33 minute read
HISTORY OF THE LGBTQ+ CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ����������
This exhibition presents the incredibly inspiring journey of the LGBTQ community leading up to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Learn about gender non-conforming folks who boldly challenged gender conventions in the early 20th century; the beginning of “gayborhoods” in the 1940s; the Lavender Scare and the establishment of the earliest gay and lesbian organizations in the 1950s; the transgender people of color-led social uprisings in the 1950s and early 1960s; and the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that helped the LGBTQ community to lead one of the most important civil rights advancements of the last century.
Advertisement
History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement: The Road to the Stonewall Riots was released in 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
Founded in 1952, the ONE Archives Foundation, Inc. is the oldest continuously operating LGBTQ organization in the nation. The mission of the ONE Archives Foundation is to collect, preserve, and protect LGBTQ history, art, and culture in collaboration with ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. In order to provide access to the archival collections, the Foundation presents and supports projects, exhibitions, and education programs to share the LGBTQ experience with diverse communities worldwide. Your donation helps support our Traveling LGBTQ History Exhibitions Project, such as this series, History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement: The Road to the Stonewall Riots.
The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement: The Road to the Stonewall Riots is published by ONE Archives Foundation as part of the Traveling LGBTQ History Exhibitions Project © 2019 ONE Archives Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this display may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.
ONE Archives Foundation 323.419.2159 | onearchives.org | askone@onearchives.org
GENDER CONVENTIONS CONTESTED
Local laws—known as anti-crossdressing ordinances— emerged across many U.S. cities in the middle of the nineteenth century, harmfully regulating gender expression in public spaces. Some of the first cities to adopt these measures include Columbus, Ohio (1848), Chicago, Illinois (1851), Wilmington, Delaware (1856), Charleston, South Carolina (1858), and San Francisco, California (1863), among many others. For example, language in Chicago’s ordinance dictated that individuals who “appear in a public place… in a dress not belonging to his or her sex” would face criminal offense charges.
Anti-crossdressing ordinances were eventually overturned in the second-half of the twentieth century but, for an entire century, oppressive hetero- and cisnormative gender conventions upheld. This stifled and stigmatized people’s capacities for non-normative gender expressions and presentations.
Despite this, individuals contested these restrictive ordinances. One of those individuals was a Black transgender woman named Lucy Hicks Anderson. Lucy Hicks Anderson was from Waddy, Kentucky and was born in 1886. In elementary school, she began wearing dresses; when her mother grew concerned, she brought Lucy to a doctor, who instructed her to raise Lucy as a girl.
After her second marriage to a man, Anderson was publicly outed by a prominent physician, leading the Ventura County District Attorney to charge her with perjury. In her trial, Lucy challenged medical authorities, asserting, “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman, ” insisting that she had “lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman” for the majority of her life. Nonetheless, she was found guilty on December 3, 1945 and sentenced to ten years probation. The following year, she and her husband were convicted of fraud and sent to federal prison in Los Angeles. She remained in Los Angeles until her death in 1954.
(Top, center) Drag magazine, Vol. 3 No. 10. Ed Trust, magazine photographer. (Middle, left) Edith crossdressing, undated. Dorothy C. Putnam and Lois Mercer papers, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. (Middle, right) Lucy Hicks Anderson, courtesy of the Museum of Ventura County. (Background, bottom right) Billy Tipton at the piano with members of the Billy Tipton Trio. Billy Tipton Photographs, #7767. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor, Dr. E. Jaye Johnson and Rev. Patti Dershem, and the work of Elizabeth Koehler, Erik Adamian, Nicholas Bihr, and James Lituchy. The ONE Archives Foundation is the oldest LGBTQ organization in the U.S. and the community partner of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
PSST... WHAT’S THIS ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY?
