Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Air and Manky Lee.
Speaker 2: Jamestown, Virginia Courthouse was buzzing with gossip. On April eighth
Speaker 2: of sixteen, twenty nine. Thomasin Hall went on trial. That day.
Speaker 2: The very nature of their identity was up for debate.
Speaker 2: Thomasin had been stirring up whispers with the way they
Speaker 2: dressed and how they socialized. Sometimes they wore dresses, other
Speaker 2: times they wore pants. It was also rumored that Thomasine
Speaker 2: was courting and sleeping with both women and men in
Speaker 2: the community. Thomasin lived at a time when gender existed
Speaker 2: in a rigid binary, with the two in opposition to
Speaker 2: each other. Men had their clothes and their social scripts,
Speaker 2: and women did too, But the record tells us that
Speaker 2: Thomasine existed somewhat fluidly changing their dress, performance, and pronouns
Speaker 2: to suit the moment. At the trial, Thomisine claimed to
Speaker 2: have both male and female genitalia, insisting that they were
Speaker 2: both a man and a woman. Thomisine underwent a number
Speaker 2: of exams and different inspectors drew different conclusions, but what
Speaker 2: we now believe is that Thomasin was likely an intersex person.
Speaker 2: Determining a single gender for Hall felt essential to the community,
Speaker 2: but the court couldn't figure out a satisfying answer, so
Speaker 2: it came up with a solution. Instead of forcing Thomasine
Speaker 2: to abide by a single set of gender norms, the
Speaker 2: court would enforce a simultaneous performance of both. The court
Speaker 2: decreed that Thomisine must wear a combination of men and
Speaker 2: women's clothing forevermore think trousers, but under an apron Doing
Speaker 2: so was meant to humiliate Thomasine and rob them of
Speaker 2: the chance to ever blend in fully with society again.
Speaker 2: Queerness was not an idea that existed in the early
Speaker 2: days of the colonies, but as the colonies developed, so
Speaker 2: too did the idea of what it meant to be
Speaker 2: a man or a woman. In the late sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: English philosopher John Locke wrote about the concept of a
Speaker 2: tabula rasa or blank slate, which suggested that humans were
Speaker 2: not born with inherent traits, but instead were shaped by
Speaker 2: their environment. This idea began to take hold in colonial America,
Speaker 2: and people started to understand that gender wasn't solely determined
Speaker 2: by biology, but rather by social and cultural factors. However,
Speaker 2: as we saw with Thomisin in that time and place,
Speaker 2: those factors resulted in a strict social code, and as
Speaker 2: the concept of gender became more rigid, so too did
Speaker 2: the expectations of sexual behavior. In the seventeen hundreds, same
Speaker 2: sex relationships were not necessarily seen as immoral, but rather
Speaker 2: as a deviation. As medicine professionalized into the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: the term homosexual was coined, and with it, the idea
Speaker 2: of same sex attraction was defined as a pathological condition.
Speaker 2: For the stories we're telling today, we're using the reclaimed
Speaker 2: umbrella term queer, even though it may feel a bit
Speaker 2: ahistorical to cover all people with so called non normative
Speaker 2: sexual and gender identities. People of the past didn't have
Speaker 2: access to our current language and concepts, and we should
Speaker 2: acknowledge that it's usually impossible to know how an individual
Speaker 2: would have used these terms if they were available to them.
Speaker 2: We know that many people throughout history experienced same gender
Speaker 2: attraction and or felt a disconnect from their gender as
Speaker 2: assigned at birth, but there's a vast gulf in language
Speaker 2: and culture that lets us only speculate most of the
Speaker 2: time about who these people were and what they felt.
Speaker 2: Queer people have always been here, but in the long
Speaker 2: arc of history, queerness has only very recently become a battleground.
