Stonewall Quotes

“optimistic sense of the “goodness” of human nature is always the essential fuel for activism.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Shortly after midnight she stopped the gyrating dancers and gave a little speech: “This dance is for the people of the streets who are part of our gay community. Let’s give them a better chance than I had when I came out. I don’t know if any of you ever lived on the streets. Many transvestites who make up STAR do. We are asking you for money tonight. Winter is coming and we need money for clothes and rent. Please dig into your pockets and help STAR. . . .” Then some of the queens surprised Sylvia by presenting her with a huge bouquet of red roses. She wept buckets.58”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“People in both GLF and GAA had promised Sylvia that they would come by and help fix up STAR House. And she had gotten some of the gay teachers in GAA to swear they would turn the top floor of the building into a kind of school, teaching some of the illiterate young runaways how to read and write. But in fact few showed up, and only Bob Kohler of GLF came by with any regularity, helping them to paint, clean up the yard, and get some primitive plumbing installed. When Sylvia decided to throw a benefit dance for STAR House at Alternate U., GLF did front her enough money to buy beer and setups. But when she went to GAA and asked that she be allowed to rent their stereo equipment, she was turned down. Arthur Bell and a few others spoke out in favor of the rental, but the dominant view was that “when we started GAA, we hadn’t a thing either. . . . We’re not in the rental business.”57”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“When Karla and some other GLF women tried to leaflet Kooky’s one night with announcements of the forthcoming lesbian dance at Alternate U., Kooky had her male bouncers toss them outside into the snow.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The famous Sea Colony having closed in 1968, there were only two lesbian bars in Manhattan in 1970: Kooky’s, on West Fourteenth Street, and Gianni’s, on West Nineteenth; both served watered-down, overpriced drinks in an atmosphere less than congenial. Kooky’s was named after the fearsome woman who was herself always on the premises. A heterosexual, and purportedly an ex-prostitute, Kooky had dyed, lacquered blond hair and was given to wearing pink crinoline dresses. Karla has described Kooky as looking “more like a poorly put-together transvestite than a woman.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Many of those feelings surfaced over the issue of separate women’s dances. GLF women, including Karla, had worked hard (even chopping ice and sweeping floors) to make the GLF dances at Alternate U. a success. But they grew to resent the “pack ’em in” attitude of the GLF men. Outnumbered by at least five to one, the women had trouble even finding each other at the overwhelmingly male dances, which to them seemed increasingly to resemble nothing so much as a standard gay male bar, overcrowded and dimly lit, with human contact “limited to groping and dryfucking.”54 Deciding that they wanted a space of their own for dances, the GLF women (never more than ten to twenty percent of the organization) demanded that one of the large rooms at Alternate U. be declared off-limits to men and that a portion of the GLF treasury be set aside to finance separate women’s dances. Some of the GLF men denounced the plan as divisive, others denied that there was a male-female problem significant enough to require so “drastic” a solution, and still others instantly supported the women’s demands. After a great deal of discussion, which was the GLF way, funds for the separate dances were somewhat reluctantly voted. The GLF women wanted a social space that would not only be free of male domination, but would also serve as an alternative to the lesbian bars then in existence.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The Firehouse quickly became the political and cultural headquarters for the gay movement in New York, its spacious quarters a beehive of assorted activities. On Saturday nights, the large meeting hall would be converted into a dance floor and the packed revels (an average crowd of fifteen hundred per dance) become a cherished alternative to the bar scene, drawing the apolitical as well as the committed, and attracting both men and women (though men were always in a decided majority).”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Where the homophile movement had stressed the importance of gays acting “responsibly” in order to win mainstream acceptance, GAA emphasized building pride in subcultural difference and organizing a political bloc to demand equal rights.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Jim acknowledges that he and the other GLFers were so strident that the old-timers felt as if they had been literally assaulted. He and his friends had no patience with counsels of moderation and no appreciation for the work previously done, against great odds, to bring the gay movement to its current level of visibility. “We wanted to end the homophile movement” is how Jim later put it. “We wanted them to join us in making a gay revolution.” And he adds, with retrospective compassion, that “we were a nightmare to them. They were committed to being nice, acceptable status quo Americans, and we were not; we had no interest at all in being acceptable.