The first books to raise national awareness to the topic of homosexuality were Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s widely popular Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). Based on interviews with thousands of volunteers, Kinsey reported that 37% of men and 28% of women studied had at least one homosexual experience in their lives. Kinsey surmised that homosexuality was “a significant part of human sexual activity since the dawn of history, primarily because it is an expression of capacities that are basic in the human animal.” The often contested finding that 10% of the population is primarily homosexual comes from Kinsey’s studies.
Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America (1951), was the first nonfiction book in the United States to identify homosexual people as an oppressed minority group. Unlike most psychological accounts of the day, it criticized the idea that homosexuality could be cured and encouraged gay men and lesbians to shed their guilt and shame. The book’s argument for the rights of homosexuals inspired activists of the era and set the stage for the LGBTQ rights movement to follow. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, sensationalized pulp fiction paperback novels emerged, portraying lesbian and gay characters in mainstream fiction for the first time. In an era where merely the positive portrayal of homosexuality could trigger obscenity charges, authors wrote tragic endings for their homosexual characters. The stories were nonetheless popular in the gay and lesbian community as they comprised one of the few published sources of gay and lesbian content. Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar (1948) and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956) boldly introduced mass audiences to gay characters. In 1957, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems successfully fought off obscenity charges brought on, in part, by its homosexual content.
(Bottom left) Fruit of the Loon. Ricardo Armory. Greenleaf Classics, 1968. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Bottom right) The Troubled Sex: A Frank and Penetrating Study of Habits and Practiced Among Lesbians - Their Causes and Clinical Histories... Carlson Wade. Beacon Envoy, 1961.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
THE LAVENDER SCARE
In the 1950s, the increased visibility of gay and lesbian communities along with a heightened fear of communism brought about the greatest crackdown on gay and lesbian people in United States history. The American Psychiatric Association officially classified homosexuality as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952, not to be removed until 1973.
In 1953, President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, banning gay and lesbian people from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors. More gay and lesbian people were fired from federal employment under homosexuality charges than for any other reason. The ban had a far greater impact, as scores of gay and lesbian people simply quit their federal jobs rather than face an official inquiry. State and municipal governments as well as private employers followed the federal lead, creating blacklists of gay and lesbian people who could no longer find employment in their respective fields. In trying to keep their sexual orientation hidden, gay men and lesbians were particularly vulnerable to extortion and violence. Those victimized rarely filed charges out of fear of exposure or arrest. Perpetrators of violence against gay and lesbian people could even claim what would become known as a “gay panic defense,” which justified any action, including murder, in the name of protecting oneself against a same-sex advance.
(Newspaper) In 1955, fear of a widespread homosexual underworld in Boise, Idaho, resulted in the questioning of 1,500 people, 16 arrests, and national media coverage.
Images courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
A CRACKDOWN ON QUEER SPACES
In mid-twentieth century America, state liquor authorities regularly revoked the licenses of bars that served homosexuals. Police enforced the regulation by raiding bars, harassing the patrons, arresting a selection of them, and closing down the bars. Bars were the primary public places where gay and lesbian people could socialize, so the raids created an atmosphere of fear that permeated all gay and lesbian gatherings.
Police canvassed public areas primarily frequented by gay men and ran entrapment schemes. Purposefully vague statutes on morals, lewd conduct, or disorderly conduct allowed the police to arrest gay and lesbian people for wearing clothing of the opposite sex, behaving like someone of the opposite sex, or even holding hands with a member of the same sex.
Those who were arrested were vulnerable to violence from the police and, if jailed, from inmates. They also faced the loss of their jobs, eviction from their homes, and social ostracism. Rather than having their sexual orientation publicly exposed, arrestees had little choice but to quietly pay their fines.
José Sarria performing at the Black Cat Café in 1958. The Black Cat Bar in San Francisco came under attack in 1951 when authorities revoked the bar’s liquor license for serving gay patrons. The owner challenged the decision, and in Stouman v. Reilly, the California Supreme Court provided a rare legal victory, siding with the institution’s right to serve gay people. Still, even in San Francisco, anti-gay sentiments proved difficult to overcome. Amid increasing police raids and legal debt, the Black Cat Bar closed in 1964.
