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Complete Calendar of Events Inside
SOUTHERN
\OCE
Presents
The Official Guide to
*
Atlanta's
Lesbian/Gay Pride
June 17-25, 1989
Week
Stonewall: An
Eyewitness
Remembers
I was at the Stonewall in '69.1 lived on
West 11th. It was hot out, people on the
stoops. I remember a whole lot of
commotion. It seems like there was
something going on in Sheridan Square, the
little park right across from the Stonewall
Inn. We were down the street, on Gay Street,
right at the comer of Gay and Christopher. I
don't remember so much of that night
because it was over in a hurry, the next night
was when the riots got real intense.
I remember the people pouring into the
Village for the next few days, and the the
intensity of bonding there. We were actually
doing something that some other revolutionary
groups had been doing for a while.
In the activity in the days afterwards,
there was a whole lot going on. Gay Youth
started. That was for people who were under
18. The Gay Liberation Front had already
started then.
Everybody went to the Stonewall. In the
Village there weren't that many places that
were that interesting. The Stonewall Inn was
an intense version of the Cove at 8:00 o’clock
on a Saturday morning - all the time! It was
a lot of fun. Some real interesting people.
I remember the Daily News headline. The
Daily News was a tabloid. It had a headline
Photo from the cover of The Village
Voice (July 3,1969) shows graffiti
outside of the Stonewall Inn.
that said, "HOMO HIVE RAIDED, QUEEN
BEES BUZZING MAD” and it started out
with a description of what would appear to
be this woman sitting on a stoop there on
Christopher Street, she's tapping her heels
and her mascara's a little smeared and on and
on and then it goes into talking about her 5
o'clock shadow.
I remember the intensity, the excitement
of it. We were finally doing something. We
were ridding ourselves of Mafia controlled
bars and the Stonewall was one of them.
I haven't participated in Pride locally for a
long time because the attitude is not real
revolutionary. Somebody told me once and I
can't remember exactly what he said, but to
paraphrase it, I asked him where the attitude
had changed and what had gone on with the
liberation groups now because they were
more involved in social things. And he said,
"You all burned the buildings down and now
we're renovating them.
-Nigel J.
Stonewall: Why We Celebrate Pride
A little after midnight on June 28,
1969, a riot broke out at a gay bar in
New York City's Greenwich Village.
The bar, the Stonewall Inn, was a
favorite of drag queens, hustlers, "rough
dykes" and men too young to legally
purchase alcohol.
The Stonewall Inn was a dive, a
"dope drop," widely believed to be
Mafia owned. The "official" reason for
the raid was that the Stonewall had no
liquor license. That was probably true,
but the police in New York had long
used bar raids to force increases in the
payoffs they received from bar owners.
If a bar became popular there would be a
raid and customers, wishing to avoid
police harassment and possible arrest,
would stay away until word got around
that the owner of the bar had increased
the payoff.
When the police arrived at the
Stonewall on that particular Friday night
in June of 1969, something out of the
ordinary happened. As the police began
to load the bar's staff into a paddy
wagon, the crowd of customers that had
been inside the bar became an angry
mob, jeering, cheering and throwing
small objects at the police. The police
called in reinforcements and more paddy
wagons. The crowd, which had grown to
several hundred in a very short time,
turned angrier and began throwing
bricks. The police, vastly outnumbered
and taken by surprise, barricaded
themselves inside the Stonewall Inn.
When the Village Voice hit the
newsstands the following Wednesday,
July 3,1969, there were two front page
articles: GAY POWER COMES TO
SHERIDAN SQUARE and FULL
MOON OVER THE STONEWALL.
Lucian Truscott's GAY POWER
article described the scene just before the
riot broke out:"... as the patrons
trapped inside were released one by one,
a crowd started to gather on the street...
initially a festive gathering, composed
mostly of Stonewall boys who were
20T* AmweniARY
waiting around for friends still inside or to see what was
going to happen. Cheers would go up as favorites would
emerge from the door, strike a pose, and swish by the
detective with a "Hello there, 'fella'... Suddenly, the
paddywagons arrived and the mood of the crowd
changed. Three of the more blatant queens - in full drag -
were loaded inside to a chorus of catcalls and boos from
the crowd... The next person to come out was a dyke,
and she put up a struggle - from car to door to car again."
