These demonstrations thrilled those who witnessed the events. While there had been prior resistance to police repression, there had never been anything so massive and lasting, and that got so much media attention. Militant activists realised that this was an opportunity, and a new kind of gay political organisation was born, creating what is termed the gay liberation phase of the LGBT civil rights movement, with the creation of organisations such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.
These new organisations transformed the very small pre-existing homophile movement into a mass movement, and that is why the Stonewall Uprising is justly famous. Just as the fall of the Bastille was not the French Revolution but the event that launched the French Revolution, just so the Stonewall Uprising was not itself the historic change, but the event that precipitated the historic change through creating gay liberation organisations, which made the movement into a mass movement, thus making the successes of the LGBT civil rights movement possible, a movement that continues to unfold, not only in the United States but around the world.
To state, as the press is so fond of repeating, that Stonewall began the modern gay rights movement is highly inaccurate. But the homophile movement that had begun 19 years before Stonewall immediately recognised the transformation that Stonewall was causing and so less than six months afterwards voted to honour the event with annual commemorations—which have now also spread around the world.
However, Stonewall has come to be seen as much more than just a turning point. All nations and all significant movements have their moments that have a power that exceeds what can be expressed by a mere rational analysis of their historic effect.
This is because these moments are symbolic, because they express the deepest truths experienced by the human heart. They become emblematic of the best in us, they symbolise our hopes and dreams, our feelings and yearnings, all that we sense is our potential: the vision of a world as it should be or could be or as it needs to be.
Thus when we learn American history, certain stories and events and people and moments are emphasised. For example, the story of how Francis Scott Keyes watched through the night to see if Fort McHenry would fall before of the intense British bombardment, and when he saw the flag still flying in the morning, he knew that an important battle had not been lost and expressed this moment of hope and the triumph of faith in the words that became our national anthem. This story—or the images of Martin Luther King, Jr, giving his “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, or of the flag being raised over Iwo Jima—are moments and images that help define who we are, moments that exemplify our values and thus are potent symbols.
The narrative of the Stonewall Uprising is a very powerful story for a number of reasons. It seemed to come out of nowhere and was quite unexpected. It was a spontaneous event, totally unplanned and undirected. And it happened in a seedy club run by the Mafia, and the groups that first turned against the police were effeminate boys who lived on the streets, sissies rejected by their families and by society, prostitutes, a butch lesbian, and men in drag—that such a group could lead an effective revolt against the police and terrify them seemed too good to be true. But this is what happened. And the police were astonished at the anger that they witnessed. And they were terrified.
Seymour Pine, who led the raid, had written the manual used for hand-to-hand combat in World War II and was blown up by a mine in the Battle of the Bulge. He said he was never more afraid in World War II than he was inside that bar surrounded by hundreds of homosexuals who had the bar under siege. Charles Smythe, who helped lead the raid and had fought with Pine in the war, said he was still shaking an hour after he was rescued by the riot police. Thus Stonewall symbolises both gay people standing up for themselves for the first time—spontaneously—and winning.
It is for these historic and iconographic reasons that it is important to grant the buildings that comprised the original club landmark status. The structure of the two buildings is largely as it was in 1969, and, most fortunately, the edifice has remained intact and unchanged. It is the first night of the Uprising that speaks most to everyone familiar with this narrative, and particularly the beginning of the first night, when the police were trapped inside the bar. During that most dramatic and suspenseful and emotional time, the police were inside the bar and the protestors outside, trying to get back inside the bar to overpower the police in order to free their prisoners and to reclaim the club as their own. Thus the edifice was the focus of the protestor’s attention on that first night, and that edifice is thus highly historic and symbolic. It is only by landmarking the building that that edifice will be granted the protection against alteration that it needs.
It seems we are finally on the verge of having the history of the LGBT civil rights movement recognised as legitimate and significant US and civil rights history, as President Obama did when he spoke of the arc of history that connects Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall.
It is time that this history be given this dignity so that we can all learn from it. I would add, however, that the LGBT history of this city—the city where Craig Rodwell opened the world’s first gay bookstore and where ACT UP was founded, where Eleanor Roosevelt lived and the gay liberation movement was founded—is a cornucopia of historic riches, and so if you do vote to landmark 51 and 53 Christopher Street, that will not be the end of recognising and protecting this history, it will rather be the beginning.
Testimony before the Landmarks Preservation Commission with Regard to Giving 51 and 53 Christopher Street Landmark Status June 23, 2015 New York City, NY by David Carter author, of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution UK/USA.
