QUIZ 8

What Was Your Stonewall? Pivotal L.G.B.T.Q. Moments Across the U.S.

By Scott James, The New York Times, June 23, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/us/stonewalls-across-us- lgbtq.html?action=click&module=Associated&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Pride%202019

The uprising at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 inspired a movement, but there were other early milestones in the struggle for

L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Here are some examples:

Los Angeles, California, May 1959

Cooper Donuts, on a seedy stretch of Main Street in Los Angeles, was one of the few places that welcomed gay

street hustlers, drag queens and transgender people.

The local police, however, were not so kind.

“They interrogate you, fingerprint you without booking you: an illegal L.A. cop-tactic to scare you from hanging

around,” wrote the author John Rechy, a regular at the shop, in his 1963 novel City of Night.

In May 1959 two police officers conducted their latest roundup at the shop, which included Mr. Rechy, and the

crowd revolted and pelted the officers with coffee, doughnuts, trash and utensils.

They “fled into their car, called backups, and soon the street was bustling with disobedience. Gay people danced

about the cars,” Mr. Rechy later said.

Historians consider Cooper Donuts to be the first L.G.B.T.Q. uprising in modern history, but Mr. Rechy said anyone

who was openly gay back then was in rebellion, “many at the time risking years of imprisonment.” Both homosexuality

and cross dressing were illegal.

“Each act of protest bolsters the next one pushing for equal rights — and respect,” Mr. Rechy said in an email.

Charlotte, North Carolina, December 1961

The Charlotte Observer described Maxine Doyle Perkins as a “public nuisance” — a “hopeless homosexual” born a

male named Max who dressed female.

In 1961 Ms. Perkins was charged with having sex with a man. She wore a dress to court and was sentenced to up to

30 years in prison.

Two years later her conviction was overturned for lack of a fair trial.

In a landmark ruling, Judge James Braxton Craven of Federal District Court questioned the severity of North

Carolina’s laws, which he noted were based on statutes from the court of King Henry VIII in 1533.

“Are homosexuals twice as dangerous to society as second-degree murderers — as indicated by the maximum

punishment for each offense?” Judge Craven asked.

The judge also thought prison was not much of a punishment for Ms. Perkins, adding that being confined with so

many men “is a little like throwing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch.”

The ruling received news media coverage, including from Time magazine, and in 1965 state lawmakers reduced jail

sentences for homosexuality to between four months and 10 years.

At a new trial Ms. Perkins dressed as a man and was acquitted.

Columbus, Ohio, October 1964

Just giving a party for gay people in Columbus in 1964 was against the law.

So it was an act of defiance when David Zimmer, Orn Huntington and others organized what would become an

annual Halloween drag ball.

“Businesses with a known gay clientele were usually subject to police harassment or raids, sometimes under the

auspices of health code violations or permit violations,” said Eric Feingold, history curator at the Ohio History

Connection, the state’s historical society.

Invitation-only guests to the ball called an anonymous pay phone for

the location, and were locked inside for the event in order to keep the

police out, creating a rare safe space for the area’s L.G.B.T.Q. community.

Eventually the ball became a showcase for drag culture and fund-

raiser during the AIDS epidemic. Today Columbus hosts one of the largest

Pride celebrations in the Midwest.

David Zimmer during a performance at the 1972 Berwick

Ball, Columbus, Ohio. Credit: Ohio History Connection

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 1965

John S. James, third from left, at a gay rights demonstration in Philadelphia

on July 4, 1965. He feared that he might lose his government job if he was

photographed, but this photo was not widely circulated and his career was

not affected. Credit: Equality Forum, via Associated Press

One of the earliest organized public demonstrations for

gay rights took place at the cradle of American democracy,

Independence Hall, on July 4, 1965.

Gay men and lesbians, in suits and ties and dresses,

politely marched with signs reading, “Homosexuals Ask For

Equality Before the Law.”

“The gay community really had a bad public image at that

time,” said John S. James, one of the nearly 40 marchers. The

formal attire communicated respectability, but the risks to

demonstrators were enormous.

“I had asked not to be photographed,” Mr. James said.

Being publicly identified as a homosexual could mean being

fired.

