Heroes of Stonewall: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Last June, as you may recall, I did a whole series on the Heroes of Stonewall. Obviously, it was a massive riot, I couldn’t cover everyone who was there in just a month. I left out someone incredibly important (several someones), and I can’t think of a better time to cover the story of another transgender person of color who heroically led us at the Stonewall Riots, and afterwards, than right now — when the Trump administration is attacking the healthcare rights of transgender people.

Miss Major — can’t find a date for it but this is such a fantastic picture

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy was born in Chicago on October 25, 1940 in the south side of Chicago at St. Luke’s Hospital. She was assigned to the male gender at birth. It didn’t last too long — while she was still fairly young, she discovered the drag ball scene and began participating regularly. She later explained that, without the terminology we have today existing, she did not realize that she and her peers were questioning their gender identities. But they were, and Miss Major was fairly open about it. Her parents attempted to curb this, but eventually just kicked her out.

Afterwards, she was homelessness — getting by as best she could through sex work and the occasional theft. She transitioned, using hormones she purchased on the black market — something that became a booming business following the very public transition of Christine Jorgensen. She briefly had a job as a secretary for the Mattachine Society, but even that didn’t last too long.

After a run in with the law, and a six month bout in a mental institution, Miss Major moved to New York City. She became a performer at the famous Jewel Box Revue, as well as the Cherries and the Powder Puff Revue. (As an aside, I’m definitely a 90’s kid because I definitely first thought that was “Powerpuff” but it isn’t.) During these years she experimented with a handful of names, but settled on the one her parents had given her: Major. She simply added the word “Miss” in front of it.

Although many of the gay bars would not let her in, Miss Major became a frequent customer at the Stonewall Inn — probably at least in part because of her and Stormé DeLarverie‘s shared association with the Jewel Box Revue. She was there on the night of June 27, 1969 and stayed late enough to be present when the police raided the bar. She participated in the rioting on that first night, until she spit in the face off one of the police officers — he responded by knocking her out. She awoke the next day in a prison cell. While she was in police custody, her jaw was broken.

After the riot, Miss Major was deeply changed by the murder of a Puerto Rican transgender friend of hers known as Puppy. Despite plenty of evidence, the police ruled the murder was a suicide. She realized that transgender women of New York could not depend on anyone but each other — she began to build a network so that they could help protect each other. This was especially true of sex workers, who started trying to get their “johns” to exit the cars so that all of the girls could see them — just in case a girl never came back from a job.

She was arrested in 1970 for burglary after a safe-breaking job went wrong, and spent four years at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. He had a great deal of respect for Miss Major, and her gender identity, and he talked to her about how she could help her community. She spent a good amount of time in solitary confinement — she was imprisoned with men, and every time a fight broke out between her and any other inmate, she was the one who was punished. She was paroled twice — but both times the parole was revoked when her parole officer reported her for deviant behavior (once was for adopting a more feminine appearance by shaving her face, and the second time was for “entering a deviant bar.”) While incarcerated, she communicated regularly with Frank “Big Black” Smith — who had been in charge of security at the Attica Correctional Facility Riots of 1971. When she was finally released in 1974, she took those lessons to heart.

In 1978, Miss Major’s long-time girlfriend gave birth to their son Christopher. Miss Major decided the life she’d built in New York was not one well-suited for raising a child, she secured sole custody of Christopher and moved to San Diego. She would eventually adopted three other boys — runaways she met at a park. This was the start of a growing chosen family that still rallies around Miss Major to this day. She started working at a food bank and attempted to help transgender people who were in prison or recovering from addiction, but as the AIDS epidemic began to ravage the queer community of California, Miss Major turned her attention to helping provide healthcare and performing funerals. The silver lining for the epidemic, Miss Major later recalled, was that many transgender people — especially women — were able to find legitimate, legal jobs for the first time, even if that job was the heartbreaking task of providing healthcare to doomed queer people no one else wanted to touch.

In the mid 90’s, Miss Major moved to San Francisco. She continued her HIV/AIDS activism, including serving with the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center (TARC). As part of that organization, she ensured they had a refrigerator available so that homeless people could store food and medications at the center. She fought for them to acquire a washing machine and a dryer so homeless people in the community could do their laundry.

