EDMUND
WHITE
It was one of the few historical dates I can think of that had tremendous repercussions on people's intimate lives. For example, before Stonewall I went to a straight shrink and I wanted to be straight, but after Stonewall I went to a gay shrink to learn how to be a "good gay." There are so many people who can look back at that one event and say that it really changed their lives and for the better. So many days with political meanings have had ghastly consequences, like Bastille Day for instance. But Stonewall can only be seen as a positive experience. (lgny, 2 July 1998)
STONEWALL BY MARTIN DUBERMAN
"Stonewall" is the emblematic event in modern lesbian and gay history. The site of a series of riots in late June early July 1969 that resulted from a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar, "Stonewall" has become synonymous over the years with gay resistance to oppression. Today, the word resonates with images of insurgency and self-realization and occupies a central place in the iconography of lesbian and gay awareness. The 1969 riots are now generally taken to mark the birth of the modern gay and lesbian political movement -- that moment in time when gays and lesbians recognized all at once their mistreatment and their solidarity. As such, "Stonewall" has become an empowering symbol of global proportions.
Yet remarkable -- since 1994 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots -- the actual story of the upheaval has never been told completely, or been well understood. We have, since 1969, been trading the same few tales about the riots from the same few accounts -- trading them for so long that they have transmogrified into simplistic myth. The decades preceding Stonewall, moreover, continue to be regarded by most gays and lesbians as some vast neolithic wasteland -- and this, despite the efforts of pioneering historians like Allan Bérubé, John D'Emilio and Lillian Faderman to fill in the landscape of those years with vivid, politically astute personalities. . . .
Dr. Duberman then tells the stories of the following participants:
Craig Rodwell, a radical figure in the Mattachine Society who opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore and spearheaded the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March.
Yvonne Flowers, an occupational therapist and teacher, an African-American who was one of the founders of Salsa Soul Sisters.
Karla Jay, who subsequently completed her doctorate in comparative literature, authored a number of books, and earned a full professorship.
Sylvia (Ray) [Lee] Rivera, a Times Square hustler when only 11 years old, she became a street transvestite and the founder of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).
Jim Fouratt, who joined and left the priesthood, then became an actor, hipster, antiwar protester, and a major spokesperson for the countercultural Yippie movement.
Foster Gunnison Jr., son of rich but distant parents, plunged into the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, became its archivist, and helped plan the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March.
Dr. Duberman has observed, "It had been on the West Coast, however, that the Mattachine Society had been formed and where many publications, organizations, legal challenges, and militant actions had taken place. If the Stonewall riots did not begin the gay revolution (as East Coasters, younger gays, and the national media have been wont to claim), it remains true that those riots became a symbolic event of international importance -- a symbol of such potency as to serve, ever since 1969, as a motivating force and rallying cry. There was enough glory for both coasts, the hinterland, and several generations -- though not many could see it in 1969."