This was no idle threat. In 1953 President Dwight D.

Eisenhower banned homosexuals from working in the federal

government.

Even scientists, like the astronomer Frank Kameny, were

fired when their orientation became known. Mr. James had

just begun his career at the National Institutes of Health as a computer programmer.

But a news photographer had indeed taken a picture. However, it was not widely circulated, and Mr. James’s career

continued unhindered.

Decades later Mr. James became the publisher of “AIDS Treatment News,” a vital news source during the epidemic,

a future that could have been threatened had he been outed in 1965.

New York City, New York, April 1966

After pouring their drinks, a bartender in Julius’s bar refuses to serve

John Timmins, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell and Randy Wicker,

members of the Mattachine Society, who were protesting unwritten

New York State policy that prevented serving gay customers.

Credit: Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

It was the unwritten law of the New York State

Liquor Authority in the 1960s that homosexuals were

inherently “disorderly,” and to serve them alcohol

meant a bar could lose its liquor license.

“Restaurant and bar owners were afraid of being

closed by the police, because if you had the gay people

in it, the cops would come and close it. So they put signs

up saying, ‘If you’re gay, don’t come here,’” Dick Leitsch

said in a videotaped interview with the L.G.B.T.Q. history bank Outwords Archive before his death last year. In April 1966

Mr. Leitsch was president of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights organization.

Inspired by sit-ins by black protesters at segregated lunch counters in the South, Mr. Leitsch and his Mattachine

colleagues conducted a “sip-in” at Julius’ bar in Greenwich Village.

“We had heard that Julius’ refused to serve gays. So we went in, we sat down and said, ‘We’re homosexuals.’ And

the waiter said, ‘I can’t serve you.’ And there was a photographer. He got a picture of him, and that’s how we got that

famous picture,” Mr. Leitsch said.

The “sip-in” received attention as one of the earliest acts of L.G.B.T.Q. civil disobedience, including an article on the

front page of The New York Times with the headline “3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars.” After the publicity the liquor

authority relented.

San Francisco, California, August 1966

Gene Compton’s cafeteria in San Francisco, circa 1966. A fight

between patrons and the police there is considered one of the

first acts of “militant queer resistance.” Credi: tHenri Leleu

Collection/Courtesy of GLBT Historical Society

A policeman’s manhandling was the final straw on

a hot summer night at Gene Compton’s cafeteria.

The diner was a beloved retreat for drag queens,

transgender people and gay denizens of the area’s

tough Tenderloin neighborhood, where many

subsisted on drugs and prostitution and were

routinely arrested on charges of cross dressing.

Tensions had been building for weeks following a

protest for rights. So when the police conducted a

raid, and an officer grabbed one of the women, she

threw her coffee in his face.

The diner erupted in violence. As many as 60 patrons pummeled the police with anything they could throw.

Windows were smashed, fighting seeped into the streets, a police car was destroyed and a newsstand set ablaze.

Compton’s is considered one of the first acts of “militant queer resistance,” Susan Stryker, a professor of gender and

women’s studies at the University of Arizona, said in her 2005 documentary “Screaming Queens,” which brought details

of the riot to light.

The incident is also considered the historical start of the transgender rights movement, but it did not spread or gain

notoriety.

“Compton’s and Stonewall had the same spark,” Ms. Stryker said. “It was state-sanctioned violence by the police

against sexual and gender minorities. But there simply wasn’t enough tinder, so to speak, in 1966. Unlike Stonewall

where you had the same spark and it turns into a conflagration.”

Huntington Park, California, October 1968

Troy Perry in the Metropolitan Community Church in 1973 after it was damaged by a fire of

suspicious origin. Credit: Anthony Friedkin

At the first service of the Metropolitan Community Church, the

scripture featured long-suffering Job. Pastor Troy Perry knew the story all

too well.

Mr. Perry had been a religious prodigy, preaching at 13. In an effort to

combat his homosexuality, he married a minister’s daughter, had two sons,

and moved to a church in California.

When he could no longer hide that he was gay, Mr. Perry was

excommunicated, divorced, and his wife took off with their children. Later,

after a failed relationship, he slit his wrists in his bathtub.

