It was like the shot heard around the world, only much more complicated.
The defining moment for Gay Pride might have come on a hot, summer night in New York City when a fed-up, burley man chucked a garbage can full of empties through a police car window.
The counter-riot had begun.
Whatever the details - and, in the fog of riot, accounts differ - there is no question that the Stonewall Inn melee in June, 1969, marked the birth of the Gay Pride movement.
The place The Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure at 57 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, was a private, gay club with an opaque, glass facade.
In 1969 it was illegal to operate a business that catered to homosexuals. Stonewall had no liquor license, but Stonewall served liquor.
The police knew that, of course, and had known for years. Periodic raids resulted in the arrest of the more flamboyant drag queens and fines levied against the house. The white college kids, while the roundup of the usual suspects was going on, always had time to sneak away.
On June 27, events unfolded differently.
Or, as one rioter later told New York Daily News writer Jerry Lisker, who filed an account a week later, after the fifth day of disturbances, "We've had all we can take from the Gestapo. We're putting our foot down."
Lisker, in his leering, smart-ass story, added, "The foot wore a spiked heel."
After a raid, without a warrant, by seven plain clothes detectives and a uniformed officer, patrons milled around outside to watch the arrest proceedings. This night some of the drag queens fought back, supported by gay men and lesbians.
"There was just...a flash of group, of mass anger," one witness recalled.
The reaction The crowd started throwing coins in mockery of the notorious gay establishment payoff system. Bottles and rocks followed. The incorrigible Lisker, mugging for his mainstream audience, wrote that compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and "other femme fatale missiles," were also hurled.
Police fell back into the empty bar, beat a heterosexual folk singer who just happened by, and proceeded to trash the place. There were accusations that the police rifled the till.
A reporter who visited Stonewall afterward said the place looked like it had been hit by a cyclone.
Some in the crowd converted a toppled parking meter into a battering ram on the door as "Gay Power!" was chanted.
Word of the riot spread throughout Greenwich Village. Gays, lesbians and supporters showed up at Christopher Street to join in. Police said there were about out 200 patrons inside Stonewall when they made their raid. That crowd, they said later, grew to 1,000 out on the streets. A riot control squad was soon on the scene.
It was the beginning of five nights of violence.
Police, arms linked, marched down the street, dispersing the crowd. Instead of folding, though, rioters circled around to renew the fray from behind, pelting the police with debris.
Outflanked, the police lashed out at anyone within grabbing distance. Trash cans were set on fire, taunts and debris hurled. Each time the crowd was disbursed, it regrouped, confounding police expectations. Once, when the police whirled around to confront their attackers, they beheld an ersatz chorus line with a synchronized kicking of heels. That chorus lined offered a little song:
"We are the Stonewall girls/We wear our hair in curls/We wear no underwear/We show our pubic hair/We wear our dungarees/Above our nelly knees!"
It was a moment when the theater of absurd met with ham-handed police tactics.
The result Remember, this was in 1969, during some of the darkest days of the Vietnam War. Cultural wars were on, which didn't, up until this point, include gay men and lesbians.
After Stonewall, talk of a Gay Liberation Front arose, taking a cue from other liberation fronts around the world.
The Gay Liberation Front no longer exists. Gay Pride very much does.
The clueless Lisker wrote, "The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones." He added the police did confiscate the money from an illegal operation and the receipts were on file at division headquarters.
One doubts he ever checked.
"The police are sure of one thing," Lisker wrote, plodding on. "They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street."
Even the clueless, sometimes, can be prophetic.
Mike Dillon is the publisher of the Capitol Hill Times. He can be reached at mdillon@nwlink.com. [[In-content Ad]]