Speaker 2: I'm lorn vogelbam, Welcome to American shadows. America has never
Speaker 2: truly been the land of the free. Since the time
Speaker 2: of colonization, wealthy Anglo Saxon landholding men have been fighting
Speaker 2: to keep themselves in power for hundreds of years. The
Speaker 2: laws they created carefully upheld their positions, often making existence
Speaker 2: precarious for people who weren't like them. Love and those
Speaker 2: who were lucky enough to find it was likewise a
Speaker 2: tightly governed experience. By the mid sixteen hundreds, the American
Speaker 2: colonies decreed that any man committing the unnatural and lascivious
Speaker 2: act of sodomy, meaning either bestiality or anal sex between
Speaker 2: anyone regardless of gender, could be by death. By eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy three, Congress passed a federal antisodomy law that applied
Speaker 2: to the District of Columbia and US territories, which threatened
Speaker 2: any convicted party with up to ten years in prison,
Speaker 2: and all the while, a constellation of state laws have
Speaker 2: been codified around fraternizing with members of the same gender.
Speaker 2: The enforcement of these laws was often characterized by brutality,
Speaker 2: but even still, queer folks found ways to find each other,
Speaker 2: a first privately and then more publicly. As the tides
Speaker 2: of acceptance shifted into the nineteen hundreds, many gathered at
Speaker 2: discreete watering holes, members only clubs, and cafes. Pockets of
Speaker 2: queerness existed wherever people lived, but the critical masses gathered
Speaker 2: in the big cities. There are a number venues that
Speaker 2: vie for the title of the oldest gay bar in America,
Speaker 2: which cite their inception back to the nineteen thirties. It's
Speaker 2: likely that similar establishments existed before then, although they weren't
Speaker 2: as visible or well documented. A long running and legendary
Speaker 2: favorite was The Child's Cafeteria off Columbus Circle in New
Speaker 2: York City. The city felt hard sometimes, but there in
Speaker 2: that one chain restaurant nicknamed Mother Child's, it felt safe,
Speaker 2: safe to sit, safe to stay, safe to be over
Speaker 2: endless cups of coffee. Patrons could often find the same
Speaker 2: familiar faces of friends, lovers, family. It had the appeal
Speaker 2: of what sociologists call a third space, which is a
Speaker 2: location that's not home but not work, where the other
Speaker 2: part of your life is lived. One nineteen thirties visitor's
Speaker 2: guide to New York even highlighted it and said it
Speaker 2: features a dash of lavender, a coded language that suggested
Speaker 2: the true character of the place for anyone who was
Speaker 2: tuned in for those who loved a spectacle. A handful
Speaker 2: of major cities also hosted spectacular drag balls that drew
Speaker 2: thousands of attendees. These were modeled on high society debutante balls,
Speaker 2: often hosting straight folks as spectators. According to one scholar,
Speaker 2: a wild dominant American society largely disapproved of these queer communities.
Speaker 2: People sure did like a party. As the queer community
Speaker 2: gained visibility alongside other social movements, it began to take
Speaker 2: up more space, it became louder, and in doing so,
Speaker 2: it often made itself a target for the powers that
Speaker 2: hoped to keep them quiet. In nineteen sixty four, Life
Speaker 2: magazine described the relationship between the police and the queer
Speaker 2: community in San Francisco as a running battle. They reported
Speaker 2: that a collective effort was underway by the department to
Speaker 2: educate their force on how to readily identify a gay person,
Speaker 2: they published and distributed internal materials warning of a gay agenda.
Speaker 2: Zine went on to say that while the stance by
Speaker 2: the LAPD was unswervingly tough, they believed it reflected the
Speaker 2: larger collective attitudes of most American police departments. The article
Speaker 2: also quotes LAPD inspector James Fisk as saying, we're barely
Speaker 2: touching the surface of the problem. The pervert is no
Speaker 2: longer as secretive as he was. He's aggressive, and his
Speaker 2: aggressiveness is getting worse because of more homosexual activity. A
Speaker 2: year after that article was published in Life magazine, a
Speaker 2: New Year's Day costume ball was held at California Hall
Speaker 2: in San Francisco. Around six hundred people had purchased tickets
Speaker 2: to raise money for the newly formed Council on Religion
Speaker 2: and the Homosexual an organization meant to advocate against discrimination
Speaker 2: with the help of religious leaders. The party planners and
Speaker 2: at ten dees alike knew it was bound to be controversial.
