There are some mysteries we may never solve.
Whatever happened to Baby Jane? …Is there really a lost Britney Spears album called Original Doll? …Who threw the first brick at Stonewall?
The New York Times has put together a pretty amazing mini doc exploring the many theories behind the popular myth through interviews with people who participated in the uprising, as well as LGBTQ historians and contemporary queer writers.
Related: Check out the new mural dedicated to Stonewall hero Marsha P. Johnson
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Spoiler alert: No one can agree on who it was. Or even if it was a brick. Or a cobblestone. Or a rock. Or something else. But that’s not the point.
Filmmaker Shane O’Neil writes:
Fifty years after Stonewall, we’re still arguing about what happened on that night. And that’s kind of the point: Stonewall was, at its core, about people reclaiming their narratives from a society that told them they were sick or pitiful or didn’t even exist.
Getting to tell your own story is a gift, but it means that you have to contend with other people’s stories, and I guess that can mean arguing, maybe for 50 years straight. And that’s O.K.
Watch.
wiredpup
I’ll tell you who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Marsha or Sylvia because neither of them were there. And if you Google Stonewall riots there’s sure are a lot of white people there. So y’all need to stop transwashing history and cultural appropriation of the gay and lesbian movement.
Kangol2
Marsha P. Johnson was there. Also, you need to go beyond Google–read up on the Stonewall Uprising, watch some of the documentaries, learn more that what Google vomits up. Your transphobic, ethnocentric BS is the antithesis of the Gay Rights, Gay Power and Gay Liberation movements were fighting for!
wiredpup
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Hey Kangol2
G
F
Y
Randolfe
I would never using the term “transwashing history” because the existence of trans, African American & latino contributions to the movement have been regularly ignored for decades. It’s good that this type of reparational history is taking place.
wiredpup
Randolfe
BS I stated a fact. Don’t like it, move on.
lcandela123
Really excellent article. I’m on the side of truth and resent self-appointed myth-makers creating a false narrative. Why? To make us feel better or more heroic or more righteous?
The interviews were really great. Appreciated the perspective of the people that were actually there and their candor.
Mikey E
It’s disturbing how the details of this one cherry-picked event are given almost religious importance. There is definitely a cult-like vibe to it. It’s a lot like how Christians parse through the details of the discovery of Jesus’s tomb or how Muslims wage endless war on each other over the details of a succession dispute from 1200 years ago. As if somehow the lives of tens of millions of gay people are determined by “who threw the first brick” at a small disturbance on a street corner 50 years ago. “Marsha” Johnson said himself that he showed up to the riot late, so he clearly did not “start” anything. But even if he had, even if 99% of the rioters were mentally ill homeless crossdressers, so what? Does that mean that all gay people have to celebrate mentally ill homeless crossdressers? A straight white male folk singer was beaten and arrested at Stonewall. Does that mean that we should be subservient to straight white male folk singers or that our movement is perpetually obligated to care about folk singing? The whole obsession wit this is bizarre. We aren’t slaves to the fortuities of a single event a half century ago.
Stonewall was not the beginning of the gay rights movement. If it had never happened, things wouldn’t be that much different today. It prompted some people to get involved faster than they might have otherwise. But work was already being done all over the US and the world, and it is the actual work that made the difference, not the one-off street disturbance.
Mike Gillispie
I find it amazing these young people saying they know what went on at STONE WALL. The guys knew. But those young people should be listening not yapping like they know.
wiredpup
Yup. But remember, these kids grew up getting participation trophies not to mention they have a lot easier today because of those of us who came before them and now want to ignore facts.
Polaro
Exactly.
Randolfe
This is an excellent article. However, it has one glaring ERROR. The first Christopher Street Liberation Day March in 1970 did not result from the riots themselves. There had been annual protests by representatives from several different organizations at Independence Hall on July 4th since 1964. In 1969, less than a week after Stonewall about 120 demonstrators showed up in Philadelphia. They violated the strict dress requirements of men in suits & women in dresses. Craig Rodwell from the New York Mattachine Society decided on the way back to NYC that the 1970 “reminder” should be held in NYC. Craig Rodwell, a Mattachine activist, proceeded to make sure that event–a continuation of the previous five years of protest — should be held in NYC. That is how the first march was born, out of earlier protests by so-called “homophile” organizations.
djmcgamester
Sometimes I wish we could just “like” posts here. Glad you’ve brought some factual information to the table. I’m almost 49 and still only knew of the Judy Garland/police raid/drag queen version of events. The build up to it all is interesting to know, something to be preserved in LGBT history. I think the day will come when our sexuality and identity doesn’t matter but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remember.
djmcgamester
Were trans people edited out of Stonewall? Maybe they were. We’re still reclaiming our own history where LGBT individuals had their own truths left out. Queer? Yes. Acknowledged in the history books? Generally, no. We’re fortunate that some level of documentation exists. I’m not sure how well documented the event was in this respect. When it comes to riots it’s even more difficult to say. I say to embrace that it could be any of “us” and move on.
Gary Q VV
Yes, exactly true. There were a multitude of events and people throughout history from which was built enough momentum to push the ideas and ideals that we now reap. There are so many, but to name a small fraction…
-Sir Francis Bacon:
Part of his accomplishments was he devised a deductive system for empirical research. As other men in the British renaissance period, he kept his Gay preference known only to his Gay friends.
-Alexander von Humboldt
He wrote The Cosmos(1845-1862), in which he presented an all-embracing view of the universe and brought together the best scientific knowledge of his time. He was a great researcher of Central and South America. Oh yeah, he lived an openly Gay life.
-Margaret Mead
She laid the foundation for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Quote: “What you have classified as homo & hetero is really sex adapted to like or understood temperaments versus sex adapted to a relationship of strangeness and distance…Uh what??Sister Margaret?
-Society of Human Rights in Chicago 1920s
It was the first American homosexual rights organization and a precursor to the modern gay-liberation movement.
-Martin Bauml Duberman
Since ’72 he’s been active in the LGBTQ Rights Movement and in formal historic documentation.
He’s been intimately involved in:
The Gay Academic Union
The National Gay Task Force
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS)
The Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate School,
CLAGS was the first university-based research center in the US to focus solely upon the study of historical, cultural & political issues concerning LGBTQ individuals and communities.
Its support for this area of scholarship is ongoing.
Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis 1950s
In a small nutshell, it was started by Harry Hay in LA, Calif. in ’51, slowly opened chapters across the US, focusing on providing public forums for medical views sympathetic to Lesbian/Gay civil rights; creating protective, supportive social networks for LG people; and providing a clearinghouse for legal, medical, and personal advice for LG people in jeopardy.
One big problem that I’ve found with our modern day society is that they rely upon Googling or using Wikistupidia too much. Thanks Malcolm, for a thorough investigation and review, albeit necessarily brief, of our ‘Gay Liberation’, ‘Gay Power Movement’, ‘Gay Revolutionary Fight’, which focused on “The Stonewall Inn”. Good research requires doing your homework by sourcing multiple data and personal accounts. This article reflects my sentiments which I’ve written oodles of times not only on Queerty, but at seminars, groups, and social gatherings. (Rarely with friends or family… where you never discuss politics, religion, or your sex life!)