Homosexuality was a dishonorable discharge in those days, and you couldn't get a job afterwards. 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 . Calling 'em names, telling 'em how good-looking they were, grabbing their butts. Finally, Mayor Lindsay listened to us and he announced that there would be no more police entrapment in New York City. Before Stonewall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival. When we got dressed for that night, we had cocktails and we put the makeup on. Dick Leitsch:We wore suits and ties because we wanted people, in the public, who were wearing suits and ties, to identify with us. That's what happened on June 28, but as people were released, the night took an unusual turn when protesters and police clashed. Martha Shelley:Before Stonewall, the homophile movement was essentially the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis and all of these other little gay organizations, some of which were just two people and a mimeograph machine. She was awarded the first ever Emmy Award for Research for her groundbreaking work on Before Stonewall. Martin Boyce:It was thrilling. Jerry Hoose:And I got to the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, crossed the street and there I had found Nirvana. Synopsis. John Scagliotti 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. Slate:The Homosexuals(1967), CBS Reports. Glenn Fukushima I had never seen anything like that. 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. 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. You see these cops, like six or eight cops in drag. I didn't think I could have been any prettier than that night. All rights reserved. The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals. 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. 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. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:At the peak, as many as 500 people per year were arrested for the crime against nature, and between 3- and 5,000 people per year arrested for various solicitation or loitering crimes. Linton Media Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:What they did in the Stonewall that night. Martin Boyce:Oh, Miss New Orleans, she wouldn't be stopped. I never believed in that. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:They were sexual deviates. And that's what it was, it was a war. 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. 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. All kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. Directors Greta Schiller Robert Rosenberg (co-director) Stars Rita Mae Brown Maua Adele Ajanaku They were afraid that the FBI was following them. Jimmy hadn't enjoyed himself so much in a long time. And so Howard said, "We've got police press passes upstairs." Geoff Kole I entered the convent at 26, to pursue that question and I was convinced that I would either stay until I got an answer, or if I didn't get an answer just stay. It was one of the things you did in New York, it was like the Barnum and Bailey aspect of it. Doing things like that. The history of the Gay and Lesbian community before the Stonewall riots began the major gay rights movement. Quentin Heilbroner Mike Wallace (Archival):Two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear. It was a real good sound to know that, you know, you had a lot of people out there pulling for you. Gay people were told we didn't have any of that. And that, that was a very haunting issue for me. And when she grabbed that everybody knew she couldn't do it alone so all the other queens, Congo Woman, queens like that started and they were hitting that door. "You could have got us in a lot of trouble, you could have got us closed up." 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. Ed Koch, Councilman, New York City:There were complaints from people who objected to the wrongful behavior of some gays who would have sex on the street. I mean it didn't stop after that. Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:And then the next night. 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. I would get in the back of the car and they would say, "We're going to go see faggots." Fred Sargeant:The press did refer to it in very pejorative terms, as a night that the drag queens fought back. It's a history that people feel a huge sense of ownership over. Read a July 6, 1969excerpt fromTheNew York Daily News. Windows started to break. Absolutely, and many people who were not lucky, felt the cops. Never, never, never. Andy Frielingsdorf, Reenactment Actors Martha Shelley:In those days, what they would do, these psychiatrists, is they would try to talk you into being heterosexual. Stonewall Uprising Program Transcript Slate: In 1969, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois. In the trucks or around the trucks. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:That night I'm in my office, I looked down the street, and I could see the Stonewall sign and I started to see some activity in front. William Eskridge, Professor of Law:The Stonewall riots came at a central point in history. 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.". Because he was homosexual. It was like a reward. 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. 1984 documentary film by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg, "Berlinale 2016: Panorama Celebrates Teddy Award's 30th Anniversary and Announces First Titles in Programme", "Guest Post: What I Learned From Revisiting My 1984 Documentary 'Before Stonewall', "See the 25 New Additions to the National Film Registry, From Purple Rain to Clerks", "Complete National Film Registry Listing", "Before Stonewall - Independent Historical Film", Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (Newly Restored), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Before_Stonewall&oldid=1134540821, Documentary films about United States history, Historiography of LGBT in the United States, United States National Film Registry films, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 05:30. David Carter, Author ofStonewall:There was also vigilantism, people were using walkie-talkies to coordinate attacks on gay men. Dana Gaiser There's a little door that slides open with this power-hungry nut behind that, you see this much of your eyes, and he sees that much of your face, and then he decides whether you're going to get in. 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. It was the only time I was in a gladiatorial sport that I stood up in. Dana Kirchoff The Catholic Church, be damned to hell. Dick Leitsch:Very often, they would put the cops in dresses, with makeup and they usually weren't very convincing. Daniel Pine That wasn't ours, it was borrowed. They'd go into the bathroom or any place that was private, that they could either feel them, or check them visually. Gay bars were to gay people what churches were to blacks in the South. They really were objecting to how they were being treated. Urban Stages Things were being thrown against the plywood, we piled things up to try to buttress it. Amber Hall Lucian Truscott, IV, Reporter,The Village Voice:They started busting cans of tear gas. They raided the Checkerboard, which was a very popular gay bar, a week before the Stonewall. This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all. Dick Leitsch:And the blocks were small enough that we could run around the block and come in behind them before they got to the next corner. You had no place to try to find an identity. John O'Brien:I knew that the words that were being said to put down people, was about me. 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. Joe DeCola It was as bad as any situation that I had met in during the army, had just as much to worry about. Danny Garvin:People were screaming "pig," "copper." 