(Top) Dottie Frank (center) with others at Acme Bar. Circa 1961. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Left panel bottom left) Harold L. Call Papers. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Right panel) Brochure for the Black Cat Café in San Francisco. 1952. José Sarria Papers. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
HARRY HAY FOUNDS THE MATTACHINE SOCIETY
The first sustained gay activist organization did not coalesce until 1951 when Harry Hay led the formation of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles. The Mattachine Society blamed society, not other queer people, for the discrimination they faced, which countered the internalized shame and guilt felt by many gay and lesbian people. Hay argued that gay and lesbian people were a minority group oppressed by a prejudicial society and that they needed to organize in order to challenge their unjust persecution.
Membership in the organization grew slowly. Most gay and lesbian people believed quiet assimilation to be their best option and would not risk exposure for what they viewed as an impossible cause. Fearful of persecution, those who did attend meetings did so at secret locations and arrived at staggered times to avoid raising suspicions. They kept the blinds drawn, their full names hidden, and the telephones in drawers in case of wire-tapping.
In 1952, when the society successfully defended a police entrapment case against one of its founders, Dale Jennings, membership rapidly expanded. Mattachine Society chapters formed across the United States. However, in 1953, Mattachine Society members succumbed to the Red Scare of the era and forced out Hay and the other original founders because of their past communist ties. Although the following years saw membership dwindle and the national coalition crumble, local Mattachine Societies continued to work effectively.
After pouring their drinks, a bartender in Julius’s Bar refuses to serve John Timmins, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, and Randy Wicker, members of the Mattachine Society who were protesting New York liquor laws that prevented serving gay customers in New York City, April 21, 1966.
Founders of the Mattachine Society include (from left to right) Dale Jennings, Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Paul Bernard
(Top) Photographed by Fred W. McDarrah. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Bottom) ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
ONE MAGAZINE HITS THE NEWSSTANDS
In 1953, a group of members from the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles came together and published a gay and lesbian periodical titled ONE Magazine. While Henry Gerber and Lisa Ben each published short-lived gay and lesbian periodicals in 1924 and 1947, resepectively, ONE Magazine was the first to sustain production and reach a national audience.
ONE was a true coalition endeavor from the start. The original nine board members included African-Americans Bailey Whitaker and Guy Rousseau, Latino Tony Reyes, and two women, Joan Corbin and Irma “Corky” Wolf. Rousseau came up with the name ONE after a Thomas Carlyle quote: “A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.”
ONE followed Harry Hay’s vision of gay and lesbian people as an oppressed minority group and challenged the status quo with cover stories on same-sex marriage and federal anti-gay witch-hunts.
Because of its content, the magazine drew the attention of the FBI and the United States Post Office. In 1953 and again in 1954, the local postmaster confiscated the magazine, claiming its positive portrayal of homosexuality violated federal obscenity laws. But in the 1958 decision ONE, Inc. v. Olesen, the United States Supreme Court overturned the ruling, delivering the first Supreme Court decision in favor of gay and lesbian rights.
Besides publishing ONE Magazine, the organization was the first to establish a public gay and lesbian research library (1953), provide social services to the gay community (1953), host conferences on gay rights (1955), teach classes in gay studies (1956), and publish a gay and lesbian scholarly journal (1958).
(Top left) From left to right: Don Slater, W. Dorr Legg, and Jim Kepner helped make ONE Incorporated the most accomplished gay and lesbian advocacy organization of the 1950s; (Middle right) W. Dorr Legg stands before ONE Incorporated staff and author Harry Otis (far right). Circa 1957-1958. ONE Incorporated Records, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Bottom left) Jim Kepner (left) and W. Dorr Legg standing outside the ONE Incorporated offices on Venice Blvd. Undated. ONE Incorporated Records, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
MARTIN, LYON, AND THE DAUGHTERS OF BILITIS
In 1955, eight lesbians in San Francisco, led by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, joined together to found the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the United States. The name came from the lesbian-themed song cycle “Songs of Bilitis,” by French poet Pierre Louÿs. The songs explored the life of a fictional lesbian character, Bilitis, who lived on the Isle of Lesbos with Sappho.
