If anybody should find out I was gay and would tell my mother, who was in a wheelchair, it would have broken my heart and she would have thought she did something wrong. Narrator (Archival):This is a nation of laws. America thought we were these homosexual monsters and we were so innocent, and oddly enough, we were so American. Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it. Martin Boyce:I heard about the trucks, which to me was fascinated me, you know, it had an imagination thing that was like Marseilles, how can it only be a few blocks away? Jerry Hoose:I mean the riot squad was used to riots. But we're going to pay dearly for this. 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. Synopsis. One never knows when the homosexual is about. But I'm wearing this police thing I'm thinking well if they break through I better take it off really quickly but they're gunna come this way and we're going to be backing up and -- who knows what'll happen. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips and personal recollections to construct an audiovisual history of the gay community before the Stonewall riots. Doing things like that. 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 the harder she fought, the more the cops were beating her up and the madder the crowd got. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history. Martha Shelley Giles Kotcher Abstract. Over a short period of time, he will be unable to get sexually aroused to the pictures, and hopefully, he will be unable to get sexually aroused inside, in other settings as well. Robin Haueter Before Stonewall (1984) - full transcript New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. Martin Boyce Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:The mob raised its hand and said "Oh, we'll volunteer," you know, "We'll set up some gay bars and serve over-priced, watered-down drinks to you guys." In an effort to avoid being anachronistic . 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. Your choice, you can come in with us or you can stay out here with the crowd and report your stuff from out here. I mean, I came out in Central Park and other places. And that's what it was, it was a war. Janice Flood Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. Clever. NBC News Archives I was proud. Joe DeCola And the people coming out weren't going along with it so easily. Somehow being gay was the most terrible thing you could possibly be. Other images in this film are And the rest of your life will be a living hell. 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. Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries . And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke loose. The newly restored 1984 documentary "Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community," re-released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the seminal Stonewall riots, remains a . Suzanne Poli Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:TheNew York TimesI guess printed a story, but it wasn't a major story. Many of those activists have since died, but Marcus preserved their voices for his book, titled Making Gay History. Revisiting the newly restored "Before Stonewall" 35 years after its premiere, Rosenberg said he was once again struck by its "powerful" and "acutely relevant" narrative. This was in front of the police. We knew it was a gay bar, we walked past it. Gay people were not powerful enough politically to prevent the clampdown and so you had a series of escalating skirmishes in 1969. It was as if an artist had arranged it, it was beautiful, it was like mica, it was like the streets we fought on were strewn with diamonds. There may be some here today that will be homosexual in the future. In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's LGBT community. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar and when she came out of the bar she was fighting the cops and trying to get away. I was in the Navy when I was 17 and it was there that I discovered that I was gay. You know, we wanted to be part of the mainstream society. We had been threatened bomb threats. All of this stuff was just erupting like a -- as far as they were considered, like a gigantic boil on the butt of America. Genre: Documentary, History, Drama. Judith Kuchar And, you know,The Village Voiceat that point started using the word "gay.". Jerry Hoose:Who was gonna complain about a crackdown against gay people? Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had a column inThe Village Voicethat ran from '66 all the way through '84. The scenes were photographed with telescopic lenses. So I run down there. John O'Brien:The election was in November of 1969 and this was the summer of 1969, this was June. Dick Leitsch:And I remember it being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco I never believed in that. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Raymond Castro:New York City subways, parks, public bathrooms, you name it. Participants of the 1969 Greenwich Village uprising describe the effect that Stonewall had on their lives. Absolutely, and many people who were not lucky, felt the cops. You throw into that, that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night. It was a 100% profit, I mean they were stealing the liquor, then watering it down, and they charging twice as much as they charged one door away at the 55. I mean does anyone know what that is? But the before section, I really wanted people to have a sense of what it felt like to be gay, lesbian, transgender, before Stonewall and before you have this mass civil rights movement that comes after Stonewall. 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 . People that were involved in it like me referred to it as "The First Run." Raymond Castro:I'd go in there and I would look and I would just cringe because, you know, people would start touching me, and "Hello, what are you doing there if you don't want to be touched?" Virginia Apuzzo: I grew up with that. Revealing and. Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. And the first gay power demonstration to my knowledge was against my story inThe Village Voiceon Wednesday. A year earlier, young gays, lesbians and transgender people clashed with police near a bar called The Stonewall Inn. Slate:The Homosexual(1967), CBS Reports. Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. A CBS news public opinion survey indicates that sentiment is against permitting homosexual relationships between consenting adults without legal punishment. 