FULL MOON OVER THE STONEWALL was a
"View From Inside." The writer, Howard Smith, had
accompanied Inspector Seymour Pine, the head of the
Public Morals section, on the raid. Smith describes the
police retreat inside the Stonewall with these words, "Pine
ordered the three cars and paddywagons to leave with the
prisoners before the crowd became more of a mob....
He and his force of eight detectives, two of them women,
would be easily overwhelmed if the temper broke....
"Pigs!" "Faggot Cops!" Pennies and dimes flew. I stood
outside the door. Escalate to nickels and quarters. A
bottle. Another bottle. Pine says, "Let's get inside. Lock
ourselves inside, it's safer...."
This was a new experience for the police. They were
used to controlling the raid, arresting whomever they
pleased, abusing others and counting the extra money
they would receive as a result of the fear the raids
produced among bar-going gay people.
The next night, Saturday, there was
another riot. This time, the crowd of
angry gay people was larger. There were
also more police.
Sunday night was calmer, unmarked
by the violence of the previous nights,
but a growing militance made it clear to
the police and to the gay people on the
streets that something had changed in
the Village. That change is the reason
the Stonewall riots are remembered each
year, usually in June, with parades and
marches in a celebration called Gay
Pride or Gay Freedom Day.
The Stonewall riots did not occur in a
vacuum. The forces that came to
confrontation on Christopher Street in
June of 1969 were also in conflict in
other cities across the United States. The
Stonewall Riots were the spark that
ignited a militant consciousness that
became the Gay Rights Movement
Before Stonewall, there were only a
handful of gay and lesbian organizations
and publications in this country. Within
one year after Stonewall, there were
hundreds.
Stonewall is the gay equivalent of
Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat
and move to the back of the bus. It
marks the end of one era and the
beginning of another.
In August of 1969, the New York
Mcatachine Newsletter published an
article entitled, "The Stonewall Riots:
The Gay View". The Mattachine
Society, the oldest gay rights
organization in America, summed up
the transformation brought about by
Stonewall with these words:
" We didn't know what it was like not to
be mistreated, and accepted harassment
when it came...Now we've walked in the
open and know how pleasant it is to
have self-respect and to be treated as
citizens and human beings. There's no
possible way to make us accept the 'old
way’ again."
- Johnny WaUl
Editor, Pride Guide
The Rainbow Flag has
increasingly been adopted by
the gay and lesbian community
as its own ensign. It depicts not
the shape of the rainbow but its colors. It bears several equal
horizontal stripes in "rainbow colors" arranged in spectrum
sequence, generally with red at the top.
In 1978, the organizing committee for San Francisco’s Gay
Freedom held a meeting in which activist Artie Bressan called
for a symbol which could be used every year to give consistency
to gay and lesbian activities. His suggestion was taken up by
local artist, Gilbert Baker, who proposed a rainbow flag as a
symbol. His choice was inspired by hippie groups and some of
the flags they had flown during demonstrations on college
campuses in the 1960s. One of these was the "Flag of the
Races", which had five stripes--one each for the colors of
humankind's skin: red, white, black, yellow and brown.
The prominence and success of the Rainbow Flag in San
Francisco's parade encouraged other cities’ parade organizers to
adopt it too. Major gay and lesbian parades in New York,
Houston, Vancouver, and Toronto
began to fly the six-stripe Rainbow
Flag.
The Rainbow Flag is now flown
widely in San Francisco. It can be seen in nearly every neighborhood,
from quaint Victorian houses to Sausalito houseboats. It was
prominently displayed at the 1988 Gay Games II, an international sports
event, and at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay
Rights in 1987. A gay yacht club in the Netherlands uses a burgee
based on the Rainbow Flag. Farther afield, in New York, the Rainbow
Flag drapes the coffins of people who have died of AIDS, and is
frequently displayed on church doors. The AIDS ward of a Sydney,
Austrailia hospital flies the Rainbow Flag as a symbol of hope.
In a few short years, this flag has spread world-wide to represent a
movement. Its success is not due to any official recognition but to
widespread spontaneous adoption by members of the community it
represents.
adapted from The Evolution and Adoption of the Rainbow Flag in San
Francisco by James J. Ferrigan, III.
Why the Rainbow Flag?