WEBVTT - Louder Than A Riot 0:00:02.600 --> 0:00:06.560 You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:17.520 Grimm and Mild from Air and Manky Lee. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:22.120 Jamestown, Virginia Courthouse was buzzing with gossip. On April eighth 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.960 of sixteen, twenty nine. Thomasin Hall went on trial. That day. 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.840 The very nature of their identity was up for debate. 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.360 Thomasin had been stirring up whispers with the way they 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:38.000 dressed and how they socialized. Sometimes they wore dresses, other 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.000 times they wore pants. It was also rumored that Thomasine 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.519 was courting and sleeping with both women and men in 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:49.599 the community. Thomasin lived at a time when gender existed 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.760 in a rigid binary, with the two in opposition to 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.560 each other. Men had their clothes and their social scripts, 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:00.040 and women did too, But the record tells us that 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:05.440 Thomasine existed somewhat fluidly changing their dress, performance, and pronouns 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:09.040 to suit the moment. At the trial, Thomisine claimed to 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.520 have both male and female genitalia, insisting that they were 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.040 both a man and a woman. Thomisine underwent a number 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.440 of exams and different inspectors drew different conclusions, but what 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.240 we now believe is that Thomasin was likely an intersex person. 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:29.080 Determining a single gender for Hall felt essential to the community, 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.000 but the court couldn't figure out a satisfying answer, so 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.000 it came up with a solution. Instead of forcing Thomasine 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.920 to abide by a single set of gender norms, the 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:44.280 court would enforce a simultaneous performance of both. The court 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:47.320 decreed that Thomisine must wear a combination of men and 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:53.520 women's clothing forevermore think trousers, but under an apron Doing 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:56.400 so was meant to humiliate Thomasine and rob them of 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.279 the chance to ever blend in fully with society again. 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.240 Queerness was not an idea that existed in the early 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.040 days of the colonies, but as the colonies developed, so 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:09.360 too did the idea of what it meant to be 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.560 a man or a woman. In the late sixteen hundreds, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.520 English philosopher John Locke wrote about the concept of a 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:20.320 tabula rasa or blank slate, which suggested that humans were 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:24.000 not born with inherent traits, but instead were shaped by 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.400 their environment. This idea began to take hold in colonial America, 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.760 and people started to understand that gender wasn't solely determined 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:38.040 by biology, but rather by social and cultural factors. However, 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:41.400 as we saw with Thomisin in that time and place, 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.880 those factors resulted in a strict social code, and as 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:49.200 the concept of gender became more rigid, so too did 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:53.760 the expectations of sexual behavior. In the seventeen hundreds, same 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:57.680 sex relationships were not necessarily seen as immoral, but rather 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:03.280 as a deviation. As medicine professionalized into the mid eighteen hundreds, 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:07.600 the term homosexual was coined, and with it, the idea 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.640 of same sex attraction was defined as a pathological condition. 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:16.079 For the stories we're telling today, we're using the reclaimed 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.040 umbrella term queer, even though it may feel a bit 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:23.440 ahistorical to cover all people with so called non normative 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:27.760 sexual and gender identities. People of the past didn't have 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.640 access to our current language and concepts, and we should 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.480 acknowledge that it's usually impossible to know how an individual 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.720 would have used these terms if they were available to them. 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.720 We know that many people throughout history experienced same gender 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.560 attraction and or felt a disconnect from their gender as 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.520 assigned at birth, but there's a vast gulf in language 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.480 and culture that lets us only speculate most of the 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.040 time about who these people were and what they felt. 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.160 Queer people have always been here, but in the long 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:06.320 arc of history, queerness has only very recently become a battleground. 