen van Cline calling from (201) 337-4446 told Smith the following:
- Yes, I am a big fake. I was trying to write a novel. I am not gay, but in order to obtain information about what it was like to have been gay in the 1960s, I joined the veterans' groups. Only Sylvia Rivera saw through me, and I don't know why she didn't expose me to the others of you. Not only am I not gay, I have two children who now are in their 30s. My name is not Stephen van Cline but, no, I will not tell you what it really is. My business, van Cline & Davenport, Ltd., is called that, but Davenport also does not exist. I did have an art gallery fairly near the Stonewall, so technically I was near the riots when they occurred. But I was not involved and the information I wrote for you and which you put up onto the web should be removed, for it is not true. William Henderson, I think, is an even bigger fake. He could have been a character in my novel, a really dangerous person who could have murdered a roommate, could have a been a real villain. Yes, you have every reason to be angry with me, and I regret that the Amalgamated Bank account was depleted because you could not find me and checks required both our signatures. At least we meant well to make sure that funds would be honestly accounted for. Yes, I have a terminal liver illness and the prognosis is that I will live only a few more years - that is why I wrote you, in order to clear my conscience. Am I religious? Well, I'm a Christian Scientist. No, I gave up on writing the novel. I did learn how difficult life was for homosexuals, but I am truly sorry to have posed as one and deceived all of you.

The STONEWALL VETERANS' ORGANIZATIONS

STONEWALL VETERANS' ASSOCIATION (SVA)

Williamson Henderson claims to be the founder of the oldest of the active veterans' group. Over the years he has been dissatisfied with all the other veteran groups. In parades, he has ridden in a 1969 Cadillac convertible. In 2001 he lost a libel case against one of the major New York City gay journals, Lesbian & Gay New York, which reported (4 May 2000) that Sylvia Rivera had said of Henderson, "My whole thing is that I just don't believe that she was there at all." Henderson, also known as Queen Allyson, claims he was arrested outside the Stonewall Inn on 28 June 1969.

VETERANS OF STONEWALL (VOS)

Stephen van Cline headed the group, an association of participants in the Stonewall Riots of 1969
Membership included

(a) Members -- participants in the June-July Stonewall Riots;
(b) Associate Members -- participants in activities and events in connection with the Stonewall riots and the gay community and dedicated to carrying on the history and perpetuating education about the human rights significance of the Stonewall riots and subsequent rights activities; and
(c) Friends -- volunteers in fund-raising and program support for education and memorial projects of Veterans of Stonewall.

STONEWALL RIOT VETERANS (SRV)

Stephen van Cline also headed this group, which often marched at the head of the annual gay parade.

STONEWALL VETERANS ORGANIZATION AND FRIENDS (SVO)

Jeremah Newton was the founder of Stonewall Veterans Organization. He had been the co-founder of the Stonewall Veterans Association until November 1997, at which time he resigned because of differences with two of the officers concerning management of finances and the raising of funds. You probably have seen him at the head of the various annual Stonewall parades in New York City and at numbers of other Stonewall meetings and get-togethers.
Executive Directors of SVO were Jeremiah Newton, R. Rusty Rose, and Warren Phillips. Historian was J. P. Ranieri.

STONEWALL ACTION IDENTITY LEAGUE (SAIL)

Formed in 2001 to bring the various veterans of the 1969 riots into one organization, SAIL was headed for a short time by Jeremiah Newton. The league was then headed by Anthony Polito, who resigned but is active in Queens, and was replaced by "Mama" Jean De Vente.

STONEWALL VETERANS' UNION (SVU)

"Mama" Jean De Vente became head of SVU in 2002 and in a letter to the editor of The Villager informed readers she was going to arrange a lead float honoring the late Sylvia Rivera for the June 2002 gay parade.

OTHER:

Edmund White (published 1998 in lgny)
Martin Duberman, Stonewall (published 1993)
Jerry Lisker, Daily News (published 6 July 1969)
Robert L. Pela (published 1969)
Mark Thompson (published 1969)
Randy Wicker , co-author of The Gay Crusaders (1972),
which contains interviews with Jack Baker, Lige Clark, Arthur Evans, Frank Kameny,
Michael McConnell, Dick Michaels, Jack Nichols, Jim Owles, Troy Perry, Marty Robinson,
and Craig Rodwell.

