Danny Garvin:With Waverly Street coming in there, West Fourth coming in there, Seventh Avenue coming in there, Christopher Street coming in there, there was no way to contain us. PDF BEFORE STONEWALL press kit - First Run Features We knew it was a gay bar, we walked past it. That was scary, very scary. And that, that was a very haunting issue for me. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. My father said, "About time you fags rioted.". Not even us. Martin Boyce:Well, in the front part of the bar would be like "A" gays, like regular gays, that didn't go in any kind of drag, didn't use the word "she," that type, but they were gay, a hundred percent gay. Jerry Hoose:The bar itself was a toilet. And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. 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." It eats you up inside not being comfortable with yourself. You knew you could ruin them for life. We didn't expect we'd ever get to Central Park. And as I'm looking around to see what's going on, police cars, different things happening, it's getting bigger by the minute. Martha Shelley National History Archive, LGBT Community Center The Activism That Came Before Stonewall And The Movement That - NPR Danny Garvin:We became a people. 400 Plankinton Ave. Compton's Cafeteria Raid, San Francisco, California, 1966 Coopers Do-Nut Raid, Los Angeles, California, 1959 Pepper Hill Club Raid, Baltimore, Maryland in 1955. Dick Leitsch:There were Black Panthers and there were anti-war 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. But we couldn't hold out very long. Jorge Garcia-Spitz Narrator (Archival):Sure enough, the following day, when Jimmy finished playing ball, well, the man was there waiting. Raymond Castro:So then I got pushed back in, into the Stonewall by these plain clothes cops and they would not let me out, they didn't let anybody out. I didn't think I could have been any prettier than that night. Jerry Hoose:The open gay people that hung out on the streets were basically the have-nothing-to-lose types, which I was. You see, Ralph was a homosexual. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. 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. I mean I'm only 19 and this'll ruin me. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:Gay people who were sentenced to medical institutions because they were found to be sexual psychopaths, were subjected sometimes to sterilization, occasionally to castration, sometimes to medical procedures, such as lobotomies, which were felt by some doctors to cure homosexuality and other sexual diseases. A Q-Ball Productions film for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Naturally, you get careless, you fall for it, and the next thing you know, you have silver bracelets on both arms. The events of that night have been described as the birth of the gay-rights movement. This Restored Documentary Examines What LGBTQ Lives Were Like Before [7] In 1987, the film won Emmy Awards for Best Historical/Cultural Program and Best Research. So it was a perfect storm for the police. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history. Oddball Film + Video, San Francisco His movements are not characteristic of a real boy. Before Stonewall | Apple TV 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. Cause I was from the streets. We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger. Before Stonewall streaming: where to watch online? - JustWatch Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:All of a sudden, in the background I heard some police cars. Interviewer (Archival):What type of laws are you after? Martin Boyce:In the early 60s, if you would go near Port Authority, there were tons of people coming in. A year earlier, young gays, lesbians and transgender people clashed with police near a bar called The Stonewall Inn. And we were singing: "We are the Village girls, we wear our hair in curls, we wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees." Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:Saturday night there it was. It was a real good sound to know that, you know, you had a lot of people out there pulling for you. And the Stonewall was part of that system. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:There were gay bars all over town, not just in Greenwich Village. Susana Fernandes The first police officer that came in with our group said, "The place is under arrest. It meant nothing to us. Guest Post: What I Learned From Revisiting My 1984 Documentary "Before Doric Wilson "You could have got us in a lot of trouble, you could have got us closed up." The very idea of being out, it was ludicrous. Lauren Noyes. 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. That summer, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:What they did in the Stonewall that night. June 21, 2019 1:29 PM EDT. Martin Boyce:For me, there was no bar like the Stonewall, because the Stonewall was like the watering hole on the savannah. 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:That's what happened Stonewall night to a lot of people. Brief Summary Of The Documentary 'Before Stonewall' | Bartleby The New York Times / Redux Pictures Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:It was always hands up, what do you want? He pulls all his men inside. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there. Jerry Hoose:I mean the riot squad was used to riots. 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. I mean it didn't stop after that. There was all these drags queens and these crazy people and everybody was carrying on. 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. Stonewall Forever is a documentary from NYC's LGBT Community Center directed by Ro Haber. Dick Leitsch:We wore suits and ties because we wanted people, in the public, who were wearing suits and ties, to identify with us. WPA Film Library, Thanks to Raymond Castro:There were mesh garbage cans being lit up on fire and being thrown at the police. Danny Garvin:We had thought of women's rights, we had thought of black rights, all kinds of human rights, but we never thought of gay rights, and whenever we got kicked out of a bar before, we never came together. Heather Gude, Archival Research Sophie Cabott Black It was terrifying. But I gave it up about, oh I forget, some years ago, over four years ago. 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. I really thought that, you know, we did it. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:The police would zero in on us because sometimes they would be in plain clothes, and sometimes they would even entrap. Fred Sargeant:Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. Danny Garvin:It was the perfect time to be in the Village. Suzanne Poli 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. A person marching in a gay rights parade along New York's Fifth Avenue on July 7th, 1979. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:If someone was dressed as a woman, you had to have a female police officer go in with her. National Archives and Records Administration Dr. Socarides (Archival):Homosexuality is in fact a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:I never bought a drink at the Stonewall. The cops were barricaded inside. TV Host (Archival):That's a very lovely dress too that you're wearing Simone. Few photographs of the raid and the riots that followed exist. It was a way to vent my anger at being repressed. 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. It was as bad as any situation that I had met in during the army, had just as much to worry about. Martha Shelley:When I was growing up in the '50s, I was supposed to get married to some guy, produce, you know, the usual 2.3 children, and I could look at a guy and say, "Well, objectively he's good looking," but I didn't feel anything, just didn't make any sense to me. It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. David Alpert Windows started to break. Gay people were told we didn't have any of that. It's the first time I'm fully inside the Stonewall. And today we're talking about Stonewall, which were both pretty anxious about so anxious. I went in there and they took bats and just busted that place up. Meanwhile, there was crowds forming outside the Stonewall, wanting to know what was going on. We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to. This is every year in New York City. And I hadn't had enough sleep, so I was in a somewhat feverish state, and I thought, "We have to do something, we have to do something," and I thought, "We have to have a protest march of our own." William Eskridge, Professor of Law:All throughout the 60s in New York City, the period when the New York World's Fair was attracting visitors from all over America and all over the world. John O'Brien:In the Civil Rights Movement, we ran from the police, in the peace movement, we ran from the police. Just making their lives miserable for once. We'll put new liquor in there, we'll put a new mirror up, we'll get a new jukebox."