FAN FAVORITE: Stonewall | Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary

American History Tellers

This episode of American History Tellers explores the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 not as a sudden revolution, but as the culmination of decades of quiet resistance and

Key takeaways

• The Stonewall Uprising was not a sudden revolution but the result of decades of organized resistance and cultural shifts within the LGBTQ community.

Main topics

• Pre-Stonewall LGBTQ activism in the United States
• Systemic discrimination against gay people post-World War II

Notable quotes

"It's enough to make you want to do something. It's enough to make you want to fight back."

Conclusion

The Stonewall Uprising was a pivotal moment that brought LGBTQ activism into the public eye, but it was built

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. We're hard at work on our 100th season of American History Tellers coming up, but in the meantime, we're revisiting a fan favorite. Our season about the Stonewall Uprising, a pivotal moment in America's gay rights movement. In 1969, a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Stonewall Inn sparked a series of riots and protests that brought LGBTQ activism out of the closet. And for listeners who would like to learn more about queer history, we recommend the new Audible original, The Pansy Craze. In this six-part, live-recorded podcast variety show, co-creator and host Mason Alexander Parr transports audiences through time to tell raucous stories of queer history that none of us learned in school. Speaker 1 (0:53) From Elizabethan England to Prohibition-era Broadway, Mason and their special guests used stories, songs, and sketches to explore times throughout history when queerness was celebrated, commodified, and then criminalized. You can listen to The Pansy Craze right now only on Audible. And now, here's our series on Stonewall, which originally aired in 2020. Speaker 1 (1:19) Imagine it's June 28th, 1969, a hot, humid Friday night in New York City. It's your birthday, and you're waiting to meet a friend at the Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village. You're turning 20, and tonight you're celebrating. You head to the bar and manage to get the attention of the bartender. What can I get for you? We're out of vodka. More's on the way. Tequila soda, double, please. You scan the faces in the crowd looking for your friend. The bar is darkly lit and pretty rough around the edges. Speaker 1 (1:47) Drinks are overpriced and watered down. The windows in the front are all blacked out, the stools rickety, and the bathrooms always flooded. But tonight the place is jam-packed, as it always is. It's a Friday night, and Stonewall is the only gay bar around where dancing is legal. Your friend Maxine finally arrives, sees you, and pushes her way through the crowd. Well, look who thinks he's special. I am special. It's my birthday. She enveloped you in a hug. Your birthday, right now or yesterday? Speaker 1 (2:16) It's one in the morning. These distinctions matter. Yesterday, actually. Yesterday. Maxine is wearing makeup, along with a miniskirt, a peasant blouse and high heels. She looks terrific. You admire Maxine's bravery. You know she's been beat up more than once. Dressing like she does is illegal in New York. She's risking arrest. And frankly, so are you. Just by being here in this bar, police keep tabs on all the gay bars in the village. You think the cops will make an appearance tonight? They wouldn't dare. Besides, I wouldn't let them. Not on your birthday. Speaker 1 (2:47) Still, you're suddenly hit by a wave of sadness. All these people around you, laughing, dancing, just being themselves, trying to live their lives, when the rest of America would rather just have them arrested and thrown in jail. Oh, don't spiral on me now. I know that look you get when you're thinking too much. Maxine, you know what your problem is? You're too perceptive. Ah, you got me. Now tell me what's on your mind. It's just the cops, the people. I don't know. Speaker 1 (3:16) Just like no one wants us anywhere. Don't let it get you down. Nobody gives a damn whether we live or die. Most people feel our very existence is the problem. Maxine has a funny way of trying to cheer you up, but she has a point. There's the outside world, the straight world. And then there's this world, happening right alongside it. It's here that you feel most comfortable. And Stonewall is an important part of this world. But suddenly, there's a lot of commotion by the front door. Speaker 1 (3:43) The bar's house lights go up, leaving you blinking in the stark brightness. All right, everyone, this is a raid. I want ID cards out. Everyone stand up against the wall. Maxine only looks annoyed, like she's seen all this before. They just raided this place Tuesday night. Don't give them your ID. Don't give them anything. That's easy for her to say. You're starting to panic. No one except the people in this room knows the real you. If they print your name in the paper tomorrow, you could lose your job at the hardware store. Your parents would probably kick you out of the house. This isn't right. The constant harassment, the danger, the fear, all for just being you. It's enough to make you want to do something. It's enough to make you want to fight back. Speaker 1 (4:29) Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Business Wars from Audible Originals. In our new season, Sweet and Low, Equal, and Splenda are locked in a bitter fight, battling for billions, while scientists and regulators threaten to shut them all down. Make sure to listen to Business Wars on Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts. James Arthur Ray was a charismatic self-help guru who promised his followers a path to wealth and enlightenment by becoming the best versions of themselves. But not all who followed him finished their journey. For the best Bingeable series, listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. From Audible Originals, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. Speaker 1 (5:36) On our