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Jim Fouratt, experienced in politics and trained as an actor, took on the role of chief spokesperson for the group.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“But 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. But”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Never having been inside the Stonewall, Ginsberg went in and briefly joined the handful of dancers. After emerging, he described the patrons as “beautiful—they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.” Deputy Inspector Pine later echoed Ginsberg: “For those of us in public morals, things were completely changed . . . suddenly they were not submissive anymore.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“But not all gays were pleased about the eruption at Stonewall. Those satisfied by, or at least habituated to, the status quo preferred to minimize or dismiss what was happening. Many wealthier gays, sunning at Fire Island or in the Hamptons for the weekend, either heard about the rioting and ignored it (as one of them later put it: “No one [at Fire Island Pines] mentioned Stonewall”), or caught up with the news belatedly. When they did, they tended to characterize the events at Stonewall as “regrettable,” as the demented carryings-on of “stoned, tacky queens”—precisely those elements in the gay world from whom they had long since dissociated themselves. Coming back into the city on Sunday night, the beach set might have hastened off to see the nude stage show Oh, Calcutta! or the film Midnight Cowboy (in which Jon Voight played a Forty-second Street hustler)—titillated by such mainstream daring, while oblivious or scornful of the real-life counterparts being acted out before their averted eyes.59”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“And to that end, he carried with him the tools of the guerrilla trade: marbles (to throw under the contingent of mounted police that had by now arrived) and pins (to stick into the horses’ flanks).”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Something like a carnival, an outsized block party, had gotten going by early evening in front of the Stonewall”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“On the boarded-up front window that faced the street, anonymous protesters had scrawled signs and slogans—THEY INVADED OUR RIGHTS, THERE IS ALL COLLEGE BOYS AND GIRLS IN HERE, LEGALIZE GAY BARS, SUPPORT GAY POWER—and newly emboldened same-gender couples were seen holding hands as they anxiously conferred about the meaning of these uncommon new assertions”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The police had left the Stonewall a shambles. Jukeboxes, mirrors, and cigarette machines lay smashed; phones were ripped out; toilets were plugged up and overflowing; and shards of glass and debris littered the floors.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Four big cops beat up a young queen so badly—there is evidence that the cops singled out “feminine boys”—that she bled simultaneously from her mouth, nose, and ears.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Pine lunged into the crowd, grabbed somebody around the waist, pulled him back into the doorway, and then dragged him by the hair, inside.46 Ironically, the prisoner was the well-known—and heterosexual—folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Earlier”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Pine later said, “I had been in combat situations, [but] there was never any time that I felt more scared than then.” With the cops holed up inside Stonewall, the crowd was now in control of the street, and it bellowed in triumph and pent-up rage.44”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“According to Beard, the cops had arrested the cross-dressed lesbian inside the bar for not wearing the requisite (as mandated by a New York statute) three pieces of clothing “appropriate to one’s gender.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Passing by the Stonewall Inn—a bar he despised, insistent it was a haven for marauding chicken hawks—Jim noticed a cluster of cops in front of the bar, looking as if they were about to enter. He shrugged it off as just another routine raid, and even found himself hoping that this time (Stonewall had been raided just two weeks before) the police would succeed in closing the joint. But as Jim got closer, he could see that a small group of onlookers had gathered. That was somewhat surprising, since the first sign of a raid usually led to an immediate scattering; typically, gays fled rather than loitered, and fled as quietly and as quickly as possible, grateful not to be implicated at the scene of the “crime.” Jim spotted Craig Rodwell at the top of the row of steps leading up to a brownstone adjacent to the Stonewall Inn. Craig looked agitated, expectant. Something was decidedly in the air.