Speaker 2: Police had been known to use any kind of touching
Speaker 2: by members of the same sex as a reason to
Speaker 2: arrest and prosecute them, but those who attended the ball
Speaker 2: that day did so enthusiastically, knowing they were taking a stand,
Speaker 2: and although the queer activists warned them not to, the
Speaker 2: ministers were upfront and told San Francisco police about their
Speaker 2: upcoming event, potentially hoping for some kind of honest truce. Naturally,
Speaker 2: the police tried to make them cancel it, the organizers refused.
Speaker 2: The night of the ball, police officers circled the hall
Speaker 2: in their cruisers. They took photographs of everyone going in
Speaker 2: and out, and were rumored to have brought large movie cameras.
Speaker 2: When the cops demanded to be allowed into the hall,
Speaker 2: lawyers who were present on behalf of the council, asked
Speaker 2: to see a search warrant. Three of the lawyers, as
Speaker 2: well as the woman selling tickets, were arrested on charges
Speaker 2: of obstructing an officer. The police were accustomed to exerting
Speaker 2: this type of power over the queer community and expected
Speaker 2: the typical lack of consequences that came with it. But
Speaker 2: the next day the council's ministers held a press conference.
Speaker 2: There they excl created the police, accusing them of deliberate harassment,
Speaker 2: bad faith, and obvious hostility. The Americans for Civil Liberties
Speaker 2: Union or ACLU got involved, and the case came to
Speaker 2: trial in February of nineteen sixty five, and before the
Speaker 2: defense could even present its case, the judge declared a
Speaker 2: not guilty verdict. He declared to the court that this
Speaker 2: was a waste of everyone's time. The queer community in
Speaker 2: San Francisco perceived this as a turning point. Many felt
Speaker 2: encouraged and believed that they were starting to be taken
Speaker 2: seriously by the mainstream. The movement was gaining a visible
Speaker 2: and collective foothold, moving from the fringes into a larger,
Speaker 2: interconnected web of social movements. This would not be the
Speaker 2: last skirmish, but the police far from it. The following
Speaker 2: New Year's Eve of nineteen sixty six, the Black Cat
Speaker 2: Club was set to host another ball. There were balloons
Speaker 2: and confetti and revelry, a confidence that the community found
Speaker 2: in safety in large numbers. That is, until it was
Speaker 2: revealed that the police weren't waiting for them outside. They
Speaker 2: had already crossed the threshold and infiltrated the party. Roughly
Speaker 2: five minutes after the New year began, the cops made
Speaker 2: themselves known. They flipped on all of the lights. One
Speaker 2: officer unplugged the jukebox, while another began tearing down the
Speaker 2: Christmas decorations, still adorning the bar. The later reports said
Speaker 2: that their only identification was their duty weapons. Poor substitute,
Speaker 2: if there ever was one. Reports say that they blocked
Speaker 2: the exits and began to beat the patrons. The raid
Speaker 2: lasted ten minutes. Of these sixteen men arrested that night,
Speaker 2: six were convicted of lewd conduct, which meant that the
Speaker 2: state of California could require them to register as sex offenders.