In 2003, Miss Major — who’s activism was returning more to its original focus on incarcerated transgender people — joined the newly founded Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGI Justice Project), and became the Executive Director. In this position, she is one of an estimated five people in the United States that is working full time towards equal transgender rights in prison. She has testified about human rights violations towards transgender people in prisons before both the California State Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva. One particular focus of her activism is on the healthcare that transgender inmates receive — they are sometimes denied everything from hormones to routine medical examinations. But, as she notes, transgender inmates face abuse in almost every aspect of prison life, and are overrepresented in prison populations (where they are typically housed with the incorrect gender).

Miss Major, Grand Marshall at San Francisco Pride

She has decried the gay rights movement for ignoring the plight of transgender people as they fought for equality — a sentiment that was shared deeply by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. (And frankly, shared by me too. It’s hard to argue with.) But Miss Major herself has continued to fight tirelessly for those the rest of society wanted to ignore. She’s known to have said: “Just because there’s this umbrella, LGBT, we’re all grouped together. But guess what? Someone poked a hole in the umbrella and the girls are still getting wet.”

And recently, although those sentiments still largely hold true, Miss Major herself has finally been getting attention for her decades of work. In 2014, Miss Major was made the Grand Marshall of the San Francisco Pride Parade. In 2015, the documentary MAJOR! was released, following Miss Major’s life as an activist.

More recently, in 2018 Miss Major has relocated from California to Little Rock, Arkansas. There, she has founded the Griffin-Gracy Historical Retreat and Educational Center — also known the House of GG. On July 4, 2019 Miss Major suffered a stroke — but survived and is recovering well enough that she has been engaged in Black Lives Matters protests within the past month according to her Instagram. If you want to help with her continued recovery or with her continued activisim for transgender and gender non-conforming people, a website has been set up for donations.

Miss Major and her daughter **Janetta Johnson**

While articles about Miss Major’s life and activism are plentiful, they all have anecdotes of Miss Major saving lives by simply being there, lending an ear, or offering advice and a good book. It’s little wonder so many have rallied around her, now often calling her “Mama Major” or “Grandma Major.” Janet Mock, a writer, director, and producer — one of the creators of the TV show Pose, once said, “Without Miss Major’s contributions and work, I would not exist.” There are countless transgender people in this country who say the same. That’s a tremendous legacy, but when asked what she hoped her legacy would be in a 2018 interview she said: “If ain’t right, fucking fix it, whatever it takes.”

And if that’s not a mantra for the whole world to adopt, I don’t know what is.

(PS, Miss Major also has a Facebook page you should totally follow.)

Stonewall: The Legacy

Today’s the day, everyone! Fifty years since the first night of the Stonewall uprising! Deciding what to write today was difficult, but I finally decided…. this is a pretty momentous occasion, especially for a queer history web site. So I’m going to talk about what sets Stonewall apart, and what lessons we learned 50 years ago that we can still be carrying with us today.

220px-Stonewall_riots

People always like to say that Stonewall was the start of the gay rights movement but if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that’s not strictly true. There had been organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis fighting for gay rights for decades. We’d already had riots like Compton’s Cafeteria, the Black Cat Riot, and Cooper’s Do-nuts, we’d already had protests like the Annual Reminders and the Dewey’s Sit-In. The gay rights movement was pretty well in effect by 1969.

So what made Stonewall so important? Why is that the moment that changed everything? Because that’s the first time we stood up against the people oppressing us together. The LGBTQIA+ community, even now, is rife with division and it was then too. The divisions were different, but they were there. The community was broken up into the “butch” gays — the “respectable” straight-passing men who could blend into mainstream society; the queens — basically any more effeminate gay men could fit into this group which was also divided up by drag queens, transvestites (who, now, we’d mostly call transgender women), street queens, and “scare queens.” There were similar divisions between lesbians — butch and femme, passing or not. And in all of those groups, of course, there was a division between the white people and the people of color.

But on June 28, 1969 none of those divisions in the queer community mattered. The divisions were still there, but it didn’t matter. We had each other’s back. Stonewall was mostly full of butch gays — and mostly white gays at that, and the police were letting most people who weren’t in the “wrong clothes for their sex” go free — but they didn’t leave, they stayed outside and watched and drew in a crowd. The street queens weren’t in the bar at all, they would have been fine — but they were the ones who started fighting back. Because — for maybe the first time ever — it wasn’t only about self-preservation. And for five nights of rioting, we all had each other’s backs. That’s what changed — that’s why we’re able to look at Stonewall as the beginning of something.

To me, that’s why Stonewall was so powerful and important. It showed that, as long as we are looking out for each other and working together, that there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.