The organization worked to provide a national support group for the often isolating lives of lesbians in the era. In 1956, the Daughters of Bilitis created the publication The Ladder, which Phyllis Lyon edited for the next fourteen years.
The Daughters of Bilitis expanded to several chapters across the United States, each with varying levels of activist involvement. The Daughters of Bilitis hosted an educational conference in San Francisco with ONE Incorporated in the late 1950s. In 1960, the Daughters of Bilitis convened the first of a series of national lesbian conferences.
Del Martin (right with white collar) and Phyllis Lyon (upper right) frequently collaborated with activist leaders during the late 1950s, including with ONE Inc. Board chairman W. Dorr Legg (far left), Mattachine Society president Hal Call (front with bowtie), prominent author Harry Otis (in white behind Call), psychologist Dr. Blanche Baker (in wheelchair), and others.
The Ladder was the only lesbian periodical in the United States over the first fourteen years of its publication. It was the first publication to put a photograph of an out lesbian on its cover.
(Top) Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Photo by Stephen Stewart. (Right middle) ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Bottom) ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, ONE Incorporated Records.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
SAN FRANCISCO MOBILIZES
By the early 1960s in San Francisco, gay activism had begun to pick up steam. Famed drag performer José Julio Sarria ran for a city supervisor’s seat in 1961, becoming the first openly LGBTQ person to run for governmental office in the United States. Although the campaign was unsuccessful, his nearly 6,000 votes hinted at an untapped gay political power.
In San Francisco in 1962, gay bar owners and bartenders organized the first gay business association, the Tavern Guild, to combat police harassment of their bars and patrons. The Society for Individual Rights (SIR) formed two years later to push for broader gay and lesbian rights. By successfully combining social functions with political activities, SIR became the largest gay organization in the United States. In 1966, it opened one of the nation’s first gay and lesbian community centers.
In 1964, a coalition of San Francisco gay and lesbian activists and religious leaders formed the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH). When police raided a CRH-sponsored New Year’s Eve event that year, religious leaders stood side-by-side with LGBTQ activists to condemn the police’s targeting of queer people. The protest brought about a temporary halt to police raids on LGBTQ establishments and demonstrated the potential of coalition politics.
José Julio Sarria founded the Imperial Court in San Francisco in 1965. The court ran social events with a camp Imperial theme, including an official coronation of a king and queen. The Imperial Court System spread across North America and has raised millions for LGBTQ causes.
When the owner of Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco turned to the police to run off their drag queen and transgender patrons, LGBTQ activists set up a picket to protest the treatment. In August 1966, when Compton’s owners ignored picketeres and again called in the police, the patrons fought back and chased the officers from the building. The ensuing riot spilled into the streets, smashing windows, vandalizing a police car, and burning down a newspaper stand.
(Top) Photo courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society; (Right top left) Postcard with José Sarria’s platform in the race for San Francisco City and County Supervisor. 1961. Photo courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society; (Right top right and middle) SIR pocket lawyer and flier. Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
LOS ANGELES FIGHTS BACK
The first reported LGBTQ clash with Los Angeles police occurred in 1959 at Cooper’s Donuts, where a mostly Black and Latino/a clientele responded to the harassment of drag queen patrons by chasing officers from the establishment. However, an organized activist front did not coalesce in Los Angeles until seven years later, when Steve Ginsberg founded PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) to promote pride in the gay community and instigate a more radical response. In 1967, PRIDE led one of the largest LGBTQ protests to date in response to the police raid of the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles. During the raid, police brutally beat and arrested patrons and bar employees. One of the most enduring legacies of PRIDE’s activism was their eponymous newsletter PRIDE, which would evolve into the first national gay news publication, The Advocate . In 1968, LGBTQ people participated in “Gay-Ins” at Griffith Park, where they denounced the police department’s anti-gay policies and practices. Later that year, when police raided Lee Glaze’s bar, The Patch, Glaze organized an immediate protest. That night, he led a crowd of flower-carrying protesters to the police station to await the release of his arrested patrons.
