The riots that shook New York in June 1969, following a police raid on an underground gay bar in Greenwich, the Stonewall Inn, are often presented in the United States as the starting point of the struggle for gay rights. The strength of the documentary directed by Mathilde Fassin is to place these events in the history of a larger movement, which led to Gay Pride, the “pride march”, now organized each year in many cities across the world.
“Bar raids, there were before and there were raids after the Stonewall Inn,” says Karla Jay, a lesbian “in the closet”, witness to the time when “it was forbidden to serve drinks to homosexuals, because [they] were criminals”. Between the 1920s and 1960s, “tens of thousands of men were arrested in New York for homosexual solicitation”, abounds the historian George Chauncey, recognized specialist in gay and lesbian studies.
All the bars with gay customers bribed the police to turn a blind eye. “Either they belonged to the mafia or they were protected by it,” says Karla Jay. For customers, fear dominates. That of losing your job, of seeing your friends move away, of breaking up with your family, of being controlled by the police who harass them.
Account of the witnesses
In this repressive context, what happened on the night of June 28, 1969 that was different for the community to rise up? “All the anger, frustration and pain that we had been repressing for years because of the social straitjacket suddenly exploded,” said a witness. Customers checked are kicked out, but refuse to leave the premises and return the following nights. It’s the police’s turn to feel “threatened” by these individuals who throw lighter fluid on the facade of the Stonewall Inn, sing, dance and throw “small change” to expose the hypocrisy of the pots -of-wine.
“The specificity of these riots is that they gave birth to a movement,” said activist Ellen Broidy, who was there those nights. A political movement, which is structured to demand equal rights and celebrates with a march, the following year, its own birth. “Blacks, drag queens and transgender people didn’t want to be walked all over anymore,” says George Chauncey. Drawing inspiration from contemporary feminist and anti-racist movements, the gay community is politicizing its fight.
Through the accounts of the witnesses, enriched with archival footage and elements of historical context provided by George Chauncey, this documentary sheds light on the “mythology” of the Stonewall events and places them in the cycle of struggles to which they belong, by evoking the homosexual fights before 1969, then those after.