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. Fred Sargeant:Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. Beginning of our night out started early. We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox." Fifty years ago, a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. Jerry Hoose:The police would come by two or three times a night. Urban Stages Jerry Hoose:I was chased down the street with billy clubs. Read a July 6, 1969excerpt fromTheNew York Daily News. Stacker put together a timeline of LGBTQ+ history leading up to Stonewall, beginning with prehistoric events and ending in the late 1960s. Martin Boyce:I had cousins, ten years older than me, and they had a car sometimes. We love to hear from our listeners! Dr. Socarides (Archival):Homosexuality is in fact a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. The idea was to be there first. And it would take maybe a half hour to clear the place out. They were supposed to be weak men, limp-wristed. Here are my ID cards, you knew they were phonies. Danny Garvin:Something snapped. That this was normal stuff. And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. Ellinor Mitchell This was a highly unusual raid, going in there in the middle of the night with a full crowd, the Mafia hasn't been alerted, the Sixth Precinct hasn't been alerted. Dick Leitsch:Mattachino in Italy were court jesters; the only people in the whole kingdom who could speak truth to the king because they did it with a smile. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. Remember everything. I could never let that happen and never did. John O'Brien:They went for the head wounds, it wasn't just the back wounds and the leg wounds. This book, and the related documentary film, use oral histories to present students with a varied view of lesbian and gay experience. John O'Brien:And deep down I believed because I was gay and couldn't speak out for my rights, was probably one of the reasons that I was so active in the Civil Rights Movement. How do you think that would affect him mentally, for the rest of their lives if they saw an act like that being? I was never seduced by an older person or anything like that. John O'Brien:I was with a group that we actually took a parking meter out of theground, three or four people, and we used it as a battering ram. There was no going back now, there was no going back, there was no, we had discovered a power that we weren't even aware that we had. [7] In 1989, it won the Festival's Plate at the Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. "We're not going.". Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:It really should have been called Stonewall uprising. We knew that this was a moment that we didn't want to let slip past, because it was something that we could use to bring more of the groups together. Getting then in the car, rocking them back and forth. Mike Wallace (Archival):Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. 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. But it was a refuge, it was a temporary refuge from the street. One of the world's oldest and largest gay pride parades became a victory celebration after New York's historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage. And once that happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble. Franco Sacchi, Additional Animation and Effects Martin Boyce:That was our only block. This produced an enormous amount of anger within the lesbian and gay community in New York City and in other parts of America. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero, in California. Not even us. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:And I keep listening and listening and listening, hoping I'm gonna hear sirens any minute and I was very freaked. Some of the pre-Stonewall uprisings included: Black Cat Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1967 Black Night Brawl, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 5, 1961. Geordie, Liam and Theo Gude That wasn't ours, it was borrowed. Jerry Hoose:The open gay people that hung out on the streets were basically the have-nothing-to-lose types, which I was. But I had only stuck my head in once at the Stonewall. Somebody grabbed me by the leg and told me I wasn't going anywhere. The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable. and I didn't see anything but a forest of hands. Because its all right in the Village, but the minute we cross 14th street, if there's only ten of us, God knows what's going to happen to us.". Yvonne Ritter:I did try to get out of the bar and I thought that there might be a way out through one of the bathrooms. The award winning film Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free the dramatic story of the sometimes horrifying public and private existences experienced by gay and lesbian Americans since the 1920s. Alan Lechner Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". Charles Harris, Transcriptions It meant nothing to us. I was a man. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. Former U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with gay rights activist Frank Kameny after signing a memorandum on federal benefits and non-discrimination in the Oval Office on June 17, 2009. It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. 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. This is one thing that if you don't get caught by us, you'll be caught by yourself. ITN Source Slate:The Homosexuals(1967), CBS Reports. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution Martin Boyce:Mind you socks didn't count, so it was underwear, and undershirt, now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit. And it was fantastic. We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them. Not able to do anything. The documentary shows how homosexual people enjoyed and shared with each other. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:So at that point the police are extremely nervous. In 1999, producer Scagliotti directed a companion piece, After Stonewall. First Run Features To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Teddy Awards, the film was shown at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? I went in there and they took bats and just busted that place up. Lauren Noyes. Martha Shelley:We participated in demonstrations in Philadelphia at Independence Hall. The shop had been threatened, we would get hang-up calls, calls where people would curse at us on the phone, we'd had vandalism, windows broken, streams of profanity. But after the uprising, polite requests for change turned into angry demands. If that didn't work, they would do things like aversive conditioning, you know, show you pornography and then give you an electric shock. It eats you up inside. And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." I was celebrating my birthday at the Stonewall. Danny Garvin:We became a people. You had no place to try to find an identity. Never, never, never. For those kisses. John O'Brien:We had no idea we were gonna finish the march. Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free dramatic stories from the early 1900's onwards of public and private existence as experienced by LGBT Americans. 