show, we'll take you to the events, the times, and the people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. We'll put you in the shoes of everyday citizens as history was being made. And we'll show you how the events of the times affected them, their families, and affects you now. The police raid at New York's Stonewall Inn on a busy Friday night in 1969 unleashed a series of riots and demonstrations that lasted six days. It proved a turning point in the budding gay rights movement, and it inspired people across the country to join a larger fight for social and political equality, a battle that's still being fought today. But Stonewall was also controversial, even within what would come to be called the LGBTQ community. By 1969, the gay rights movement had already been building for decades. Speaker 1 (6:23) Some activists who advocated a more gradual, incremental approach to equality worried that this spontaneous uprising threatened to undo decades of careful work. Only in hindsight would it become clear that Stonewall wasn't a setback, but an important step forward. But in the years following World War II, members of the LGBTQ community were still largely invisible in mainstream society. They also faced broad discrimination. They were harassed by police, oppressed by the government. Speaker 1 (6:50) and dismissed by the courts and medical profession. But slowly, incrementally, small groups of people started to come together and seek a way forward. A note to listeners. As our understanding of sexuality and identity has deepened and evolved, so has our language. The terms used throughout history, both by LGBTQ people to refer to themselves and by others, have changed over time. In this series, we'll generally use LGBTQ. Speaker 1 (7:15) But at times, we may use older terminology in order to accurately capture the attitudes and ideas of the past. And lastly, the gay rights movement in the United States was an effort as diverse and complex as the LGBTQ community today. Though we've tried to capture that breadth in this four-part series, the stories we're presenting here are not comprehensive. They follow strands of the gay rights movement in America from 1950 until 1970. But they were just the beginning of a history that asks difficult questions about gender, race, and identity. and demonstrates how some groups push for change in the face of daunting obstacles. This is Episode 1, Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary. Speaker 1 (7:55) In 1950, America was roaring. Back from the war against Germany and its allies, the economy grew at a rapid pace, and the country emerged as a global leader in politics and culture. But for Harry Hay, a 38-year-old actor and music teacher living in Los Angeles, the brilliant sheen of all that success only served to hide something underneath. Hay was a gay man. He'd known this most of his life. It was neither an attitude nor a choice. He'd simply been born that way. Speaker 1 (8:22) Hay had been raised by a wealthy family, and growing up, his sexuality was mostly ignored. But when he came out as gay in college at Stanford, many of his friends shunned him. Hay was shocked and hurt by their reaction, and began to realize he'd been living in an insulated reality. As Hay saw this painful experience play out for other gay friends, he began to take note of the dangers people like himself faced. Nationwide, states were passing new laws that targeted LGBTQ people. Speaker 1 (8:49) using new categories to criminalize behavior that would otherwise be passed over. In California, the name of anyone caught loitering in a public toilet would be registered with the state. In New York, any person wearing less than three pieces of clothing that corresponded to their legal sex could be arrested and imprisoned. So-called sodomy laws impose dire penalties, including a declaration of status as a sex offender. And in Pennsylvania and California, anyone classified as a sex offender could be locked up in a mental institution. permanently. In seven states, they could even be castrated. In short, while never outlawing homosexuality itself, an entire body of laws and policies made just being gay a de facto crime, with far-reaching consequences. Speaker 1 (9:36) But despite the fear and danger, gay people still managed to find each other. On the streets or in bars that cater to gay clientele. Whether for love, sex, or companionship, couples and small groups joined together while nearly always having to disguise their activities. Jim Kepner, a contemporary of Hayes, recalled meeting other men through ads and magazines. Through what were known as penpal groups, he would court these men long distance using what he described as a hinting process. He wrote, Speaker 1 (10:04) Over two or three letters, you would say that you were interested in philosophy, poetry, and biographies, but not very interested in sports, except walking or swimming. You didn't start with Oscar Wilde or Walt Whitman, but you could include some writers who were less specifically identified. Then you brought it up. Of course, gay people were everywhere. They were simply too afraid to speak openly. And they were facing an America, the land of freedom and democracy, that was forcing them to lie, to stay quiet, or to deny their own existence. Speaker 1 (10:33) In 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a biologist at Indiana University, released a landmark study of human sexuality. The report, called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, was covered broadly in the press. And for the first time, Americans began to talk publicly about their own sexuality. But in Los Angeles, Harry Hay noticed something in the fine print. The study found that homosexuality was far more widespread than Hay had ever guessed. Speaker 1 (10:58) Nearly 40% of men had experienced what the report characterized as homosexual relations. Not only that, but it reported that gay men were proven capable of being happy, healthy individuals, not sick or abnormal. The Kinsey report galvanized Hay's thinking, but he took it a step forward. 37% of the population seemed