We’re not yet at the bright future every single one of the heroes of Stonewall we’ve talked about this month — and all of the ones we haven’t talked about yet — had envisioned for us. But I can promise, that is how we’ll get there. Working together, as a community.

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I know this was like hokey and sappy or whatever, but it’s over now. Go celebrate!

Heroes of Stonewall: Tammy Novak

tammy_novack Gay nightlife in 1969 was something quite different from what it is today for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons was that they tended to be owned by organized crime families, rather than by actual queer people. While this didn’t usually work out in the favor of the customers, it was just fine with Tammy Novak.

Tammy Novak was 18 years old in 1969, and was living — as far as I can tell — fully transitioned into life as a woman. Typically, a transvestite (the popular word of the time) would only be allowed into a place like Stonewall Inn if they were wearing at least four articles of “gender appropriate” clothing — the minimum allowed by law. The idea was that by making sure everyone was “gender appropriate” it would minimize police attention (and that worked out so well, clearly…)

o-stonewall-facebook — Tammy Novak making out with some guy. Good for her.

But Novak had lived with Fat Tony of the Genovese crime family — the owners of Stonewall Inn — and so she was allowed to come and go as she pleased, no matter what she was wearing. She was also friendly with Chuck Shasheen, who ran the bar.

It was because of these connections that Tammy was in the bar when it was raided by the police on June 28, 1969 — and she immediately caught the attention of the police. There’s some (kind of unreliable) eyewitness testimonies that Tammy was on a lot of drugs that night, and seemed not to realize what was going on until the shouting outside of the bar snapped her out of it. She was almost in the police wagon (that drag queens were being loaded into) at this point, but turned and swung at the police — she made an escape attempt.

This — like so many other moments — was claimed by some to be the moment that sparked the riots, but with the shouting being a pretty key part of the story, my guess is this was happening just after or around the same time that Stormé Delarverie was being arrested. During the confusion that followed, Tammy made her escape. She took refuge in the apartment of drag performer Joe Tish.

There doesn’t appear to be any record of what happened to Tammy after the riots. This is partially because she wasn’t the only Tammy Novak in New York in 1969 — the other Tammy Novak was a performer at a place called 82 Club, and was not involved in the riots in any way, but it does make it more confusing when you’re trying to find out what happened to this Tammy Novak.

Heroes of Stonewall: Zazu Nova

tumblr_o9k403okov1v6m5vmo1_1280 — Zazu Nova at a GLF meeting in 1970

The third name given by eyewitnesses at the Stonewall riots for the person who may have thrown the legendary “first brick” was Zazu (sometimes “Zasou“) Nova — and if I had to put money down on one of them, this is who I would pick. The sad thing is, there’s just not a ton of information about her and her name is often left out of conversations about the riots altogether.

Nova was a transvestite (in the common lingo of the day) and a sex worker on the streets of Greenwich Village in 1969. Nova had given herself the title “Queen of Sex” and was known to carry herself as though she were actually royalty. Nova was a practicing Unitarian, and was said to be quite proud of having a religious upbringing. It was rumored Nova had spent time in prison for murder — and though it’s definitely true that she’d been in prison, the why is all conjecture.

Whether or not Nova was a murderer, she was definitely a badass. One anecdote shared in the book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter (and coincidentally one of the only places to get information on Nova or on Jackie Hormona from their lives before the riots) relates that she and a man named Martin Boyce were about to get jumped by five men, when she pulled a heavy chain out of her purse and chased the five men away.

Now, Zazu Nova was not inside the Stonewall Inn when the police raided it. But Nova frequently worked Christopher Street, and the raid drew quite a crowd. Nova was absolutely present at the start of the riots, and absolutely had the, let’s say, gumption to react to the police abusing Stormé Delarverie. She was later seen fighting alongside Marsha P. Johnson that first night — which might explain how some witnesses believed that it was in fact Johnson who threw the brick even though she wasn’t there yet.

It’s very difficult to find much about Nova following the riots. She became involved in the Gay Liberation Front that was founded after the riots. She was also a founding member of New York Gay Youth and was involved in Street Action Transvestite Revolutionaries, the organization started by Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — though I can’t find exactly to what extent. What became of her after those organizations fizzled out, I truly cannot find.

And that’s it. That is all that I could find about someone who may be one of the greatest heroes of the modern LGBTQ+ movement.