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“She had never been crazy about Stonewall, she reminded Tammy: Men in makeup were tolerated there, but not exactly cherished. And if she was going to go out, she wanted to vent—to be just as outrageous, as grief-stricken, as makeup would allow. But Tammy absolutely refused to take no for an answer and so Sylvia, moaning theatrically, gave in. She popped a black beauty and she and Gary headed downtown. •”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The first news they heard on returning was about Judy Garland’s funeral that very day, how twenty thousand people had waited up to four hours in the blistering heat to view her body at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home on Madison Avenue and Eighty-first Street. The news sent a melodramatic shiver up Sylvia’s spine, and she decided to become “completely hysterical.” “It’s the end of an era,” she tearfully announced. “The greatest singer, the greatest actress of my childhood is no more. Never again ‘Over the Rainbow’”—here Sylvia sobbed loudly—“no one left to look up to.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Chuck Shaheen, who spent much more time at Stonewall, remembers—while acknowledging that the bar was “98 percent male”—a few more lesbian customers than Sascha does, and, of those, a number who were decidedly femme. One of the lesbians who did go to Stonewall “a few times,” tagging along with some of her gay male friends, recalls that she “felt like a visitor”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The jukebox on the dance floor played a variety of songs, even an occasional “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” to appease the romantics. The Motown label was still top of the heap in the summer of 1969; three of the five hit singles for the week of June 28—by Marvin Gaye, Junior Walker, and the Temptations—carried its imprint. On the pop side, the Stonewall jukebox played the love theme from the movie version of Romeo and Juliet over and over, the record’s saccharine periodically cut by the Beatles’ “Get Back” or Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto.” And all the new dances—the Boston Jerk, the Monkey, the Spider—were tried out with relish. If the crowd was in a particularly campy mood (and the management was feeling loose enough), ten or fifteen dancers would line up to learn the latest ritual steps, beginning with a shouted “Hit it, girls!”28”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“The queens considered Stonewall and Washington Square the most congenial downtown bars. If they passed muster at the Stonewall door, they could buy or cajole drinks, exchange cosmetics and the favored Tabu or Ambush perfume, admire or deplore somebody’s latest Kanecalon wig, make fun of six-foot transsexual Lynn’s size-12 women’s shoes (while admiring her fishnet stockings and miniskirts and giggling over her tales of servicing the firemen around the corner at their Tenth Street station), move constantly in and out of the ladies room (where they deplored the fact that a single red light bulb made the application of makeup difficult), and dance in a feverish sweat till closing time at four A.M.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Some of the Mob members who worked gay clubs were themselves gay—and terrified of being found out.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Tony and his partners, Mario and Zucchi, had opened Stonewall as a private “bottle club.” That was a common ruse for getting around the lack of a liquor license; bottles would be labeled with fictitious names and the bar would then—contrary to a law forbidding bottle clubs from selling drinks—proceed to do a cash business just like any other bar. The three partners spent less than a thousand dollars in fixing up the club’s interior. They settled for a third-rate sound system, hired a local electrician and his assistant to build a bar and raise the dance-floor stage, and got their jukebox and cigarette machines—had to get them—from the local don, Matty “the Horse” Iannello.20 As the man who controlled the district in which Stonewall was located, Iannello was automatically entitled to a cut in the operation. Shaheen never once saw Iannello in Stonewall, nor did he ever meet him, but Matty the Horse got his percentage like clockwork. The Stonewall partners also had to pay off the notoriously corrupt Sixth Precinct. A patrolman would stop by Stonewall once a week to pick up the envelopes filled with cash—including those for the captains and desk sergeants, who never collected their payoffs in person. The total cash dispensed to the police each week came to about two thousand dollars.21”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America

“Craig also thought Stonewall was a haven for “chicken hawks”—adult males who coveted underage boys. Jim Fouratt shared that view. He characterized Stonewall as “a real dive, an awful, sleazy place set up by the Mob for hustlers, chickens to be bought by older people.”
― Martin Duberman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America