Mr. Perry was saved by his roommate, and when he awoke in a nearby

hospital he said he heard the voice of God say, “I love you, and I don’t have

stepsons and daughters.”

“It dawned on me, after a few months, that if God loved me, God had

to love other gay people,” Mr. Perry said.

So he started his own church — one that welcomed gays and lesbians

and fought for progressive causes. The first service had 12 people in his

living room.

Today the church is celebrating 50 years with more than 220 branches

in 33 nations, but along the way it has endured harassment, arson, and the slayings of eight clergy members.

“The end of Job’s story is that God gave him back more than he had ever owned,” Mr. Perry said.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 1971

Donna Burkett, then 25, and Manonia Evans, 21, knew they

would be confronting the government when they walked into the

Milwaukee County Clerk’s office.

The two African-American women asked for a license to legally

marry. When denied they began one of nation’s first battles for

marriage equality.

“It is already a given right through the Constitution,” Ms.

Burkett told local station WTMJ-TV in 1971.

The women took their case to court. They lost, and the harsh

publicity surrounding the controversy (“Jet” magazine deridingly

described who was the man and who was the woman in the

relationship) helped break the couple apart.

Manonia Evans, 21, left, and Donna Burkett, 25, in Milwaukee in 1971. They

applied for a marriage license, and when they were refused, unsuccessfully

appealed in court. Credit: Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.

Ms. Burkett, contacted by phone in May, said her actions were not heroic. “Why does anyone care about that? It

was so long ago,” she said.

Others see it differently.

Five years ago the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center gave Ms. Burkett an award for her courage.

Houston, Texas, July 1975

Ray Hill in 1978 in Houston. He started the radio

program “Wilde ’N’ Stein,” one of the nation’s earliest

broadcasts for L.G.B.T.Q. listeners. “What I had in mind

was to build community with radio,” he said. Credit:

Courtesy JD Doyle/Houston LGBT History

Ray Hill was a teenager in 1958 in

Houston when he came out as gay to his

parents.

“They were afraid I might grow up to be

a Republican,” Mr. Hill later said. “But if I

was gay, they could handle that.”

His profession was another matter. Mr.

Hill became a burglar and went to prison.

When he was released in 1975 he noticed how many gays and lesbians in Texas lived in fear.

“They’re all in their closets. They’re all scared,” Mr. Hill told the Outwords Archive shortly before his death last year.

So Mr. Hill started the radio program “Wilde ’N’ Stein” (referring to Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein) on KPFT-FM,

one of the nation’s earliest broadcasts for L.G.B.T.Q. listeners. “What I had in mind was to build community with radio,”

he said.

The conversation was not universally welcomed. Mr. Hill said he became “the guy that talks about being gay, and I

open the phones.”

Later, he became the station’s manager and, as an openly gay man and an ex-convict, challenged the Federal

Communications Commission’s provision that such positions could only go to people of “good moral character.” He also

fought to reform the justice system.

“His legacy of unrepentant rabble-rousing made Texas a more welcome place for the underdog,” wrote journalist

Renée Feltz in the “Texas Observer” at the time of Mr. Hill’s death.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, 1970s and 1981

Beginning in the 1970s dozens of groups of lesbians, determined to separate themselves from the male-dominated

world, bought properties across rural America, often in the Bible Belt, and set up their own self-sufficient communities

called “womyn’s lands.”

Diana Rivers founded the Ozark Land Holding Association in 1981, on 240 acres with a mountain and creek, near

Fayetteville, built around the idea of “women living on land that we have control over,” Ms. Rivers said.

“We didn’t go out and advertise,” she said. “We didn’t go around the neighborhood saying, ‘This is a lesbian

community moving in next to you.’”

But the women did not hide either.

They marched in the earliest Pride parades in Fayetteville. “I remember gay pride when 10 of us would go out

walking down the street,” Ms. Rivers said, “hoping no one would throw a rock at us.”

Now thousands attend Fayetteville’s Pride celebrations and “the street is jammed with people cheering and waving

and carrying on,” Ms. Rivers said.

And the locals appear to accept Ms. Rivers’ settlement, and some matter-of-factly call it “Dyke Mountain.”