How Queer radicals used Stonewall to upend the gay establishment (Part I)
The wild story of the year between Stonewall and the first Pride march.
The Stonewall Riots live on in a hybrid of history and mythology. Hundreds of conflicting accounts from those nights have all converged to form one resounding statement: The riots birthed the modern queer rights movement.
Exactly one year after Stonewall, activists from an array of groups commemorated the riots by marching together under a banner that read CHRISTOPHER STREET GAY LIBERATION DAY 1970.
Over the next 50 years, it would become a worldwide multibillion dollar event known as Pride—but it almost never happened at all.
This four part special edition Pride series examines the year between Stonewall and that first march, and how young queer activists upended the gay establishment to make it happen.
Some context.
The social movements of the 1960s—particularly the movements for Black liberation and against the Vietnam War—popularized confrontational, direct action.
Established gay and lesbian rights organizations were resistant to these types of demonstrations. Many of them were founded by communists in the 50s, at the height of the Red Scare, and had to operate while navigating FBI informants infiltrating their meetings.
These organizations—the Mattachine Society of Washington, The Mattachine Society of New York, and the Daughters of Bilitis, to name a few—together formed the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) in 1966.
But there was a growing frustration among members that their tactics weren’t working.
Ernestine Eckstein was the Vice President of the New York Daughters of Bilitis, the most prominent lesbian rights organization in the city and one of its only Black members.
In a 1966 interview for the DOB newsletter, The Ladder, Eckstein said:
“Picketing I regard as almost a conservative activity now. The homosexual has to call attention to the fact that he's been unjustly acted upon. This Is what the Negro did.”
About two years before Stonewall, Ernestine would leave for the West Coast to lead Black Women Organized for Action. Little of her life is known after, but death records indicate she died in the ‘90s.
One of the last known photographs of Eckstein features her picketing at the Annual Reminder Day.
Reminder Day.
Liberation Day, or Pride, wasn’t the first annual public demonstration for queer rights in the United States.
An earlier demonstration beginning in the mid ‘60s was the Annual Reminder Day, where ERCHO members descended on Philadelphia City Hall every Independence Day to picket in silence for gay rights.
The demonstration was conservative, to say the least.
Mattachine Washington founder and lifelong gay activist Frank Kameny insisted on a strict dress code. The goal was to present gays and lesbians as typical members of society, rather than the deviants Americans were taught to believe they were.
On June 20, 1969—one week before Stonewall—New York Daughters of Bilitis founder Barbara Gittings sent ERCHO organizations the itinerary for the Fourth Annual Reminder Day, emphasizing that the demonstration would be a “lawful, orderly, dignified one.”
Included in the packet was the dress code, written by Kameny, which read:
Suits or slacks and jackets for men
Dresses, or skirts and blouses, or business suits for women.A neat, well-groomed, good-looking, conservative appearance is considered desirable.
A three-person committee is authorized by ERCHO to pass upon the appearance of persons marching on the picket line and to rule off the line those not meeting the standards.
Craig & Dick.
Craig Rodwell was a 29 year old former member of the Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY) before moving on to start the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN).
Rodwell, with his partner Fred Sargeant, owned the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop at 291 Mercer Street, about a 10 minute walk from Stonewall. The bookshop acted as a hub for gay organizers to safely meet. For the July 4 Reminder Day, Rodwell was tasked with bussing New York participants to the demonstration in Philly.
Years earlier, Rodwell had a romantic relationship with Dick Leitsch, whom he persuaded to attend MSNY meetings. Most memorably, the two would participate in Mattachine’s 1966 “Sip-in” at Julius’ Bar to protest an ordinance forbidding bartenders from serving alcohol to gay people.
By 1969, Leitsch was the Executive Director of MSNY, and Craig Rodwell had moved on.
On June 24, 1969, Leitsch responded to the media packet for the Reminder Day, informing Gittings that MSNY would not be attending and demanding they remove the organization’s name from their fliers.
In addition to citing “abominable” treatment by Rodwell at the Reminder a year before, Leitsch wrote:
We cannot support a demonstration that pretends to reflect the feelings of all homosexuals while excluding many homosexuals from participating in the demonstration. Since our membership covers all the spectrum of gay life, we encompass drag queens, leather queens, and many, many, groovy men and women…we choose neither to participate nor support the demonstration and to make our reasons plain in our publication.
He continued:
The Annual Reminder held out such promise at its inception, and to see it become the personal property of a few who would set themselves up as an “establishment”, no less bigoted and exclusionary than the real Establishment we’re supposedly fighting. Well, there’s no use in fighting that battle over again[.]
Four days later, a standard raid at the Stonewall Inn would change the course of history and put the final nail in the Annual Reminder.
Stonewall.
If anyone tells you they have a definitive, undisputed account of the Stonewall Riots, you should immediately be skeptical.
Contrary to myth, most reports indicate the riots didn’t start with a brick.
That brick also wasn’t thrown by the iconic queer rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, who said of her presence at the riots:
I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire. And it was a raid already. The riots had already started.
The presence of Johnson’s fellow lifelong queer activist, Sylvia Rivera, has also been called into question.
Multiple accounts from that night confirm the presence of Stormé DeLarverie, a Black butch lesbian who toured for years with the Jewel Box Revue and even rode horses for Ringling Brothers.
Another confirmed presence is Zazu Nova. A young trans woman who dubbed herself the “Queen of Sex.” After Stonewall, she would be a founding member of Gay Youth and an active member of the Gay Liberation Front.
The preoccupation of who was “there” overstates the importance of Stonewall as an event. There were many times before Stonewall that queer people rioted against police raids. What made Stonewall different was the organizing that emerged from it—organizing to which Marsha, Sylvia, Zazu, Craig, and others were crucial.
That’s what birthed Pride, and that’s what this series is about.