Summary: Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America by Martin Duberman

• “Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America” by Martin Duberman is a compelling exploration of the historic events that ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
• I encourage you to delve into the pages of this book and discover the stories of the brave individuals who paved the way for LGBTQ+ rights. “Stonewall” is not just a history lesson; it’s a call to action for a more inclusive and just society.

Stonewall (1994) is the definitive history of the 1969 uprising that catalyzed the gay rights movement in the United States. By examining the lives of six gay and lesbian people involved in the movement, author Martin Duberman sheds light on the systems of oppression – as well as the incredible dedication and bravery – that led to mainstream society’s greater acceptance of the gay and lesbian community.

Who is it for?

• Activists
• Those inspired by grassroots movements
• Anyone interested in how communal action can lead to change

What’s in it for me? An inspiring story of activism, bravery, and pride.

The American gay rights movement has come a long way. In the 1950s, 15 states included homosexuality under their “sexual psychopath” laws. Police officers could judge for themselves what that entailed and indefinitely confine the people they arrested. Gay sex acts were illegal in all 50 states. By contrast, gay people today have the right to marry. It’s progress, undeniably, but it needs to be contextualized.

The movement began as a strident pushback against state violence – a full-scale assault not only on the laws that targeted gay and lesbian people, but on gender norms, wars, and the mistreatment of racial and ethnic minorities. The Stonewall uprising marked a major turning point. From its aftermath sprung a group called the Gay Liberation Front, who rejected the class structure that most Americans denied existed. They were out and proud, signaling a new era of gay: uncompromising and unapologetic.

The people depicted in these summaries each took their own path from childhood to New York-based activism. Representing only six facets of the gay movement, which is as colorful and diverse as the rainbow itself, their unique journeys are an informative and inspiring example for fellow travelers.

In these summaries, you’ll learn

• why the Stonewall Inn’s reputation among gay people in New York was decidedly mixed;
• how the gay rights movement used humor as a weapon; and
• what Beat poet extraordinaire Allen Ginsberg had to say about the riots.

A sense of identity was forged in childhood.

Craig will never forget the day in 1947 when his mother, a struggling divorcée, drove him to the home for troubled boys outside of Chicago. He was six, and terrified. Despite the initial fear, Craig remembers his years there fondly – not least for the sometimes erotic friendships that developed between the boys. Sex play was common enough that even the nonsexual boys would walk the grounds holding hands. Craig came to see sex between males as natural.

Yvonne was raised in Brooklyn by an outspoken Black woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what was right. Yvonne had her mother’s spirit, too: she refused to be baptized at age 12 because she didn’t believe in God. She also felt confident in her sexuality – at age 13 she announced at the dinner table that she was a lesbian. Her parents pretended that they hadn’t heard her.

Karla’s parents were distant. Her primary role model was an aunt who had been a vaudeville singer and who drove a car – highly unusual for Brooklyn women in the 1950s. She also cursed like a sailor, told dirty jokes, and even played touch football with the boys. Karla, too, had no patience for traditional gender roles. She’d rather roughhouse in the street than play with the dolls her mother gave her.

Jim was a beautiful boy; he was even selected as a Gerber baby-food model. As a teen he became involved in politics, including a stint for anticommunist Senator Joseph McCarthy – something he later became deeply ashamed of. Campaigning required Jim to hitchhike across his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. He quickly learned that in exchange for a blow job, men would happily drive him anywhere.

When Ray was three, his mother drank a glass of milk laced with rat poison in their Spanish Harlem apartment and instructed him to do the same. It tasted so bad that he couldn’t drink it, so she drank his glass instead. She was 22. Ray went to live with his grandmother, whose neighbors noticed his effeminacy and teased him about it. By age ten he was regularly having sex with a married man down the block. He started wearing his grandmother’s makeup in fourth grade, but no one noticed except one of his teachers, who performed sex acts with him in the back seat of his car. In sixth grade, Ray left home for good and headed straight for 42nd Street, where he’d heard that people like him hung out.

Foster, older than the others, was from a family rich in money but not in love. Foster internalized his parents’ constant hectoring and was mired in self-doubt. He was also academically gifted, which led him to Columbia University. By the age of 20, he knew he was gay. But he was so mixed up about sex that he was celibate nearly his whole life. This might account for his eventual zealous commitment to organizing the nascent gay movement.

Independence made way for new experiences.

No one ever accused Yvonne of not being cool. She was hip to the jazz scene, obsessed with Thelonious Monk, and a regular at the clubs in Greenwich Village. She also frequented underground lesbian bars. Harlem was a retreat from the racist Village gay scene, where bouncers turned away Black women. Lesbian bar culture enforced strict roles, but Yvonne was OK with that. She leaned butch, cross-dressing to clearly indicate to both men and women what her preferences were.

Craig loved the adventure of the gay cruising scene in Chicago. Once, a hookup showed Craig a stack of magazines – including one called the Mattachine Review, put out by what he said was an organization of homosexuals. Craig was thrilled; he had never heard of gay people organizing, or promoting their rights. He made up his mind to move to New York, the epicenter of gay America. After a few years of saving up money, he got on a bus and checked into the 34th Street YMCA.

Karla loved school. Her school was all girls, and she loved that a girl was always the smartest kid in class and the best athlete on the team. School also helped her begin to understand her sexuality; there was a fair amount of homoerotic activity between students. Karla read about lesbians in books but was demoralized to learn that the lifestyle could result in negative consequences.