Speaker 2: Two of those men, Charles Tally and Benny Baker, were
Speaker 2: in fact placed on the states first in the nation,
Speaker 2: sex offender registry. They had been caught kissing other men
Speaker 2: at the party. They appealed the decision, even petitioning Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: which decided not to consider the case. Meanwhile, the police
Speaker 2: painted themselves as the victims, including a claim that three
Speaker 2: officers were injured, with one being hospitalized. In February of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, a queer newsletter named Pride headlined their
Speaker 2: story CoP's Start bar brawl, A word spread quickly around
Speaker 2: the country. By September of that year, the publication had
Speaker 2: morphed into The Advocate, which still exists today. The Black
Speaker 2: cat raid was cited as an impetus for creating the
Speaker 2: first national, mass circulation gay newspaper, The Advocate became a
Speaker 2: central tool of the community. It collected and spread news
Speaker 2: of the gay rights movement faster and further than ever before,
Speaker 2: and it would end up playing a pivotal role in
Speaker 2: informing readers and stoking passion in what came next. Tucked
Speaker 2: away behind a descript facade, the Stonewall Inn was the
Speaker 2: heart of queer New York, but by the end of
Speaker 2: June of nineteen sixty nine, the Stonewall Inn was about
Speaker 2: to become the epicenter of a movement. The two room
Speaker 2: establishment was dimly lit and cramped with a makeshift bar
Speaker 2: constructed from black painted plywood, a few stools, and a
Speaker 2: few water buckets used for rinsing dirty glasses. The liquor
Speaker 2: was cheap, diluted, and plentiful. A single bare light bulb
Speaker 2: hung high on the wall, a flashing beacon that warned
Speaker 2: folks when a raid was eminent. It wasn't much, but
Speaker 2: to those who came, it was everything. The dance floor
Speaker 2: was small, but it was where the patrons came alive,
Speaker 2: letting loose in a world where they could be themselves
Speaker 2: without fear of persecution. It was illegal in New York
Speaker 2: to serve gay people of let alone create a dedicated
Speaker 2: space for them, but the padding of police pockets by
Speaker 2: mafia owners helped subvert these policies, and the Stonewall Inn
Speaker 2: became a haven for those who had been forced to
Speaker 2: live in the shadows. They came to the Stonewall In
Speaker 2: to escape, to find community, and to express themselves in
Speaker 2: a way that was impossible in the outside world. On Tuesday,
Speaker 2: June twenty fourth of nineteen sixty nine, police raided the
Speaker 2: Stonewall In for operating without a valid liquor license, arresting
Speaker 2: several employees and confiscating the boothe Because of a mafia
Speaker 2: police agreement, it was arranged that the typical raid would
Speaker 2: happen on a weeknight or well before midnight on a weekend,
Speaker 2: when fewer customers would be present. This was all standard
Speaker 2: operating procedure, but this time something would be different. The
Speaker 2: police planned a second raid for the following weekend, which
Speaker 2: was part of a concerted campaign to shut down the
Speaker 2: village's mafia run gay bars. In the early hours of
Speaker 2: the following Saturday morning, they surprised the almost two hundred
Speaker 2: patrons inside when they came in and locked the doors
Speaker 2: behind them. They started calling for everyone to show in
Speaker 2: order to leave, targeting both employees and those dressed in
Speaker 2: drag for arrest. A one patron who was there at
Speaker 2: the time described it almost like a hostage situation. According
Speaker 2: to the deputy police inspector in charge of the raid,
Speaker 2: a Seymour Pine, he hadn't been planning on arresting patrons
Speaker 2: until they started getting verbal pushback from the gender nonconforming
Speaker 2: portion of the crowd. A Pine, a World War Two
Speaker 2: veteran who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge
Speaker 2: and was a contributing author to the Army manual on
Speaker 2: Hand to Hand Combat, later said he had never been
Speaker 2: more scared than he was that night. The police had
Speaker 2: grown increasingly aggressive in their harassment of the queer community.
Speaker 2: As the patrons were rounded up and filed out of
Speaker 2: the establishment. Instead of leaving, they stayed something ignited. They
Speaker 2: were tired of being pushed around, tired of being beaten
Speaker 2: and arrested for simply existing. Maybe it was just that
Speaker 2: the crowd inside had been bigger at most raids. Maybe
Speaker 2: some patrons were waiting for their friends. Maybe the earlier
Speaker 2: raid on the stone Wall, combined with the recent raids
Speaker 2: and closures of several other bars in the village, was
Speaker 2: finally too much. As more and more people gathered outside.