(Right top) One of the “Fagots Stay Out” signs that instigated the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) protests against Barney’s Beanery. 1969. Pat Rocco photographer. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Right bottom left) Protestors of the police raid at The Patch. Advocate Records. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Right bottom right) Protesters of the police raid at the Black Cat. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
THE EAST COAST AND A NATIONAL COALITION
Upon founding the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1961, Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols worked to enlist the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to support legal challenges to the Federal Government’s discriminatory employment policies. The collaboration resulted in the first succesful lawsuits against employment discrimination in Scott v. Macy (1965) and Norton v. Macy (1969).
In New York City in 1964, Randy Wicker and members of the New York Mattachine Society and the League for Sexual Freedom organized the first picket of the military’s discriminatory policies towards gay and lesbian people. In Philadelphia in 1965, the Janus Society led a sit-in at Dewey’s restaurant in response to a decision by the owner to refuse service to those in “nonconformist clothing.”
The following year, the New York Mattachine Society staged “sip-ins” at New York City bars to protest the state’s ban on serving gay and lesbian people. In 1963, Frank Kameny helped bring together the Janus Society in Philadelphia and Mattachine Society chapters in New York and Washington D.C., to form East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). In 1965, ECHO led small protests at the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and Civil Service Commission, and initiated the Annual Reminder pickets outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
In 1966, gay and lesbian activist organizations came together in Kansas City, Missouri, for the first North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO). By 1967, the coalition claimed a membership of 6,000 individuals and organizations, and by 1968, it had formalized a national campaign behind Kameny’s “Gay is Good” slogan.
The pickets of the White House and the Pentagon in 1965 were some of the first gay and lesbian protests in history. Photos courtesy of Kay Tobin Lahusen, Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Collection. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
GENDER-VARIANT INDIVIDUALS SPARK THE REVOLUTION
Transgender and gender non-conforming people of color played a pivotal role in LGBTQ protests before the Stonewall Riots of 1969. For instance, the Cooper Do-nuts uprising in May of 1959 served as one of the first LGBTQ+ protests against police brutality in the 20th century. Located in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, this 24-hour café was frequented by queer Black and Latinx people who were often barred from other establishments for attracting police attention. Officers routinely intimidated transgender patrons by harassing them and asking inappropriate questions; they would ultimately arrest them for masquerading, loitering, or suspicion of sex work. Tensions broke when two officers began apprehending patrons. Outraged, people threw donuts, coffee, and paper plates until the officers retreated. They returned with backup, leading to a riot and partial closure of Main Street.
In Philadelphia, the management of Dewey’s Famous, a popular lunch-counter chain frequented by LGBTQ+ youth of color, refused service to gender non-conforming teenagers due to their “rowdy” behavior and “non-conformist” clothing. On April 25, 1965, over 150 LGBTQ+ patrons were arrested, including Clark Polak, president of the gay and lesbian Janus Society. Polak, along with three teenagers, were found guilty of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. As a result, the trans community and the Janus Society created an informational picket line over the next few days; drawing from tactics used by African-American civil rights activists, they organized a sit-in to bring attention to “all indiscriminate denials of service.” After the second protest—and with no arrests made— Dewey’s management reversed their policy. Three years before Stonewall, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in August 1966 rocked the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The 24-hour restaurant – whose clientele consisted mainly of drag queens, transgender people, runaway youth, and sex workers – was one of few gay establishments that allowed entrance to trans people. When restaurant management began fearing that trans people were detracting from business, they ordered police to remove all gender non-conforming patrons from the premises. Chaos ensued when one trans woman was roughly apprehended by an officer and threw coffee in his face. People threw utensils, tables, and chairs around the restaurant and through windows.