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. They were to us. The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. Maureen Jordan It's not my cup of tea. Because that's what they were looking for, any excuse to try to bust the place. Greg Shea, Legal Fred Sargeant:The effect of the Stonewall riot was to change the direction of the gay movement. John O'Brien:And then somebody started a fire, they started with little lighters and matches. John O'Brien:In the Civil Rights Movement, we ran from the police, in the peace movement, we ran from the police. Things were just changing. Chris Mara Homosexuals do not want that, you might find some fringe character someplace who says that that's what he wants. 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. Do you want them to lose all chance of a normal, happy, married life? They were afraid that the FBI was following them. John DiGiacomo We didn't necessarily know where we were going yet, you know, what organizations we were going to be or how things would go, but we became something I, as a person, could all of a sudden grab onto, that I couldn't grab onto when I'd go to a subway T-room as a kid, or a 42nd street movie theater, you know, or being picked up by some dirty old man. Then the cops come up and make use of what used to be called the bubble-gum machine, back then a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around. Martha Shelley:In those days, what they would do, these psychiatrists, is they would try to talk you into being heterosexual. That never happened before. National History Archive, LGBT Community Center And you will be caught, don't think you won't be caught, because this is one thing you cannot get away with. Well, little did he know that what was gonna to happen later on was to make history. I made friends that first day. Richard Enman (Archival):Well, let me say, first of all, what type of laws we are not after, because there has been much to-do that the Society was in favor of the legalization of marriage between homosexuals, and the adoption of children, and such as that, and that is not at all factual at all. 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. And you felt bad that you were part of this, when you knew they broke the law, but what kind of law was that? They are taught that no man is born homosexual and many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in the first three years of life. John van Hoesen TV Host (Archival):And Sonia is that your own hair? That's it. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:And they were, they were kids. A word that would be used in the 1960s for gay men and lesbians. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. Her most recent film, Bones of Contention, premiered in the 2016 Berlin International Alexandra Meryash Nikolchev, On-Line Editors Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:We told this to our men. Dana Kirchoff Jerry Hoose:I remember I was in a paddy wagon one time on the way to jail, we were all locked up together on a chain in the paddy wagon and the paddy wagon stopped for a red light or something and one of the queens said "Oh, this is my stop." Noah Goldman It was nonsense, it was nonsense, it was all the people there, that were reacting and opposing what was occurring. But it's serious, don't kid yourselves about it. That's more an uprising than a riot. 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. What Jimmy didn't know is that Ralph was sick. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Martha Shelley:The riot could have been buried, it could have been a few days in the local newspaper and that was that. Doric Wilson:In those days, the idea of walking in daylight, with a sign saying, "I'm a faggot," was horren--, nobody, nobody was ready to do that. Slate:Boys Beware(1961) Public Service Announcement. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:There were gay bars all over town, not just in Greenwich Village. But as visibility increased, the reactions of people increased. Transcript Enlarge this image To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. Quentin Heilbroner John O'Brien:Whenever you see the cops, you would run away from them. My last name being Garvin, I'd be called Danny Gay-vin. But I was just curious, I didn't want to participate because number one it was so packed. 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. Activists had been working for change long before Stonewall. It is usually after the day at the beach that the real crime occurs. It premiered at the 1984 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United States on June 27, 1985. Fred Sargeant:In the '60s, I met Craig Rodwell who was running the Oscar Wilde Bookshop. Because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation. Nobody. Dan Bodner Daniel Pine Andrea Weiss is a documentary filmmaker and author with a Ph.D. in American History. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers. 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? You know, it's just, everybody was there. At least if you had press, maybe your head wouldn't get busted. Pamela Gaudiano 'Cause I really realized that I was being trained as a straight person, so I could really fool these people. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:I had been in some gay bars either for a story or gay friends would say, "Oh we're going to go in for a drink there, come on in, are you too uptight to go in?" Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The police would zero in on us because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even entrap. Once it started, once that genie was out of the bottle, it was never going to go back in. The overwhelming number of medical authorities said that homosexuality was a mental defect, maybe even a form of psychopathy. That night, the police ran from us, the lowliest of the low. 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. It must have been terrifying for them. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:We would scatter, ka-poom, every which way. Chris Mara, Production Assistants He pulls all his men inside. A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, activists rode their motorcycles during the city's 1989 gay-pride parade. hide caption. They'd go into the bathroom or any place that was private, that they could either feel them, or check them visually. And so we had to create these spaces, mostly in the trucks. There were gay bars in Midtown, there were gay bars uptown, there were certain kinds of gay bars on the Upper East Side, you know really, really, really buttoned-up straight gay bars. I mean they were making some headway. We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger. 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 the police escalated their crackdown on bars because of the reelection campaign. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:They were sexual deviates. Raymond Castro:There were mesh garbage cans being lit up on fire and being thrown at the police. 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. This 1955 educational film warns of homosexuality, calling it "a sickness of the mind.". Paul Bosche Detective John Sorenson, Dade County Morals & Juvenile Squad (Archival):There may be some in this auditorium.