Speaker 2: The people being released from the bar hammed it up
Speaker 2: for the assembled crowd, taking bows, throwing up their arms,
Speaker 2: and shouting one liners at the police. People began throwing
Speaker 2: pennies and beer cans, accompanied by shouts about paying off
Speaker 2: the cops. Soon the tension had reached a breaking point.
Speaker 2: What happened next has been widely disputed and mythologized. Someone
Speaker 2: through a brick, but the number of people who claimed
Speaker 2: to have thrown the first brick at Stonewall is staggering,
Speaker 2: as is the number who claimed to have been there,
Speaker 2: far more than the two hundred or so patrons or
Speaker 2: the others who gathered to watch. Some who were there
Speaker 2: estimated that the crowd numbered anywhere from around five hundred
Speaker 2: to in thousands. The fell into bedlam. Punches were thrown,
Speaker 2: people were dragged, tires were slashed. The police eventually barricaded
Speaker 2: themselves inside the bar and called for backup. People began
Speaker 2: throwing things through the windows, bricks, makeshift moltov cocktails, trash.
Speaker 2: The crowd turned a parking meter into a battering ramp.
Speaker 2: People would later express the feeling that Stonewall was their
Speaker 2: home and the attempt to break down the doors represented
Speaker 2: their need to take back a space that was theirs.
Speaker 2: Reinforcements in the form of fire trucks and riot cops
Speaker 2: eventually arrived, and the cops barricaded in the Stonewall In
Speaker 2: were able to exit along with the restees trapped inside. However,
Speaker 2: the crowd was still large and had no intention of leaving.
Speaker 2: Fire Hoses were used at an attempt to disperse them.
Speaker 2: Cops began hitting protesters with billy clubs and dragging them
Speaker 2: into squad cars. As dawn broke, the street was covered
Speaker 2: in shattered glass. Cops still stood at attention, and groups
Speaker 2: of rioters lingered in the nearby park and some with
Speaker 2: improvised bandages over bleeding cuts. The news spread rapidly through
Speaker 2: New York City. The following day, Protests continued outside the
Speaker 2: bar on and off for six days. Groups of queer
Speaker 2: people showed up outside the Stonewall Inn, facing off with
Speaker 2: and taunting the assembled police. Demonstrators blocked off the road,
Speaker 2: shouting Christopher Street belongs to the Queen's and liberate the street.
Speaker 2: The poet Alan Ginsburg, having heard about the riots, showed
Speaker 2: up on Sunday night to a smaller and calmer crowd.
Speaker 2: He was delighted by the energy in the air and
Speaker 2: visited the Stonewall Inn for the first time, still open
Speaker 2: but reduced to giving away soda for free, where he
Speaker 2: danced with abandon. This wasn't the first police raid or
Speaker 2: protest in a queer community, and it certainly wouldn't be
Speaker 2: the last, but the Stonewall Riot was a turning point
Speaker 2: in the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual,
Speaker 2: and otherwise queer rights, and it marked the birth of
Speaker 2: the modern day queer liberation movement. Today, one of our
Speaker 2: primary metaphors around queerness draws from the visual of a closet,
Speaker 2: and if you're a queer person, you might be in
Speaker 2: it or coming out of it, or perhaps you're actively
Speaker 2: outside of it. But this is a newer turn of phrase,
Speaker 2: having only shown up in the nineteen sixties. Then and earlier,
Speaker 2: coming out had a larger implication, like a debutante, one
Speaker 2: was coming out into the gay world. The closet door
Speaker 2: becomes a portal to a world poised with open arms.
Speaker 2: A month after the riots, on July twenty seventh of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, a group of about five hundred people
Speaker 2: joined a vigil and marched in Greenwich Village Demonstrator's Mind.