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. The Underground Lounge John O'Brien 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. The Stonewall had reopened. Fred Sargeant Because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation. The music was great, cafes were good, you know, the coffee houses were good. We could lose our memory from the beating, we could be in wheelchairs like some were. A sickness of the mind. You cut one head off. 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. Even non-gay people. One time, a bunch of us ran into somebody's car and locked the door and they smashed the windows in. John O'Brien:We had no idea we were gonna finish the march. That never happened before. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world. The men's room was under police surveillance. You knew you could ruin them for life. Participants of the 1969 Greenwich Village uprising describe the effect that Stonewall had on their lives. Available via license: Content may be subject to . But as we were going up 6th Avenue, it kept growing. Tom Caruso Suzanne Poli Today, that event is seen as the start of the gay civil rights movement, but gay activists and organizations were standing up to harassment and discrimination years before. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:Those of us that were the street kids we didn't think much about the past or the future. And we all relaxed. We had no speakers planned for the rally in Central Park, where we had hoped to get to. And when you got a word, the word was homosexuality and you looked it up. Do you want them to lose all chance of a normal, happy, married life? 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. But we had to follow up, we couldn't just let that be a blip that disappeared. Just let's see if they can. "Daybreak Express" by D.A. (c) 2011 You know. That's more an uprising than a riot. Slate:The Homosexual(1967), CBS Reports. Seymour Pine, Deputy Inspector, Morals Division, NYPD:The moment you stepped out that door there would be hundreds facing you. So you couldn't have a license to practice law, you couldn't be a licensed doctor. Danny Garvin:And the cops just charged them. I would wait until there was nobody left to be the girl and then I would be the girl. I really thought that, you know, we did it. We didn't expect we'd ever get to Central Park. It eats you up inside. 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. Dan Bodner Doric Wilson Martin Boyce:I wasn't labeled gay, just "different." We did use humor to cover pain, frustration, anger. It gives back a little of the terror they gave in my life. Cause I was from the streets. The Laramie Project Cast at The Calhoun School 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. But we're going to pay dearly for this. Beginning of our night out started early. Before Stonewall - Trailer BuskFilms 12.6K subscribers Subscribe 14K views 10 years ago Watch the full film here (UK & IRE only): http://buskfilms.com/films/before-sto. Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives Remember everything. 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." [2][3] Later in 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4][5][6]. Pennebaker courtesy of Pennebaker Hegedus Films Tires were slashed on police cars and it just went on all night long. There may be some girls here who will turn lesbian. David Alpert A New York Police officer grabs a man by the hair as another officer clubs a. As kids, we played King Kong. All I knew about was that I heard that there were people down in Times Square who were gay and that's where I went to. The events. The homosexual, bitterly aware of his rejection, responds by going underground. Cop (Archival):Anyone can walk into that men's room, any child can walk in there, and see what you guys were doing. If there's one place in the world where you can dance and feel yourself fully as a person and that's threatened with being taken away, those words are fighting words. They frequent their own clubs, and bars and coffee houses, where they can escape the disapproving eye of the society that they call straight. 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. It meant nothing to us. 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?". They could be judges, lawyers. And I had become very radicalized in that time. And they started smashing their heads with clubs. Howard Smith, Reporter,The Village Voice:All of a sudden, in the background I heard some police cars. 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. Just making their lives miserable for once. 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 . Jerry Hoose:The bar itself was a toilet. Dick Leitsch:You read about Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal and all these actors and stuff, Liberace and all these people running around doing all these things and then you came to New York and you found out, well maybe they're doing them but, you know, us middle-class homosexuals, we're getting busted all the time, every time we have a place to go, it gets raided. Jeremiah Hawkins National History Archive, LGBT Community Center Like, "Joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words 'fire,' you will be walking a beat on Staten Island all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. Fred Sargeant:When it was clear that things were definitely over for the evening, we decided we needed to do something more. He said, "Okay, let's go." Before Stonewall. A gay rights march in New York in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act being amended to include gay rights. Jerry Hoose:I was afraid it was over. TV Host (Archival):Ladies and gentlemen, the reason for using first names only forthese very, very charming contestants is that right now each one of them is breaking the law. And a whole bunch of people who were in the paddy wagon ran out. The idea was to be there first. 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. The Stonewall riots inspired gay Americans to fight for their rights. 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. This was in front of the police. That's what gave oxygen to the fire. And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked. Then during lunch, Ralph showed him some pornographic pictures. If you came to a place like New York, you at least had the opportunity of connecting with people, and finding people who didn't care that you were gay. I'm losing everything that I have. This is every year in New York City. And I found them in the movie theatres, sitting there, next to them. Jerry Hoose:I was chased down the street with billy clubs. Jerry Hoose:Who was gonna complain about a crackdown against gay people? Martin Boyce:We were like a Hydra. People cheer while standing in front of The Stonewall Inn as the annual Gay Pride parade passes, Sunday, June 26, 2011 in New York. [7] In 1987, the film won Emmy Awards for Best Historical/Cultural Program and Best Research. 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. Eric Marcus, Writer:Before Stonewall, there was no such thing as coming out or being out. But after the uprising, polite requests for change turned into angry demands. Gay bars were always on side streets out of the way in neighborhoods that nobody would go into. We love to hear from our listeners! I famously used the word "fag" in the lead sentence I said "the forces of faggotry." There was the Hippie movement, there was the Summer of Love, Martin Luther King, and all of these affected me terribly. Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt:I never bought a drink at the Stonewall. Charles Harris, Transcriptions Dan Martino Danny Garvin:It was the perfect time to be in the Village. This is one thing that if you don't get caught by us, you'll be caught by yourself.