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:18.479 I'm lorn vogelbam, Welcome to American shadows. America has never 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.000 truly been the land of the free. Since the time 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:26.880 of colonization, wealthy Anglo Saxon landholding men have been fighting 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.320 to keep themselves in power for hundreds of years. The 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:35.120 laws they created carefully upheld their positions, often making existence 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:39.920 precarious for people who weren't like them. Love and those 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.920 who were lucky enough to find it was likewise a 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:48.080 tightly governed experience. By the mid sixteen hundreds, the American 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:52.960 colonies decreed that any man committing the unnatural and lascivious 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:57.640 act of sodomy, meaning either bestiality or anal sex between 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.560 anyone regardless of gender, could be by death. By eighteen 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.600 seventy three, Congress passed a federal antisodomy law that applied 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.080 to the District of Columbia and US territories, which threatened 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:12.800 any convicted party with up to ten years in prison, 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.880 and all the while, a constellation of state laws have 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:20.080 been codified around fraternizing with members of the same gender. 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:24.640 The enforcement of these laws was often characterized by brutality, 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.080 but even still, queer folks found ways to find each other, 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.760 a first privately and then more publicly. As the tides 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.560 of acceptance shifted into the nineteen hundreds, many gathered at 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:42.640 discreete watering holes, members only clubs, and cafes. Pockets of 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:47.080 queerness existed wherever people lived, but the critical masses gathered 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.760 in the big cities. There are a number venues that 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.560 vie for the title of the oldest gay bar in America, 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.440 which cite their inception back to the nineteen thirties. It's 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.040 likely that similar establishments existed before then, although they weren't 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.159 as visible or well documented. A long running and legendary 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.360 favorite was The Child's Cafeteria off Columbus Circle in New 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:13.440 York City. The city felt hard sometimes, but there in 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:18.080 that one chain restaurant nicknamed Mother Child's, it felt safe, 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:23.080 safe to sit, safe to stay, safe to be over 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.039 endless cups of coffee. Patrons could often find the same 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:33.120 familiar faces of friends, lovers, family. It had the appeal 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.360 of what sociologists call a third space, which is a 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:39.680 location that's not home but not work, where the other 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:43.200 part of your life is lived. One nineteen thirties visitor's 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.800 guide to New York even highlighted it and said it 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.719 features a dash of lavender, a coded language that suggested 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.160 the true character of the place for anyone who was 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:55.640 tuned in for those who loved a spectacle. A handful 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.520 of major cities also hosted spectacular drag balls that drew 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:04.320 thousands of attendees. These were modeled on high society debutante balls, 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.479 often hosting straight folks as spectators. According to one scholar, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.280 a wild dominant American society largely disapproved of these queer communities. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.120 People sure did like a party. As the queer community 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:22.160 gained visibility alongside other social movements, it began to take 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:26.080 up more space, it became louder, and in doing so, 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.400 it often made itself a target for the powers that 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:39.360 hoped to keep them quiet. In nineteen sixty four, Life 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.000 magazine described the relationship between the police and the queer 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:47.320 community in San Francisco as a running battle. They reported 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.960 that a collective effort was underway by the department to 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.600 educate their force on how to readily identify a gay person, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:59.960 they published and distributed internal materials warning of a gay agenda. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.160 Zine went on to say that while the stance by 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:06.600 the LAPD was unswervingly tough, they believed it reflected the 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:12.160 larger collective attitudes of most American police departments. The article 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.680 also quotes LAPD inspector James Fisk as saying, we're barely 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.800 touching the surface of the problem. The pervert is no 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:23.120 longer as secretive as he was. He's aggressive, and his 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:27.800 aggressiveness is getting worse because of more homosexual activity. A 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.000 year after that article was published in Life magazine, a 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:34.120 New Year's Day costume ball was held at California Hall 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:38.319 in San Francisco. Around six hundred people had purchased tickets 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.480 to raise money for the newly formed Council on Religion 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.760 and the Homosexual an organization meant to advocate against discrimination 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.880 with the help of religious leaders. The party planners and 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.720 at ten dees alike knew it was bound to be controversial. 