Speaker 2: Activists gave speeches and shouts of gay power echoed through
Speaker 2: the streets. News of what happened at the Stonewall Inn
Speaker 2: spread across the country, in part thanks to The Advocate,
Speaker 2: which reprinted local reporting about the riots. The community was catalyzed.
Speaker 2: Even still, Stonewall Inn couldn't hold on in the aftermath
Speaker 2: of the riot because it didn't have a liquor license.
Speaker 2: The venue tried to convert itself into a juice bar,
Speaker 2: but this venture failed, and just three months later, with
Speaker 2: dust settled and activists having gone home, the space went
Speaker 2: up for lease. Over the next few decades, it morphed
Speaker 2: into all the different things in New Yorker could want,
Speaker 2: a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store,
Speaker 2: among them, But it would be a long time before
Speaker 2: the space once again became a safe place for the
Speaker 2: queer community to gather. Many local gay rights groups were
Speaker 2: invigorated by the events at Stonewall, and newly minted groups
Speaker 2: of younger folks took up the cause from their elders.
Speaker 2: They created spaces for queer people to take part in
Speaker 2: gay run night life in an environment free from mafia control.
Speaker 2: On June twenty eighth of nineteen seventy, the Christopher Street
Speaker 2: Liberation Day March lined up at noon in Sheridan Square
Speaker 2: near the Inn and walked fifty blocks to Central Park's
Speaker 2: Sheep Meadow. Estimates of the crowd's size vary, but what
Speaker 2: started as a few hundred people quickly ballooned into several
Speaker 2: thousand as the march continued. That same day, in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: a Christopher Street West Parade marched down Hollywood Boulevard. The
Speaker 2: latter was more a spectacle than a march, with the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times later reporting queens and drag ferries with
Speaker 2: paper wings, clowns, leather jacketed motorcyclists, a lesbian on horseback,
Speaker 2: a python, white huskies, American flags, hilarious and somber signs
Speaker 2: and chants, and a float depicting a homosexual nailed to
Speaker 2: a cross ape. Smaller group marched in San Francisco. Over
Speaker 2: the years, more and more cities began holding parades to
Speaker 2: coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, first Boston,
Speaker 2: then London, then Washington, d c. Those nights at the
Speaker 2: Inn became a beacon for people the world over, a
Speaker 2: source of inspiration and courage that's still drawn from a. Germany,
Speaker 2: for example, calls their annual Pride celebration Christopher Street Day,
Speaker 2: an homage to the New York City street where American
Speaker 2: queer history changed forever. Eventually, in the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: part of the space that had been the Stonewall Inn
Speaker 2: became a bar again and was once again re christened.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, it was added to the National
Speaker 2: Register of Historic Places, and in two thousand became a
Speaker 2: National Historic Landmark, where you too can go enjoy a
Speaker 2: cold drink and a slice of history to this very day, safely,
Speaker 2: legally and with whomever you so choose. There's more to
Speaker 2: this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to
Speaker 2: hear all about it. Activism doesn't always take place in
Speaker 2: the streets. It also takes place in the home. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, Mary Jane Rathbun was a fifty somethingter
Speaker 2: iye hop waitress with a side hustle. She was a
Speaker 2: grandmotherly type, but perhaps only as far as the gray
Speaker 2: hair and glasses went. She was known to swear like
Speaker 2: a sailor, hang out in radical left wing circles, and
Speaker 2: sell pot brownies. She would carry a big basket of
Speaker 2: her wares and sell direct consumers in San Francisco's cast
Speaker 2: Her district for two bucks a pop or a dozen
Speaker 2: for twenty. She also did brisk business with Dennis Perone's
Speaker 2: legendary Big Top cannabis supermarket and the legal dispensary run
Speaker 2: out of a Castro apartment. She drummed up business by
Speaker 2: posting ads on bulletin boards describing her brownies as magically delicios.