Heroes of Stonewall: Jackie Hormona

boytree I wish this article was going to be longer, but I have honestly scoured the internet for more information on this person, and I have almost nothing. Nevertheless, Jackie Hormona contributed the Stonewall riots — and he should be acknowledged for what he did.

Rumors flurried about who began the actual riots outside the bar. Legend has it that a queen threw the first brick, right after Stormé Delarverie was forced into the back of a police wagon. In the confusion, eye witnesses recounted three different queens in that action — Marsha P. Johnson became the most popular of these names — probably because she was already the most well known, but by her own recounting of the event she wasn’t there yet. The other two were Jackie Hormona and Zazu Nova.

It’s honestly proven very difficult to get any other information about these two. Jackie Hormona’s birth name might have been Jack Daniel Whitehall (I say that because I saw that written not very definitively on a not a very reliable website, but it’s the only other name I’ve found.) Jackie was a sex worker who regularly hustled on Christopher Street. Though Jackie used a drag name, Jackie wasn’t exactly a drag queen — he wore subtle make up to enhance his looks. He had a reputation for being much more level-headed than the other queens — and moral. He would break up fights, he would stop the street workers from stealing from each other, but he also stood up against the police when they harassed the local street queens. But Jackie also had a reputation as being kind of a loner and keeping a distance from the rest of the queers on the streets of Greenwich Village, which is why there’s not a lot more information I can find.

220px-Stonewall_riots — See that blond over on the left? That’s Jackie Hormona!

Jackie was definitely at the riots on the first night. We know this because he appears in a very famous picture that I guarantee you’ve seen. In fact, it’s already been on this site once!

I will say, I don’t personally think Jackie Hormona was the one who threw the “first brick” (if that’s even a thing that happened and not just legend that came out of this) because most witnesses who were there and saw it claimed it was a drag queen. And while Jackie was certainly associated with drag queens, street queens, and transgender women, he would have been hard to actually mistake for one if you saw him throwing a brick. I think his reputation for standing up to the police led some people to believe, when they saw him there, that he must have started things off. Which is not unreasonable. Even if that’s not the case, though, I’m quite sure he jumped right in.

tumblr_orpokpsdpc1rhe0jeo1_400 — Jackie Hormona, all the way on the right, marching with the Gay Liberation Front in Times Square

Jackie also became quite involved with the Gay Liberation Front that formed after the Stonewall riots. There are two pictures of him with GLF banners (both in this article!). After that I can’t find much of anything except that he may have been one of the victims of the AIDS epidemic.

Heroes of Stonewall: Stormé DeLarverie

obit-delarverie-articlelarge — Photo Credit: New York Times

Sometimes called “the Rosa Parks of the gay community,” Stormé DeLarverie was a butch lesbian who’s arrest is often credited as the moment that sparked the Stonewall Riots — despite being quite adamant that “it was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience – it wasn’t no damn riot.”

DeLarverie was born in 1920 to a white man and a black woman — who worked as a servant for her father’s family. DeLarverie’s exact date of birth was never exactly known, so she celebrated it on December 24. (I’m not sure why you’d pick that if you’re given a choice, but I guess we can’t all have June birthdays…) As a kid, DeLarverie was bullied constantly. In her teenage years, she joined the circus — getting a job riding jumping horses for Ringling Brothers Circus, until she was injured in a fall and was unable to resume the work.

DeLarverie realized she was a lesbian around the age of 18. She entered into a relationship with a dancer named Diana, who she was with for about 25 years until Diana’s death in the ’70s. DeLarverie carried a photo of Diana with her for the rest of her life.

storme_delarverie_no_photo_c In 1955, began touring as the MC and the only drag king in the Jewel Box Revue — the first racially integrated drag show, appearing regularly at the Apollo Theater. Audience members would attempt to “guess the girl,” ultimately being surprised during a song entitled “Surprise with a Song” that the girl was actually DeLarverie, who was often sporting a mustache and a tailored suit. DeLarverie was noted particularly for having a strinkingly handsome appearance as a boy — which inspired a lot of other lesbians of the time to begin wearing traditionally masculine clothing as well. Her career as a performer would be explored in the 1987 documentary Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box.