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:56.400 Police had been known to use any kind of touching 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:58.720 by members of the same sex as a reason to 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.040 arrest and prosecute them, but those who attended the ball 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:06.360 that day did so enthusiastically, knowing they were taking a stand, 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.160 and although the queer activists warned them not to, the 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.040 ministers were upfront and told San Francisco police about their 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:19.360 upcoming event, potentially hoping for some kind of honest truce. Naturally, 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.079 the police tried to make them cancel it, the organizers refused. 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.160 The night of the ball, police officers circled the hall 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.920 in their cruisers. They took photographs of everyone going in 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.200 and out, and were rumored to have brought large movie cameras. 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.120 When the cops demanded to be allowed into the hall, 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.439 lawyers who were present on behalf of the council, asked 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.160 to see a search warrant. Three of the lawyers, as 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:45.120 well as the woman selling tickets, were arrested on charges 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.240 of obstructing an officer. The police were accustomed to exerting 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.559 this type of power over the queer community and expected 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.560 the typical lack of consequences that came with it. But 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.600 the next day the council's ministers held a press conference. 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:03.079 There they excl created the police, accusing them of deliberate harassment, 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:07.240 bad faith, and obvious hostility. The Americans for Civil Liberties 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:10.720 Union or ACLU got involved, and the case came to 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:15.040 trial in February of nineteen sixty five, and before the 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.640 defense could even present its case, the judge declared a 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.560 not guilty verdict. He declared to the court that this 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.959 was a waste of everyone's time. The queer community in 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:29.000 San Francisco perceived this as a turning point. Many felt 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.760 encouraged and believed that they were starting to be taken 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:35.959 seriously by the mainstream. The movement was gaining a visible 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.440 and collective foothold, moving from the fringes into a larger, 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.719 interconnected web of social movements. This would not be the 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.720 last skirmish, but the police far from it. The following 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.040 New Year's Eve of nineteen sixty six, the Black Cat 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.719 Club was set to host another ball. There were balloons 0:10:55.800 --> 0:11:00.000 and confetti and revelry, a confidence that the community found 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:04.000 in safety in large numbers. That is, until it was 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.240 revealed that the police weren't waiting for them outside. They 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.400 had already crossed the threshold and infiltrated the party. Roughly 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.280 five minutes after the New year began, the cops made 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.520 themselves known. They flipped on all of the lights. One 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.880 officer unplugged the jukebox, while another began tearing down the 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.400 Christmas decorations, still adorning the bar. The later reports said 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:29.319 that their only identification was their duty weapons. Poor substitute, 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.240 if there ever was one. Reports say that they blocked 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.360 the exits and began to beat the patrons. The raid 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.400 lasted ten minutes. Of these sixteen men arrested that night, 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.360 six were convicted of lewd conduct, which meant that the 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:46.640 state of California could require them to register as sex offenders. 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.840 Two of those men, Charles Tally and Benny Baker, were 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.000 in fact placed on the states first in the nation, 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.600 sex offender registry. They had been caught kissing other men 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.840 at the party. They appealed the decision, even petitioning Supreme Court, 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.960 which decided not to consider the case. Meanwhile, the police 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:08.160 painted themselves as the victims, including a claim that three 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.840 officers were injured, with one being hospitalized. In February of 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:17.080 nineteen sixty seven, a queer newsletter named Pride headlined their 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:21.040 story CoP's Start bar brawl, A word spread quickly around 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.600 the country. By September of that year, the publication had 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.800 morphed into The Advocate, which still exists today. The Black 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:31.520 cat raid was cited as an impetus for creating the 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:36.240 first national, mass circulation gay newspaper, The Advocate became a 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:40.160 central tool of the community. It collected and spread news 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.480 of the gay rights movement faster and further than ever before, 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.280 and it would end up playing a pivotal role in 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:59.000 informing readers and stoking passion in what came next. Tucked 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:02.960 away behind a descript facade, the Stonewall Inn was the 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:05.880 heart of queer New York, but by the end of 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.199 June of nineteen sixty nine, the Stonewall Inn was about 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.840 to become the epicenter of a