Speaker 2: As she had noticed that, in addition to getting people high,
Speaker 2: those with chronic illness symptoms seemed to receive relief from
Speaker 2: her brownies, she began giving them away for free to
Speaker 2: her sick neighbors. Amary inspired a loyal following her only
Speaker 2: daughter had been killed by a drunk driver, and soon
Speaker 2: her neighbors became her adopted kids, and many of them
Speaker 2: were young gay men who had come to San Francisco
Speaker 2: to find their chosen family. Soon growers began donating to
Speaker 2: help keep her brownie business in the game as she
Speaker 2: left ihop after a fall and began working in her
Speaker 2: kitchen full time. She was fifty seven when she was
Speaker 2: first arrested. According to the San Francisco Examiner, after her
Speaker 2: first arrest in January of nineteen eighty one, a police
Speaker 2: seized and i quote, twenty pounds of high grade marijuana,
Speaker 2: the quantities of psilocybin, mushrooms, cocaine, and second all of
Speaker 2: thirty five pounds of margarine, twenty five pounds of sugar,
Speaker 2: twenty five pounds of flour, twenty two dozen eggs, and
Speaker 2: twenty one thousand square feet of plastic wrap, in addition
Speaker 2: to fifty four dozen freshly baked brownies. It was the
Speaker 2: same year that AIDS began to be widely reported in
Speaker 2: the United States. After completing her mandatory community service, she
Speaker 2: began devoting much of her time to volunteer work and baking,
Speaker 2: committing herself to a life of service. She was furious
Speaker 2: at the government's in action in the AIDS crisis, which
Speaker 2: had already killed many of her adopted kids from the castro.
Speaker 2: Mary became a fixture of the Shanty Project a hospice
Speaker 2: program for folks with terminal illness, including HIV and AIDS.
Speaker 2: She took care of the patients there in any way
Speaker 2: she could, picking up medication, shopping, and bringing food, and
Speaker 2: she continued to bake those brownies. Soon she was baking
Speaker 2: dozens a month and distributing them to everyone in need.
Speaker 2: She started volunteering at San Francisco General Hospital's Ward eighty six,
Speaker 2: the country's first to outpatient clinic for people living with AIDS,
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty six, she won her first of four
Speaker 2: Volunteer of the Year awards. In nineteen ninety two, she
Speaker 2: was once again arrested while baking, but her time wasn't up.
Speaker 2: She was sixty eight years old, and her attitude catapulted
Speaker 2: her to fame. The Sonoma County District Attorney was determined
Speaker 2: to convict Mary like any other marijuana dealer, a sentence
Speaker 2: of about five years in prison, but Mary refused to
Speaker 2: take the deal and insisted on going to trial. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: San Francisco declared an official Brownie Mary Day and referred
Speaker 2: to her as the city's Mother Teresa. She was insistent
Speaker 2: that giving away pop brownies to those suffering from illness
Speaker 2: was the right thing to do and pleaded not guilty
Speaker 2: while wearing a gold pot leaf necklace and a pot
Speaker 2: patterned sweater. The judge was not amused. Mary got out
Speaker 2: on bail and continued to be vocal expletives and all
Speaker 2: about the medicinal use of the plan. People from San
Speaker 2: Francisco and beyond rallied behind her. The DA ended up
Speaker 2: dropping all of his charges, fearing an attempted challenge to
Speaker 2: cannabis's legal status. In the end, Mary helped countless scores
Speaker 2: of people in her immediate orbit and beyond in the
Speaker 2: state of California would go on to legalize the plant
Speaker 2: for medicinal uses in nineteen ninety six. As for Mary,
Speaker 2: she passed away in nineteen ninety nine, and when she did,
Speaker 2: her brownie recipe went with.
Speaker 1: Her American Shadows. As hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by Robin Minator, researched by Robin Miniator and
Speaker 1: Cassandra de Alba, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young,
Speaker 1: with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the show, visit grimminmile dot com
Speaker 1: for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple
Speaker 1: podcasts are where ever you get your podcasts.