THE MOB AND THE MOVEMENT
In hindsight: How events at Stonewall Inn are remembered illustrates how popular narratives shape commemorations and social movements.
As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of 1968 this year, plans are already underway to celebrate a significant 50th anniversary next year: the 50th anniversary of Stonewall Inn.
On June 28, 1969, New York Police Department deputy inspector Seymour Pine led a raid on the small bar in Greenwich Village. The officers confiscated cases of beer and liquor and evacuated the venue’s approximately 200 patrons. Instead of disbanding, however, the patrons rallied in the street, forming a crowd that eventually doubled in size. Angry that police had disrupted one of the few venues wherein gay men and women could congregate freely, the group confronted the officers.
The men threw “bricks, bottles, garbage, pennies and a parking meter” at the police, according to a tiny column on page 33 of the next day’s New York Times. As shouting escalated into violence, the night ended with the injury of four police officers, the arrest of 13 people, and what is now generally considered the birth of the gay liberation movement.
The anniversary commemorations next year will undoubtedly feature the theme of “Pride,” a word now recognized globally as being associated with LGBTQ culture. This branding connotes self-affirmation and the power to express gender and sexuality freely. But what “Pride” gains in brevity and inclusivity, it loses in conveying the depth of the history behind events such as Stonewall. In fact, in recent years, “Pride parades” have become the subject of criticism for being too much of a mainstream event. Some within the movement have argued that pride has become too redundant, too successful, and too corporate. This disconnect has been at the heart of the evolving narrative around Stonewall in which critical aspects of the event’s history are manipulated to fit into a tidier narrative.
As the narrative around Stonewall has evolved, aspects of the event’s history have been manipulated to fit into a tidier narrative.
As an example, the narrative around Stonewall often excludes the role that the New York mafia played in the raid and subsequent protests. The Stonewall Inn operated as a private club run by “Fat Tony” Lauria. A member of the Genovese family, Lauria recognized that patrons from the gay community had limited options for nightlife and socializing. As such, he invested very few resources into Stonewall; the bar was known for being dingy and dangerous, with no running water nor an emergency exit.
In the days following the riot, Howard Smith, a writer for the Village Voice, wrote a cover story about Stonewall titled the “Full Moon Over The Stonewall.” (In contrast to the Times, the Voice dedicated two cover stories to the incident). Smith chronicled the experiences of the police officers inside the club, describing their initial encounters with the crowd as “explosive.” But his description of those that returned to the Inn the following evening was jovial and lighthearted. He reported the crowd members chanting lyrics such as,
“We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We have no underwear
We show our pubic hairs!”
The chant suggests the actions following the raid to be irreverent and theatrical, more party than protest.
In the Voice’s other cover story, “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square”, writer Lucian Truscott IV, described the club owners in more ominous language. “’C’mon in and see what da pigs done to us,’” Truscott reports the owners “growling” at passers-by. “‘We’re honest businessmen here. We’re American boys. There ain’t nuttin bein’ done wrong in dis place.’” While the article does not explicitly call the owners Italian mobsters, its articulation of their accents hints at their true personas.
Smith’s reporting echoes this description of the Inn owners. “As for the rough-talking owners and/or managers of the Stonewall,” he writes, “their riff ran a something like this: we are just honest businessmen who are being harassed by the police because we cater to homosexuals, and because our names are Italian so they think we are part of something bigger.”
With this sentence, Smith introduces the narrative of potential discrimination by the police against the owners for their suspected mafia involvement. Smith later reinforces this sub-narrative by reporting that the police denied persecuting the homosexual community. Rather, the police stated that during similar raids, customers were rarely arrested; most convictions targeted management and club staff.
The reporting by both journalists suggests the significance of the mafia men — and their voices — in both the raid and protests. Perhaps even more indicative of the roles the mafia men played is the front-page photograph printed in the July 3 Village Voice: boarded-up windows of the Stonewall Inn with graffiti that reads “GAY PROHIBITION CORUPT$ COP$ FEED$ MAFIA [sic].” The graffiti positions gay liberation as a counter-movement to police corruption and organized crime. It redirects the criminal activity targeted by the raid — homosexuality — toward the mafia, a recognizable villain in contemporary American culture. It links anti-queer bigotry to larger societal ills such as police corruption and organized crime.
The NYPD responded to this type of protest by repeatedly emphasizing that the raid was carried out with the intention of eliminating an outfit of organized crime. In this way, the police attempted to avoid being viewed as having anti-queer biases. By focusing on the actions of the mafia, the police claimed a role within the narrative of Stonewall’s history not as either for or against LGBTQ persons, but as opposed to the ruthless crime families that ran New York’s seedy underbelly. The patrons of gay clubs and bars found themselves caught in the crossfire.
One year after the first parking meter was thrown outside Stonewall, thousands marched from Greenwich Village to Central Park to celebrate the anniversary of the riots and to proclaim, “the new strength and pride of the gay people.” Micahel Kotis, the president of the Mattachine Society, a non-profit organization that advocated for the repeal of laws discriminating against gay people, was quoted as crediting the “battle” that took place at the Stonewall Inn for “the gay people [having] discovered their potential strength and [gaining] a new pride.” Widely recognized as the first Gay Pride parade, this anniversary event arguably played a greater role in branding the gay liberation movement than did the riots at Stonewall. But the event also reflected a decision to tell a different history of that iconic event. The newly-minted parade departed from the narrative inscribed onto the boarded windows of Stonewall a year before, away from a club linked to mafia owners.
Narrative plays a critical role in the success or failure of social movements. How we choose to reconstruct memories of historical moments does more than shape the public perception of the movement and its objectives. It also affects how members of the movement see themselves; a process worthy of study in anniversary years as much as the events themselves.
Claire Hoffman is a History and Classics double major at Villanova University, and one of two inaugural History Communication Fellows at the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.