movement. The two room 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.760 establishment was dimly lit and cramped with a makeshift bar 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.439 constructed from black painted plywood, a few stools, and a 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:24.440 few water buckets used for rinsing dirty glasses. The liquor 0:13:24.520 --> 0:13:29.160 was cheap, diluted, and plentiful. A single bare light bulb 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.440 hung high on the wall, a flashing beacon that warned 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.880 folks when a raid was eminent. It wasn't much, but 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.760 to those who came, it was everything. The dance floor 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.280 was small, but it was where the patrons came alive, 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.319 letting loose in a world where they could be themselves 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.800 without fear of persecution. It was illegal in New York 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.080 to serve gay people of let alone create a dedicated 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.480 space for them, but the padding of police pockets by 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:59.640 mafia owners helped subvert these policies, and the Stonewall Inn 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.040 became a haven for those who had been forced to 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:05.000 live in the shadows. They came to the Stonewall In 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:09.160 to escape, to find community, and to express themselves in 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.240 a way that was impossible in the outside world. On Tuesday, 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.719 June twenty fourth of nineteen sixty nine, police raided the 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.280 Stonewall In for operating without a valid liquor license, arresting 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:24.200 several employees and confiscating the boothe Because of a mafia 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.520 police agreement, it was arranged that the typical raid would 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.680 happen on a weeknight or well before midnight on a weekend, 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:35.080 when fewer customers would be present. This was all standard 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.680 operating procedure, but this time something would be different. The 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.960 police planned a second raid for the following weekend, which 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.520 was part of a concerted campaign to shut down the 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.840 village's mafia run gay bars. In the early hours of 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.720 the following Saturday morning, they surprised the almost two hundred 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.360 patrons inside when they came in and locked the doors 0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:00.800 behind them. They started calling for everyone to show in 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.400 order to leave, targeting both employees and those dressed in 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.560 drag for arrest. A one patron who was there at 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.600 the time described it almost like a hostage situation. According 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.000 to the deputy police inspector in charge of the raid, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.800 a Seymour Pine, he hadn't been planning on arresting patrons 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.760 until they started getting verbal pushback from the gender nonconforming 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.320 portion of the crowd. A Pine, a World War Two 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.360 veteran who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.000 and was a contributing author to the Army manual on 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:33.240 Hand to Hand Combat, later said he had never been 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.320 more scared than he was that night. The police had 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.800 grown increasingly aggressive in their harassment of the queer community. 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:42.880 As the patrons were rounded up and filed out of 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:50.000 the establishment. Instead of leaving, they stayed something ignited. They 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.520 were tired of being pushed around, tired of being beaten 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:58.040 and arrested for simply existing. Maybe it was just that 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.720 the crowd inside had been bigger at most raids. Maybe 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.880 some patrons were waiting for their friends. Maybe the earlier 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.280 raid on the stone Wall, combined with the recent raids 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:09.880 and closures of several other bars in the village, was 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:14.600 finally too much. As more and more people gathered outside. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:17.520 The people being released from the bar hammed it up 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:21.000 for the assembled crowd, taking bows, throwing up their arms, 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:25.040 and shouting one liners at the police. People began throwing 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:29.000 pennies and beer cans, accompanied by shouts about paying off 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:33.400 the cops. Soon the tension had reached a breaking point. 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:38.680 What happened next has been widely disputed and mythologized. Someone 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.200 through a brick, but the number of people who claimed 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.080 to have thrown the first brick at Stonewall is staggering, 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:47.440 as is the number who claimed to have been there, 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.200 far more than the two hundred or so patrons or 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.760 the others who gathered to watch. Some who were there 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.000 estimated that the crowd numbered anywhere from around five hundred 0:16:57.040 --> 0:17:02.920 to in thousands. The fell into bedlam. Punches were thrown, 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:07.639 people were dragged, tires were slashed. The police eventually barricaded 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.120 themselves inside the bar and called for backup. People began 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:16.600 throwing things through the windows, bricks, makeshift moltov cocktails, trash. 