DeLarverie continued performing with the Jewel Box Revue until 1969, becoming quite well known and influential in drag culture. 1969, however, was the year the most truly secured her place in queer history. DeLarverie was at the Stonewall Inn working as a bouncer when the police raid began in the early morning hours. Although resistance to the raid truly started inside the bar itself, the real riot on the street is often said to have begun with a woman many have identified as DeLarverie. She was brought out of the bar and through the crowd outside several times, but kept escaping — at least once by punching an officer (which she, according to friend Lisa Cannistraci, believed was the first punch of the riot.) At some point, DeLarverie was hit in the head by an officer’s baton and began to bleed from the wound — she struggled and complained that her handcuffs were too tight, before looking to the crowd and asking “Why don’t you guys do something?” At this point, the police officers picked up DeLarverie and hurled her into the back of the police wagon — and the crowd erupted. (It was at this moment that the legendary “first brick” was thrown.)

Now, it hasn’t been confirmed that DeLarverie was actually the woman that that story is about — but it has been absolutely confirmed that she was there and was one of several butch lesbians fighting against the police. In truth, it’s entirely likely that the above story did happen, and no one’s name but DeLarverie’s has ever been put forth for it, but there probably wasn’t just one inciting incident that sparked the riots — a number of things were happening simultaneously that cumulatively led to the uprising.

The riots transformed DeLarverie, who became a fierce activist and a protector of the LGBTQIA+ community afterwards. She had a state gun permit, and was known to patrol the neighborhoods around lesbian bars looking for intolerance or, as she described it, “ugliness” against her community. She was a regular staple at the Pride parades and rallies that followed after Stonewall, and also acted as a bouncer at several lesbian bars until she was 85 years old. Meanwhile, she also continued to perform, often putting on benefits for abused women and children and volunteered for queer organizations and charities as well.

She was also a well-respected member of the Stonewall Veterans Association, holding several offices there including Chief of Security and Ambassador. She also served as Vice President from 1998 to 2000.

stormebysambassett1 — Photo by Sam Bassett

In 2010, DeLarverie moved into a nursing home in Brooklyn. With dementia setting in, she did not know she was living in a nursing home but she retained her memories of the Stonewall Riots and her childhood. On June 7, 2012 Brooklyn Pride Inc. honored her at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, where they also aired the 1987 documentary about her. Two years later on April 24, the Brooklyn Community Pride Center honored DeLarverie “for her fearlessness and bravery.” One month — to the day — later, DeLarverie died in her Brooklyn nursing home from a heart attack at 94 years old.

DeLarverie led a long life, but her legacy with the LGBTQIA+ community will continue for many many years to come. Every time there is ugliness against this community, I hope you hear her asking that question that changed the course of history for queer people everywhere: “Why don’t you guys do something?”

Stonewall Riots

I’m sure almost everyone reading this site already knows about what is arguably the single biggest turning point in LGBT+ history: the Stonewall riots. Buckle up, this one is long but it couldn’t be more important.

First, let’s talk about the Stonewall Inn itself. The Stonewall Inn was (and is, to this day) located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York. It was owned by members of the Genovese crime family because, backtracking a bit, during Prohibition when the sale of alcohol was forced to go underground, organized crime had essentially taken over the gay bar industry. There really weren’t any gay-owned and operated nightlife establishments, not like we see now. On the one hand, this was good because that meant the police were often paid not to raid these bars — on the other hand, it meant that the owners of these operations were only in it for the money and so they overcharged for watered down drinks and generally treated their customers badly. In fact, it’s theorized that the owners of Stonewall were making more money off of blackmailing their wealthier regulars than from their liquor sales. But their customers did not have many other places to go. Some of the patrons of the club were homeless, gay eighteen year-olds who literally had nowhere else to go. For them, Stonewall wasn’t just a bar — it was home. In every sense of the word.

To prevent any cops from coming into the establishment, a bouncer peered through a peephole at anyone trying to come in. Anyone who was permitted in either needed to “look gay” or be someone the bouncer recognized. All visitors had to write their names in a guest log, although it was very rare for anyone to use their real name. On weekends, there was a $3 cover charge that came with two drink tickets. (The 1960’s definition of “overcharging for drinks” is not the same as our modern definition of “overcharging for drinks”. If I get a drink ticket with my cover charge, I am extremely happy. Especially on a Saturday night!) If a cop was spotted, bright white lights would turn on — the bar was kept intentionally as dark as possible, but these lights would signal that everyone needed to stop dancing together and stop touching at all.

Police raids were increasingly common in the period leading up to June 28 1969, but the Genovese crime family was always — up to that point — tipped off before a raid happened. At 1:20 am, however, they discovered that there was a first time for everything. Detective Charles Smythe and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine arrived at the door with four plainclothes officers and two uniformed patrolmen, banged on the door and shouted “Police! We’re taking the place!” The Genoveses had not been tipped off, which they would later learn was because the raid was actually ordered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, who suspected them of bootlegging their liquor (correctly, I might add.) There were also four undercover police (two male and two female) who were already inside the bar.