EDMUND WHITE

It was one of the few historical dates I can think of that had tremendous repercussions on people's intimate lives. For example, before Stonewall I went to a straight shrink and I wanted to be straight, but after Stonewall I went to a gay shrink to learn how to be a "good gay." There are so many people who can look back at that one event and say that it really changed their lives and for the better. So many days with political meanings have had ghastly consequences, like Bastille Day for instance. But Stonewall can only be seen as a positive experience. (lgny , 2 July 1998)

MARTIN DUBERMAN

[From the preface to Stonewall, New York: Penguin, a Plume Book, 1994]
"Stonewall" is the emblematic event in modern lesbian and gay history. The site of a series of riots in late June early July 1969 that resulted from a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar, "Stonewall" has become synonymous over the years with gay resistance to oppression. Today, the word resonates with images of insurgency and self-realization and occupies a central place in the iconography of lesbian and gay awareness. The 1969 riots are now generally taken to mark the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political movement -- that moment in time when gays and lesbians recognized all at once their mistreatment and their solidarity. As such, "Stonewall" has become an empowering symbol of global proportions.

Yet remarkable -- since 1994 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots -- the actual story of the upheaval has never been told completely, or been well understood. We have, since 1969, been trading the same few tales about the riots from the same few accounts -- trading them for so long that they have transmogrified into simplistic myth. The decades preceding Stonewall, moreover, continue to be regarded by most gays and lesbians as some vast neolithic wasteland -- and this, despite the efforts of pioneering historians like Allan Bérubé, John D'Emilio and Lillian Faderman to fill in the landscape of those years with vivid, politically astute personalities. . . .

Dr. Duberman then tells the stories of the following participants:

Craig Rodwell, a radical figure in the Mattachine Society who opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore and spearheaded the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March.

Yvonne Flowers, an occupational therapist and teacher, an African-American who was one of the founders of Salsa Soul Sisters.

Karla Jay, who subsequently completed her doctorate in comparative literature, authored a number of books, and earned a full professorship.

Sylvia (Ray) [Lee] Rivera , a Times Square hustler when only 11 years old, she became a street transvestite and the founder of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

Jim Fouratt, who joined and left the priesthood, then became an actor, hipster, antiwar protester, and a major spokesperson for the countercultural Yippie movement.

Foster Gunnison Jr. , son of rich but distant parents, plunged into the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, became its archivist, and helped plan the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March.

Dr. Duberman has observed, "It had been on the West Coast, however, that the Mattachine Society had been formed and where many publications, organizations, legal challenges, and militant actions had taken place. If the Stonewall riots did not begin the gay revolution (as East Coasters, younger gays, and the national media have been wont to claim), it remains true that those riots became a symbolic event of international importance -- a symbol of such potency as to serve, ever since 1969, as a motivating force and rallying cry. There was enough glory for both coasts, the hinterland, and several generations -- though not many could see it in 1969."

A FILM ABOUT STONEWALLERS

"My Mother Told Me I Was Different"
is a 1998 documentary produced by New Village Productions, 145 East 27th St. (Suite 1-A), New York, NY 10016 (212) 779-3051.

Carol Polcovar and Gale Albahae are behind the production, which has been advised by China Clark, African-American screenwriter and playwright;

Jeremiah Newton, Stonewall veteran, executive director of Stonewall Veterans Association, NYU's liaison to the film industry;

Mary Porter, professor of anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College;

David Rothenberg, writer, publicist, gay activist, and founder of Fortune Society;

Harry Wieder, political activist in both the gay and disabilities movements.

The work is the first video documentary to present eyewitness accounts of the Stonewall Rebellion. It will be released to coincide with the 30th anniverary of the Stonewall Rebellion.

PLAYBOY's Account of the Incidents (June 1998)

On June 28, 1969, a squad of police entered a bar in Greenwich Village. The Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street was a well-known gathering place for gay men, lesbians and transvestites. It was said that the owners of the bar paid off the police; that in return, the police staged only token raids in which they would stop the dancing, ask for IDs and cart off the most vivid of the queens. But the raid on June 28 broke the pattern for all time.

Angry patrons filed out of the bar, only to linger in Sheridan Square. They picked up rocks, bottles and garbage and began to hurl them at the bar and the startled officers still inside. The cops barricaded the door. Projectiles shattered the window. Someone threw a fire-bomb through the window. Another squirted lighter fluid under the door.

Chanting "gay power," the crowd uprooted a parking meter and tried to batter down the door. The effort ended when police reinforcements arrived.