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.439 The crowd turned a parking meter into a battering ramp. 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:23.160 People would later express the feeling that Stonewall was their 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:26.520 home and the attempt to break down the doors represented 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:28.959 their need to take back a space that was theirs. 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:32.959 Reinforcements in the form of fire trucks and riot cops 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:36.439 eventually arrived, and the cops barricaded in the Stonewall In 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:41.439 were able to exit along with the restees trapped inside. However, 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.679 the crowd was still large and had no intention of leaving. 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.400 Fire Hoses were used at an attempt to disperse them. 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.239 Cops began hitting protesters with billy clubs and dragging them 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:56.680 into squad cars. As dawn broke, the street was covered 0:17:56.720 --> 0:18:00.760 in shattered glass. Cops still stood at attention, and groups 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.560 of rioters lingered in the nearby park and some with 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:08.760 improvised bandages over bleeding cuts. The news spread rapidly through 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:13.080 New York City. The following day, Protests continued outside the 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.560 bar on and off for six days. Groups of queer 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.800 people showed up outside the Stonewall Inn, facing off with 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:24.200 and taunting the assembled police. Demonstrators blocked off the road, 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:28.560 shouting Christopher Street belongs to the Queen's and liberate the street. 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:32.639 The poet Alan Ginsburg, having heard about the riots, showed 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:35.879 up on Sunday night to a smaller and calmer crowd. 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.320 He was delighted by the energy in the air and 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:42.639 visited the Stonewall Inn for the first time, still open 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:46.000 but reduced to giving away soda for free, where he 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.399 danced with abandon. This wasn't the first police raid or 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.000 protest in a queer community, and it certainly wouldn't be 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:57.760 the last, but the Stonewall Riot was a turning point 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:03.000 in the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:07.119 and otherwise queer rights, and it marked the birth of 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:18.440 the modern day queer liberation movement. Today, one of our 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:22.440 primary metaphors around queerness draws from the visual of a closet, 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:25.520 and if you're a queer person, you might be in 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.880 it or coming out of it, or perhaps you're actively 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.959 outside of it. But this is a newer turn of phrase, 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:36.440 having only shown up in the nineteen sixties. Then and earlier, 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:41.520 coming out had a larger implication, like a debutante, one 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:45.280 was coming out into the gay world. The closet door 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:49.399 becomes a portal to a world poised with open arms. 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:52.800 A month after the riots, on July twenty seventh of 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.080 nineteen sixty nine, a group of about five hundred people 0:19:56.160 --> 0:20:00.000 joined a vigil and marched in Greenwich Village Demonstrator's Mind. 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:04.600 Activists gave speeches and shouts of gay power echoed through 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.680 the streets. News of what happened at the Stonewall Inn 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.320 spread across the country, in part thanks to The Advocate, 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:16.600 which reprinted local reporting about the riots. The community was catalyzed. 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.600 Even still, Stonewall Inn couldn't hold on in the aftermath 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.920 of the riot because it didn't have a liquor license. 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.640 The venue tried to convert itself into a juice bar, 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.960 but this venture failed, and just three months later, with 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.040 dust settled and activists having gone home, the space went 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.119 up for lease. Over the next few decades, it morphed 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.719 into all the different things in New Yorker could want, 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:43.920 a bagel shop, a Chinese restaurant, and a shoe store, 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.639 among them, But it would be a long time before 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.320 the space once again became a safe place for the 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:53.200 queer community to gather. Many local gay rights groups were 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:57.000 invigorated by the events at Stonewall, and newly minted groups 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:59.440 of younger folks took up the cause from their elders. 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:02.840 They created spaces for queer people to take part in 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.720 gay run night life in an environment free from mafia control. 