As officers fled to call for backup, over a hundred trans people set fire to a newsstand, smashed the windows of a squad car, and aggressively resisted arrest. Compton’s Cafeteria is lauded since transgender folks and their allies successfully resisted police brutality and transformed; moreover, social services for transgender people in San Francisco were transformed as a result of the uprising.
(Top, center) Drag magazine, Vol. 3 No. 11. ONE Periodical Collection. Ed Trust, magazine photographer. (Middle, left) A still from Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 film “The Exiles”, circa 1961. (Middle, enter) DRUM magazine, Vol. V, Number 6 by Janus Society of America. ONE Periodical Collection. Clark P. Polak, editor. (Bottom, right) Screen grab from Gay San Francisco, by Jonathan Price and Ed Muckerman, courtesy of Susan Stryker. (Background, middle left) Drag magazine, Vol. 3 No. 11. ONE Periodical Collection. Ed Trust, magazine photographer.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor, Dr. E. Jaye Johnson and Rev. Patti Dershem, and the work of Elizabeth Koehler, Erik Adamian, Nicholas Bihr, and James Lituchy. The ONE Archives Foundation is the oldest LGBTQ organization in the U.S. and the community partner of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
STONEWALL RIOTS
In the 1960s, gay bars across the United States were routinely subjected to police raids. Because the gay bars were considered to be “immoral” establishments, they had difficulty holding on to liquor licenses. Unnecessary ID checks, arrests, and police brutality were commonplace. However, the Stonewall Riots proved to be a turning point at which the LGBTQ community began to fight back against the unjust behavior of the police.
The riots began at around 2 AM on June 28, 1969, at the Mafia-owned Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village that was popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the LGBTQ community: drag queens, transgender men and women, young gay male prostitutes, and homeless youth. Police had targeted the Stonewall Inn many times in the past.
However, this particular raid would end differently. As the police checked IDs, arrested Stonewall patrons, and escorted them into police vans, people became increasingly agitated and started to resist. Police quickly lost control over the crowds that gathered in support of the patrons being arrested. The crowd began throwing coins at the police, and then bottles and other sharp objects. Feeling threatened, the police reacted with violence, beating protestors and spraying them with tear gas.
Protesters continued to throw bottles through the windows and used lighter fluid to ignite fires in trashcans, and even inside the bar. Police eventually called in the Tactical Patrol Force. However, every time they managed to disperse the crowd, it reassembled around them.
The riots continued from Saturday until Wednesday, with hundreds of people joining in the fight.
A crucial event in LGBTQ history, the Stonewall Riots came to symbolize the beginning of an international queer liberation movement. On June 28, 1970, the first LGBTQ Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Today, Pride events are held annually in June throughout the world to mark the Stonewall Riots.
(Top left and bottom left) View of a damaged jukebox and cigarette machine, along with a broken chair, inside the Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher Street) after riots. Photographed by Fred W. McDarrah. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. (Top right) An unidentifed group of young people celebrate outside the boarded-up Stonewall Inn. Photographed by Fred W. McDarrah. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. (Bottom middle) Layout of the Stonewall Inn in 1969. David Carter (2004). Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, St. Martin’s Press. (Bottom right) The Stonewall Inn by Diana Davies, copyright owned by New York Public Library. www.onearchives.org
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
On July 2, 1951, Sylvia Rivera, a Latinx transgender woman, was born in the Bronx, New York. Between familial abuse at home and bullying in primary school, Rivera abandoned formal education and left home at age eleven. She then lived on 42nd Street, an area that was home to drag queens, hustlers, and queer street youth; it was here that young drag queens and trans women informally adopted Rivera and taught her how to survive. Like many transgender and gender non-conforming people, she found momentary refuge in the street scene outside the Stonewall Inn during the 1960s. A major player in the riots, Rivera eventually grew frustrated with the way LGBTQ+ rights movement focused on white, cisgender, gay men. Rivera, with her friend Marsha P. Johnson, went on to establish the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970, after which she largely disappeared from activist circles. For the remainder of her life, she devoted herself to working with transgender communities in New York City.
Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman, was born on August 24, 1945 and moved to New York City in the 1960s. She changed her name in 1966, later adding the “P.” for “Pay It No Mind” – her response when people incessantly questioned her gender. Alongside other gay and trans people, she fought against police brutality and discrimination outside the Stonewall Inn. Although active in the Gay Liberation Front, Johnson and Sylvia Rivera felt the organization was not addressing issues faced by transgender and gender nonconforming people of color, which compelled her and Sylvia Rivera to establish STAR in 1970. In the 1980s, Johnson joined forces with the radical organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP), and organized food and clothing for young transgender people impacted by the AIDS epidemic. Although never investigated, Johnson’s death in 1992 was likely a hatemotivated murder. A lifelong radical activist for racial, social, and economic justice, Johnson helped transform the lives of transgender youth of color.
(Top, center) Drag magazine, Vol. 3 No. 11. Ed Trust, Magazine photographer. (Center, right) Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera from Drag magazine, Vol. 2 No. 8. Ed Trust, Magazine photographer. (Bottom, left) Drag magazine, Vol. 2 No. 8. Ed Trust, Magazine photographer. (Bottom, center) Miss Major Griffin-Gracy during the Pride 2014 parade in San Francisco, California. June 29, 2014. Quinn Dombrowski, photographer. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a formerly incarcerated Black transgender woman born in Chicago, Illinois on October 24, 1940. In her twenties, she worked as a professional “female impersonator” in New York and frequented the Stonewall Inn, where she participated in the 1969 rebellion. After the murder of her close friend – a transgender Puerto Rican woman and sex worker – went uninvestigated, she grew motivated to radically improve the lives of trans and gender nonconforming people of color. Upon moving to California in 1978, Griffin-Gracy became heavily involved with various HIV/AIDS organizations. In the mid-2000s, Griffin-Gracy became the Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), a community organizing project lead by transgender, gender-variant and intersex people who have experienced or are currently experiencing incarceration. Miss Major currently resides in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor, Dr. E. Jaye Johnson and Rev. Patti Dershem, and the work of Elizabeth Koehler, Erik Adamian, Nicholas Bihr, and James Lituchy. The ONE Archives Foundation is the oldest LGBTQ organization in the U.S. and the community partner of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
PRIDE IS BORN
In 1970, just a year after the Stonewall Riots, commemorative marches and “gay-ins” were organized in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to coincide with the anniversary of Stonewall. New York’s march started with a small group of people, grew to hundreds, and then to thousands as it entered Central Park.
The Los Angeles contingent enlisted the help of the American Civil Liberties Union to acquire a city permit and become the first LGBTQ march sanctioned by a city government. In the years following, the marches grew in size and participation, and spread across the world in cities small and large. Now often known as the Pride Parade, the event serves as an annual reminder and celebration of the Stonewall Riots.
American gay rights activists Foster Gunnison (1925 - 1994) & Craig Rodwell (1940 - 1993) (both center) lead the first Stonewall anniversary march, then known as Gay Liberation Day (and later Gay Pride Day).
(Top) New York, New York, June 28, 1970. Photographed by Fred W. McDarrah. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Right top) An unidentifed group of young people celebrate on a building stoop near the boarded-up Stonewall Inn. Photographed by Fred W. McDarrah. ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; (Right bottom) Marchers in the first Los Angeles Pride Parade. Pat Rocco photographer, Pat Rocco Papers. ONE Archives at USC Libraries; (Left) Poster advertising the Gay-In at Central Park. “Alternative Press Collection.” Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut. www.onearchives.org
This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Edith Windsor and the work of Elizabeth Koehler.
Proud SPONSORS