For nights thereafter, gaysgathered at the site. They held meetings, formed committees and finally staged a Gay Power march up Sixth Avenue.

Today, the annual Pride march attracts almost half a million gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders,
and their supporters. They paint the stripe down Christopher Street lavender.

The sign for Gay Street -- situated a few doors down from the Stonewall -- is one of the most frequently stolen artifacts in the city. You can see the bands where previous signs were attached to posts and streetlights rising ever higher, like a carnival indicator of pride.

DAILY NEWS
By Jerry Lisker
Reprinted from the New York Daily News, July 6, 1969
She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand pained brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and table. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday
Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power
The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of "C'mon girls, lets go get'em," the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. "If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war."

Bruce and Nan
Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20's. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

"I don't like your paper," Nan lisped matter-of-factly. "It's anti-fag and pro-cop."

"I'll bet you didn't see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn't have a liquor license."

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan's trembling hands.

"Calm down, doll," he said. "Your face is getting all flushed."

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

"This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too," Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

"What wedding?," the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. "Eric and Jack's wedding, of course. They're finally tieing the knot. I thought they'd never get together."

Meet Shirley
"We'll have to find another place, that's all there is to it," Bruce sighed. "But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later."

"They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular," Nan said bitterly. "I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that's the real reason. It's a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn't they leave us alone?"

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

"Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there," she said. "The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don't know what they did inside, but that's their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies."

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premises.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. "They had the tightest security in the Village," a First Division officer said, "We could never get near the place without a warrant."

Police Talk
The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, "it hit me right above the temple."

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall's cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

STONEWALL

By Mark Thompson
[From the Archives of The Advocate, 1969]
It began with a rock hurled through glass, an action forever embedded in our collective memory. The riot in response to a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a motley gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, has come to symbolize the struggle for gay and lesbian rights the world over.

The following series of street protests in late June 1969 were not widely reported at the time, however. While local gays quickly responded to the import of the event, letting it energize a new era of fiery activism, it took a while for word of the riot to reach other places.

Some weeks passed before the Los Angeles-based Advocate published an account of revolt. Gay activism in Southern California had been heating up quite nicely in the previous two years, so maybe news about an East Coast flare-up didn't seem to matter much at firs. Once printed, however, Dick Leitsch's account of the riot fully telegraphed its significance to readers everywhere.

Leitsch wrote:

Plainclothes officers entered the club at about 2 a.m. . . . Employees were arrested and the customers told to leave. The patrons gathered on the street outside and were joined by other Village residents. . . . Pennies were thrown at the cops by the crowd, then beer cans, rocks, and even parking meters. The cops retreated inside the bar, which was set afire by the crowd. . . . A melee ensued, with nearly a thousand persons participating, as well as several hundred cops.

The resistance spilled out onto neighboring streets and continued for two days. "It's the revolution!" said one of the queens leading the charge. And gay history was made.

By Robert L. Pela
"Get the faggots down and keep them down!" came the call.

Members of New York City's police force were fighting off hundreds of men and women in front of a tiny gay bar in Greenwich Village. Some of the men were wearing dresses, some of them were half-naked hustlers from a nearby park, and all of them, it seemed, were hurling bricks and bottles and clenching their fists in defiance of the police.

It was June 28, 1969, and what began as a routine early-morning police raid on the Stonewall Inn had turned into a brawl beneath police and the bar's patrons. The skirmish sparked five days of rioting that found gay men and lesbians battling police officers who were swinging nightsticks and filling patrol wagons with anyone they could get their hands on. "By the third day," recalls one participant, "the cops outnumbered the queers five to one, and the drag queens were forming kick lines and singing songs about 'Lillie Law' and the 'girls in blue.' In the end the cops kicked our asses."

Perhaps. But for gay men and lesbians nationwide, it was a moral victory and a call to arms. "The riots at the Stonewall Inn are now considered the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political movement," says Martin Duberman, a historian and the author of Stonewall, an account of the fateful weekend and its impact. "Stonewall stands as that moment in time when gays and lesbians recognized -- all at once -- their mistreatment and their solidarity. Stonewall has become an empowering symbol of global proportions."

. . . . These people don't consider themselves heroes. For the most part these early activists see themselves as a group of people who'd simply had enough of the oppression and abuse they'd been handed again and again. [The 3 May 1994 Advocate then quotes eight women and men who were there in June 1969.]