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:11.040 On June twenty eighth of nineteen seventy, the Christopher Street 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.679 Liberation Day March lined up at noon in Sheridan Square 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:18.320 near the Inn and walked fifty blocks to Central Park's 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.879 Sheep Meadow. Estimates of the crowd's size vary, but what 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.080 started as a few hundred people quickly ballooned into several 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.639 thousand as the march continued. That same day, in Los Angeles, 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.280 a Christopher Street West Parade marched down Hollywood Boulevard. The 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.359 latter was more a spectacle than a march, with the 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:41.639 Los Angeles Times later reporting queens and drag ferries with 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:46.560 paper wings, clowns, leather jacketed motorcyclists, a lesbian on horseback, 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:51.560 a python, white huskies, American flags, hilarious and somber signs 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:54.960 and chants, and a float depicting a homosexual nailed to 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:59.280 a cross ape. Smaller group marched in San Francisco. Over 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.560 the years, more and more cities began holding parades to 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:06.200 coincide with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, first Boston, 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.800 then London, then Washington, d c. Those nights at the 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.439 Inn became a beacon for people the world over, a 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:19.160 source of inspiration and courage that's still drawn from a. Germany, 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:22.680 for example, calls their annual Pride celebration Christopher Street Day, 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:26.120 an homage to the New York City street where American 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:31.360 queer history changed forever. Eventually, in the early nineteen nineties, 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:33.760 part of the space that had been the Stonewall Inn 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:37.000 became a bar again and was once again re christened. 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.000 In nineteen ninety nine, it was added to the National 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.359 Register of Historic Places, and in two thousand became a 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:47.879 National Historic Landmark, where you too can go enjoy a 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:52.280 cold drink and a slice of history to this very day, safely, 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:58.399 legally and with whomever you so choose. There's more to 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.560 this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:14.560 hear all about it. Activism doesn't always take place in 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:18.520 the streets. It also takes place in the home. In 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:22.720 the nineteen seventies, Mary Jane Rathbun was a fifty somethingter 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:25.679 iye hop waitress with a side hustle. She was a 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:28.680 grandmotherly type, but perhaps only as far as the gray 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:31.879 hair and glasses went. She was known to swear like 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.000 a sailor, hang out in radical left wing circles, and 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.840 sell pot brownies. She would carry a big basket of 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:42.320 her wares and sell direct consumers in San Francisco's cast 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:44.960 Her district for two bucks a pop or a dozen 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:48.600 for twenty. She also did brisk business with Dennis Perone's 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:52.320 legendary Big Top cannabis supermarket and the legal dispensary run 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:55.440 out of a Castro apartment. She drummed up business by 0:23:55.480 --> 0:24:00.000 posting ads on bulletin boards describing her brownies as magically delicios. 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:05.160 As she had noticed that, in addition to getting people high, 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.520 those with chronic illness symptoms seemed to receive relief from 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.720 her brownies, she began giving them away for free to 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:16.880 her sick neighbors. Amary inspired a loyal following her only 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:19.840 daughter had been killed by a drunk driver, and soon 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:23.840 her neighbors became her adopted kids, and many of them 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:26.639 were young gay men who had come to San Francisco 0:24:26.800 --> 0:24:31.240 to find their chosen family. Soon growers began donating to 0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:33.840 help keep her brownie business in the game as she 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:36.800 left ihop after a fall and began working in her 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:40.000 kitchen full time. She was fifty seven when she was 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:44.439 first arrested. According to the San Francisco Examiner, after her 0:24:44.480 --> 0:24:47.679 first arrest in January of nineteen eighty one, a police 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:51.240 seized and i quote, twenty pounds of high grade marijuana, 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:55.320 the quantities of psilocybin, mushrooms, cocaine, and second all of 0:24:55.400 --> 0:24:58.159 thirty five pounds of margarine, twenty five pounds of sugar, 0:24:58.440 --> 0:25:01.520 twenty five pounds of flour, twenty two dozen eggs, and 0:25:01.600 --> 0:25:05.080 twenty one thousand square feet of plastic wrap, in addition 0:25:05.200 --> 0:25:09.159 to fifty four dozen freshly baked brownies. It was the 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:12.679 same year that AIDS began to be widely reported in 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:17.280 the United States. After completing her mandatory community service, she 0:25:17.359 --> 0:25:20.520 began devoting much of her time to volunteer work and baking, 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:25.080 committing herself to a life of service. She was furious 0:25:25.119 --> 0:25:27.560 at the government's in action in the AIDS crisis, which 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:30.920 had already killed many of her adopted kids from the castro. 0:25:32.080 --> 0:25:35.320 Mary became a fixture of the Shanty Project a hospice 0:25:35.320 --> 0:25:39.800 program for folks with terminal illness, including HIV and AIDS. 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:42.160 She took care of the patients there in any way 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:46.640 she could, picking up medication, shopping, and bringing food, and 0:25:46.720 --> 0:25:50.520 she continued to bake those brownies. Soon she was baking 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:53.960 dozens a month and distributing them to everyone in need. 0:25:54.640 --> 0:25:58.560 She started volunteering at San Francisco General Hospital's Ward eighty six, 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:02.480 the country's first to outpatient clinic for people living with AIDS, 0:26:02.960 --> 0:26:05.680