Beyond Stonewall: The Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier and Gay Liberation

Gay organizing in Buffalo, New York shows Stonewall was not the sole genesis of gay liberation.

Don Licht (left) and Donn Holley at the MSNF “Meeting of the Mayors Protest” (1972). Photo courtesy of the Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York, Archives & Special Collections Department, E. H. Butler Library, SUNY Buffalo State.

In December of 1969, Buffalo gays and lesbians gathered in the cramped and dimly-lit back room of a gay juice and coffee bar called The Avenue, located in a dilapidated building at 70 Delaware Avenue, to begin organizing for their liberation. The meeting was called by James “Jim” Garrow, a bar owner and popular fixture of the gay community, whose bar the Tiki, known for its garish Polynesian-themes decor, had been raided and closed by the State Liquor Authority (SLA). Opened in 1968 and closed by the end of 1969, the Tiki existed during a decade when Buffalo gay bars rarely stayed open for long. Prior to the 1960s, Buffalo had a thriving gay bar scene. Corruption within the Buffalo Police Department allowed bar owners to pay off Bureau of Vice Investigation officers to avoid harassment, liquor license violations, and closure.

Five months after the Stonewall Inn Riots, the Buffalo Bureau of Vice Enforcement targeted the Tiki in a series of raids. Buffalo bar raids were not the dramatic affairs they often were in large cities such as New York where gay bars were equipped with bells or flashing lights to alert patrons of…