From the beginning, the raid did not go as planned. In a typical raid, the patrons were lined up and asked to show their identification, and anyone dressed as a female was sent to the bathrooms with a female officer in order to verify their sex. (Why, yes, that was as invasive as it sounds!) The patrons of the bar refused to line up — some attempted to flee from the bar immediately, but the police blocked off the doors. Others lined up but refused to present their IDs, and still others refused to go to the bathrooms with female officers. Some of the lesbians present were inappropriately touched while being frisked by male police officers.

The police decided that they were simply going to make arrests of anyone who did not cooperate. The patrol wagons hadn’t arrived yet, so the police lined up the people they were arresting. The patrons who were not being arrested were released by the front door. Instead of leaving, however, they waited and watched. A crowd began to form, which quickly grew to be over 100 people in size. Deputy Inspector Pine would later say it was “ten times the number of people being arrested”. The crowd began singing “We Shall Overcome” and shouting “Gay Power!” and other various catchphrases to deter the police from their current course. As the patrol wagons arrived, pennies and beer bottles were thrown at them.

The police attempted to force a woman into one of the arriving wagons — by most accounts she was “typical New York butch” Stormé DeLarverie. She was clubbed over the head for complaining her handcuffs were too tight — and that set her off. She fought four police officers for ten minutes, before looking at the crowd and saying “Why don’t you guys do something?” At that point, she was tossed into the patrol wagon — but they were too late. She’d struck the match.

A_photo_of_Marsha_P._Johnson — Marsha P. Johnson

The popular version of events holds that Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick — which would have been right at this moment. Johnson’s own telling of the events says she wasn’t there until about an hour and a half later — after she’d heard about the riot, she went to find her friend Sylvia Rivera before joining in. The other two names often given for the possible “first brick thrower were Jackie Hormona (also unlikely, in my opinion) and Zazu Nova (that’s who my money is on!) There are countless different versions of what happened, depending on who you ask. There was no organization except — according to Michael Fader, who was present — “a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit.” According to various accounts, including Fader’s, there was a feeling in the air that this night was going to change things and “we were never going to go back”. That could not have been more true.

nypl-digitalcollections-510d47e3-af36-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99-001-w_bcdb76b01c2deda621751d69bdbcee4f.focal-760x380 — Sylvia Rivera

The police were ultimately forced back into the bar by the crowd, where they were essentially captives. Garbage was set on fire and forced through the windows of the bar. The NYPD’s Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) was called in, in order to help free the stranded police officers and get them medical treatment (which a few of them needed). The TPF also tried to clear the streets by forming a phalanx and pushing the crowd back — but the crowd made a joke of it. They formed a kick line in response to the police’s formation. Those in the kick line sang a parody of the popular vaudeville song “Ta-ra–ra Boom-de-day” with lyrics that went “We are the Stonewall girls/We wear our hair in curls/We don’t wear underwear/We show off our pubic hair.” The TPF did not appreciate the humor, and launched into a full-scale assault on the kick line, hitting them with nightsticks and bats.

That enraged the crowd even more. The mob started chasing the police, flipping cars, By four in the morning, however, the streets had been cleared. News of the riot appeared in several local papers, and rumors flew about what had caused them. That night, the riots picked up again — many people came back from the night before, but this time they were joined by activists who had been present, by people who enjoyed provoking the police, and even by some tourists. Thousands of people gathered outside the Stonewall Inn. Accounts vary on which night was more violent but there was one notable change — homosexual men and women were making out with each other openly on the street. One witness described it: “From going to places where you had to knock on a door and speak to someone through a peephole in order to get in. We were just out. We were in the streets.” Traffic trying to get through Christopher Street was stopped, with cars and buses being blocked and harassed until the occupants would announce their support for the demonstrators. Police cars were vandalized. More than a hundred police officers were sent — but every time someone would get arrested, the mob would rush out and recapture them from the police. By 4 am, the second night of rioting had died down.

For the next several nights, there were smaller altercations between police and the LGBT community in New York City. Less than a week later, a bus was chartered to get activists from New York safely to Philadelphia for what would be the last of the Annual Reminders. Following the riots, many of the people present became members of the newly formed Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in order to further fight for equality for the queer community.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)