Martin Boyce:In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in. Charles Harris, Transcriptions 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. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Ed Koch who was a democratic party leader in the Greenwich Village area, was a specific leader of the local forces seeking to clean up the streets. So gay people were being strangled, shot, thrown in the river, blackmailed, fired from jobs. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:Gay rights, like the rights of blacks, were constantly under attack and while blacks were protected by constitutional amendments coming out of the Civil War, gays were not protected by law and certainly not the Constitution. Robin Haueter Danny Garvin:We became a people. It was narrated by author Rita Mae Brown, directed by Greta Schiller, co-directed by Robert Rosenberg, and co-produced by John Scagliotti and Rosenberg, and Schiller. Never, never, never. He pulls all his men inside. It was not a place that, in my life, me and my friends paid much attention to. Martin Boyce:That was our only block. John O'Brien:I knew that the words that were being said to put down people, was about me. Danny Garvin:He's a faggot, he's a sissy, queer. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:And they were, they were kids. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. And then there were all these priests ranting in church about certain places not to go, so you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do. And it was those loudest people, the most vulnerable, the most likely to be arrested, were the ones that were doing the real fighting. J. Michael Grey All of the rules that I had grown up with, and that I had hated in my guts, other people were fighting against, and saying "No, it doesn't have to be this way.". Martin Boyce:It was another great step forward in the story of human rights, that's what it was. More than a half-century after its release, " The Queen " serves as a powerful time capsule of queer life as it existed before the 1969 Stonewall uprising. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. But as we were going up 6th Avenue, it kept growing. I mean, I came out in Central Park and other places. 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. 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. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. National Archives and Records Administration John O'Brien:I was very anti-police, had many years already of activism against the forces of law and order. Danny Garvin:Bam, bam and bash and then an opening and then whoa. Doric Wilson:When I was very young, one of the terms for gay people was twilight people, meaning that we never came out until twilight, 'til it got dark. John O'Brien:And then somebody started a fire, they started with little lighters and matches. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips . Do you understand me?". Well, it was a nightmare for the lesbian or gay man who was arrested and caught up in this juggernaut, but it was also a nightmare for the lesbians or gay men who lived in the closet. I grew up in a very Catholic household and the conflict of issues of redemption, of is it possible that if you are this thing called homosexual, is it possible to be redeemed? Mike Wallace (Archival):Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. We were thinking about survival. It was a down at a heels kind of place, it was a lot of street kids and things like that. But everybody knew it wasn't normal stuff and everyone was on edge and that was the worst part of it because you knew they were on edge and you knew that the first shot that was fired meant all the shots would be fired. Martha Babcock And the Stonewall was part of that system. Jorge Garcia-Spitz Revealing and, by turns, humorous and horrifying, this widely acclaimed film relives the emotional and political spark of today's gay rights movement - the events that . Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It was getting worse and worse. Available via license: Content may be subject to . A CBS news public opinion survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punishment. Narrator (Archival):We arrested homosexuals who committed their lewd acts in public places. And the police escalated their crackdown on bars because of the reelection campaign. We heard one, then more and more. Daily News The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals. And they wore dark police uniforms and riot helmets and they had billy clubs and they had big plastic shields, like Roman army, and they actually formed a phalanx, and just marched down Christopher Street and kind of pushed us in front of them. All the rules were off in the '60s. And today we're talking about Stonewall, which were both pretty anxious about so anxious. Fred Sargeant:Three articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. It was done in our little street talk. Oh, tell me about your anxiety. Clever. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had a column inThe Village Voicethat ran from '66 all the way through '84. But after the uprising, polite requests for change turned into angry demands. Narrated by Rita Mae Brownan acclaimed writer whose 1973 novel Rubyfruit Jungle is a seminal lesbian text, but who is possessed of a painfully grating voiceBefore Stonewall includes vintage news footage that makes it clear that gay men and women lived full, if often difficult, lives long before their personal ambitions (however modest) But we went down to the trucks and there, people would have sex. Raymond Castro:New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it. TV Host (Archival):Are those your own eyelashes? And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. Before Stonewall. Before Stonewall. ITN Source Narrator (Archival):Note how Albert delicately pats his hair, and adjusts his collar. 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. I hope it was. Revealing and often humorous, this widely acclaimed film relives the emotionally-charged sparking of today's gay rights movement . Lester Senior Housing Community, Jewish Community Housing Corporation Watch Before Stonewall | Prime Video - amazon.com Danny Garvin:It was a chance to find love. Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations They frequent their own clubs, and bars and coffee houses, where they can escape the disapproving eye of the society that they call straight. The documentary shows how homosexual people enjoyed and shared with each other. Her most recent film, Bones of Contention, premiered in the 2016 Berlin International Raymond Castro:Incendiary devices were being thrown in I don't think they were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. WGBH Educational Foundation I mean they were making some headway. John O'Brien:Whenever you see the cops, you would run away from them. They were to us. W hen police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969 50 years ago this month the harassment was routine for the time. "Don't fire. And there, we weren't allowed to be alone, the police would raid us still. His movements are not characteristic of a real boy. And I said to myself, "Oh my God, this will not last.". It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. And I just didn't understand that. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:We would scatter, ka-poom, every which way. Yvonne Ritter:And then everybody started to throw pennies like, you know, this is what they were, they were nothing but copper, coppers, that's what they were worth. Mike Wallace (Archival):The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. You gotta remember, the Stonewall bar was just down the street from there. The New York State Liquor Authority refused to issue liquor licenses to many gay bars, and several popular establishments had licenses suspended or revoked for "indecent conduct.". Martha Shelley:If you were in a small town somewhere, everybody knew you and everybody knew what you did and you couldn't have a relationship with a member of your own sex, period. Slate:In 1969, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois. Jeremiah Hawkins Mafia house beer? There was at least one gay bar that was run just as a hustler bar for straight gay married men. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films I would get in the back of the car and they would say, "We're going to go see faggots." I first engaged in such acts when I was 14 years old. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community is a 1984 American documentary film about the LGBT community prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots. Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an email, or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805. Joe DeCola We had been threatened bomb threats. Almost anything you could name. Mary Queen of the Scotch, Congo Woman, Captain Faggot, Miss Twiggy. It's very American to say, "You promised equality, you promised freedom." Doric Wilson:Somebody that I knew that was older than me, his family had him sent off where they go up and damage the frontal part of the brain. Martin Boyce This 19-year-old serviceman left his girlfriend on the beach to go to a men's room in a park nearby where he knew that he could find a homosexual contact. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? You cut one head off. [7] In 1987, the film won Emmy Awards for Best Historical/Cultural Program and Best Research. And a couple of 'em had pulled out their guns. People could take shots at us. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The federal government would fire you, school boards would fire you. And the first gay power demonstration to my knowledge was against my story inThe Village Voiceon Wednesday. Dick Leitsch:And that's when you started seeing like, bodies laying on the sidewalk, people bleeding from the head. Windows started to break. And it just seemed like, fantastic because the background was this industrial, becoming an industrial ruin, it was a masculine setting, it was a whole world. Danny Garvin Vanessa Ezersky Audience Member (Archival):I was wondering if you think that there are any quote "happy homosexuals" for whom homosexuality would be, in a way, their best adjustment in life? Before Stonewall : Throughline : NPR Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It really should have been called Stonewall uprising. And I think it's both the alienation, also the oppression that people suffered. Danny Garvin:Everybody would just freeze or clam up. And there was like this tension in the air and it just like built and built. But I gave it up about, oh I forget, some years ago, over four years ago. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers. Slate:The Homosexuals(1967), CBS Reports. [00:00:55] Oh, my God. It's like, this is not right. Tom Caruso A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a. He is not interested in, nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage. We were going to propose something that all groups could participate in and what we ended up producing was what's now known as the gay pride march. Suzanne Poli They call them hotels, motels, lovers' lanes, drive-in movie theaters, etc. But we couldn't hold out very long. Judy Laster Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:Saturday night there it was. Dick Leitsch:There were Black Panthers and there were anti-war people. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob, took place on a weeknight, they took place early in the evening, the place would not be crowded. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution Samual Murkofsky Calling 'em names, telling 'em how good-looking they were, grabbing their butts. Newly restored for the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Before Stonewall pries open the . Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:All of straight America, in terms of the middle class, was recoiling in horror from what was happening all around them at that time, in that summer and the summer before. Doric Wilson:And I looked back and there were about 2,000 people behind us, and that's when I knew it had happened. They pushed everybody like to the back room and slowly asking for IDs. But you live with it, you know, you're used to this, after the third time it happened, or, the third time you heard about it, that's the way the world is. 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. How do you think that would affect him mentally, for the rest of their lives if they saw an act like that being? And you felt bad that you were part of this, when you knew they broke the law, but what kind of law was that? Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The police would zero in on us because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even entrap. 'Cause I really realized that I was being trained as a straight person, so I could really fool these people. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. Corbis Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco That's what happened on June 28, but as people were released, the night took an unusual turn when protesters and police clashed. Frank Simon's documentary follows the drag contestants of 1967's Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, capturing plenty of on- and offstage drama along the way. It was like a reward. And they were having a meeting at town hall and there were 400 guys who showed up, and I think a couple of women, talking about these riots, 'cause everybody was really energized and upset and angry about it. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives Slate:Perversion for Profit(1965), Citizens for Decency Through Law. And the rest of your life will be a living hell. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Newly That was scary, very scary. Before Stonewall | Apple TV And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked. Stonewall Forever Explore the monument Watch the documentary Download the AR app About & FAQ Privacy Policy Historic Films The police weren't letting us dance. A person marching in a gay rights parade along New York's Fifth Avenue on July 7th, 1979. "BEFORE STONEWALL" - MetroFocus I am not alone, there are other people that feel exactly the same way.". Raymond Castro:Society expected you to, you know, grow up, get married, have kids, which is what a lot of people did to satisfy their parents. Dan Bodner There were occasions where you did see people get night-sticked, or disappear into a group of police and, you know, everybody knew that was not going to have a good end. And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble. This was ours, here's where the Stonewall was, here's our Mecca. Katrina Heilbroner Marc Aubin America thought we were these homosexual monsters and we were so innocent, and oddly enough, we were so American. John O'Brien:It was definitely dark, it was definitely smelly and raunchy and dirty and that's the only places that we had to meet each other, was in the very dirty, despicable places. 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. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:There was also vigilantism, people were using walkie-talkies to coordinate attacks on gay men. I was proud. Martin Boyce:The day after the first riot, when it was all over, and I remember sitting, sun was soon to come, and I was sitting on the stoop, and I was exhausted and I looked at that street, it was dark enough to allow the street lamps to pick up the glitter of all the broken glass, and all the debris, and all the different colored cloth, that was in different places. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And by the time the police would come back towards Stonewall, that crowd had gone all the around Washington Place come all the way back around and were back pushing in on them from the other direction and the police would wonder, "These are the same people or different people?". Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We were looking for secret exits and one of the policewomen was able to squirm through the window and they did find a way out. Pamela Gaudiano 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. Martin Boyce:You could be beaten, you could have your head smashed in a men's room because you were looking the wrong way. 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 . Also, through this fight, the "LGBT" was born. Martin Boyce:Mind you socks didn't count, so it was underwear, and undershirt, now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit. In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox." As president of the Mattachine Society in New York, I tried to negotiate with the police and the mayor. Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. BBC Worldwide Americas Transcript Aired June 9, 2020 Stonewall Uprising The Year That Changed America Film Description When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of. Hear more of the conversation and historical interviews at the audio link. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We had maybe six people and by this time there were several thousand outside. I would wait until there was nobody left to be the girl and then I would be the girl. The film brings together voices from over 50 years of the LGBTQ rights movement to explore queer activism before, during and after the Stonewall Riots. The Underground Lounge What finally made sense to me was the first time I kissed a woman and I thought, "Oh, this is what it's about." I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. On June 28, 1969, New York City police raided a Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, setting off a three-day riot that launched the modern American gay rights movement. It was right in the center of where we all were. The idea was to be there first. Danny Garvin:People were screaming "pig," "copper." Dick Leitsch:We wore suits and ties because we wanted people, in the public, who were wearing suits and ties, to identify with us. Before Stonewall - Wikipedia Before Stonewall 1984 Directed by Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg Synopsis 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. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Martin Boyce:And then more police came, and it didn't stop. William Eskridge, Professor of Law: The 1960s were dark ages for lesbians and gay men all over America. The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable. Raymond Castro:So finally when they started taking me out, arm in arm up to the paddy wagon, I jumped up and I put one foot on one side, one foot on the other and I sprung back, knocking the two arresting officers, knocking them to the ground. I'm losing everything that I have. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, I had to act like I wasn't nervous. Alexis Charizopolis They were the storm troopers. Martin Boyce:It was thrilling. First you gotta get past the door. That night, we printed a box, we had 5,000. That wasn't ours, it was borrowed. Mike Wallace (Archival):Dr. Charles Socarides is a New York psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. We could lose our memory from the beating, we could be in wheelchairs like some were. They were just holding us almost like in a hostage situation where you don't know what's going to happen next. The scenes were photographed with telescopic lenses. Available on Prime Video, Tubi TV, iTunes. This Restored Documentary Examines What LGBTQ Lives Were Like Before Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it.