Foster had struggled ever since his graduation from Columbia in 1949. His counselors recommended psychotherapy; he opted to move to Florida instead. He worked for his father’s prefab housing business and made a lot of money. Bored, and paralyzed by his insecurities, he settled into an undemanding career at a nonprofit, where he would stay until he found a cause worthy of his remarkable talent and dedication.

After an aborted attempt to become a priest, Jim wound up in New York. He was committed to becoming an actor in the avant-garde theater – and secure in his homosexual orientation. There were very few gay bars in the Village in the early 1960s, but Jim could cruise for hookups in all-night coffee shops or public baths, subway station men’s rooms, or the YMCA. A gay-hip scene was also emerging in some downtown cafés. The message that it was OK to be gay began filtering out into the wider New York hipster scene.

Gay hustling had been centered in Times Square since at least the 1940s. Ray started hustling there when he was 11 – and he loved it. He made enough money to leave his grandmother’s house and move in with another street hustler he’d fallen in love with. He made fast friends who quickly became his family, and he was formally rechristened “Sylvia” in someone’s uptown apartment. The ceremony was officiated by Marsha, who was only 17 but already considered an “old queen.” Marsha taught Sylvia “not to take no shit from nobody and not to give a fuck about nothing.”

In late-1950s New York, connections grew into communities.

Oppressed communities frequently develop their own grammar of resistance. They also forge their own religion and music to express their experiences. Gay and lesbian bar culture developed similarly, as a kind of refusal of the status quo.

The experiences of gay men and lesbians during World War II created a collective consciousness that would later result in a political movement. During the war, people from small towns all over the country came together and realized that they weren’t freakish and alone, as society had led them to believe. After the war, these people settled down in subcultural enclaves where gay and lesbian bars proliferated. Bars became critical social institutions for gay men and working-class lesbians, facilitating a new type of community.

In 1950, a group of left-wing gay men in Los Angeles founded the Mattachine Society. They argued that political struggle was needed to challenge society’s view that gay people were sick. But by the time Craig arrived in New York in the late 1950s, Mattachine was no longer a radical voice. Its new message was that gays should conform and be respectable. Still, Craig couldn’t wait to join. He got increasingly involved and was soon running the newsletter. Unlike many Mattachine members, he used his real name despite the threat of police retaliation.

But Craig didn’t just love to organize the gay community in New York; he was a joyful participant in the revelry. Outdoor cruising – especially in Washington Square Park – was de rigueur despite frequent verbal and physical abuse by the cops. One night Craig was jumped by three plainclothes police officers who screamed epithets, slapped him in handcuffs, and took him to the station. When he asked why he had been arrested, they beat him up in a side room.

Yvonne felt more at home than ever in the gay Village scene. In addition to taking classes at NYU, she worked part-time as an attendant in the psychiatric ward at a local hospital. She partied hard and facilitated her burgeoning drug habit by dipping into the hospital storeroom for prescription medication. She hung out at softball games and Black lesbian house parties. Despite the rampant homophobia gathering steam in political movements, including the Black civil rights movement, she started to get involved in organizing the movement against the looming war in Vietnam.

Yvonne’s love life was as chaotic as the rest of her life. She was always entangled in a series of dramatic affairs – and always searching for her next big love. In her relationships, she was simultaneously afraid of being smothered and abandoned, and she increasingly turned to drugs and alcohol to help her manage the pressure.

But for the most part, she was living her truth and having a great time being young, Black, and gay in the overflowing excitement and explosive possibility of New York in the early 1960s.

The gay political community grew into a movement.

In 1963, the New York Times ran an anxious piece about the rise of homosexuality in the city. The closing quote was from a psychoanalyst insisting that gay and lesbian people were “ill” and that through psychotherapy they could be “cured.” Despite the negative view, this article marked an end of public silence on homosexuality.

The “homophile movement,” as it was increasingly called, remained miniscule compared to the civil rights marches. But organizations like Mattachine, which emphasized freedom and individuality, still represented a general assault on traditional values; they were the first glimmer of hope for an improvement in status for members of the LGBTQ community.

In 1964, Foster walked into the Mattachine office where Craig was working at the reception desk. Foster had read about Mattachine and wanted to get involved. At first, Craig thought Foster – in his three-piece suit and crew cut – was a government plant.

Foster thought the homophile movement urgently needed a unifying central body to become truly disruptive. But he was worried that hippies would make the whole movement look flippant. He recommended strict admission criteria for Mattachine.

Meanwhile, Craig tried to draw younger and more militant people into Mattachine – often the long-haired beatniks Foster disparaged. Craig organized leaflet teams in the Village and instructed them to stay civil even when faced with abuse. For Craig, visibility was the key to ending oppression, and he searched for ways to help people come out as gay. Craig’s community – the new Mattachine – believed they had to make society adjust to them, not the other way around.

Karla, by now a student at Barnard, didn’t fit into either the butch or the femme role expected of her in the radical lesbian scene. As a result, she was uncomfortable there and focused mainly on her studies. But in 1968, when students occupied Columbia to protest the university’s mistreatment of its Black neighbors in Harlem, Karla was electrified. She was radicalized by the students’ audacity to stand up for something they believed in – and she was equally appalled by the police’s violent reaction. She couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore.

When Sylvia first went to prison for solicitation, she weighed 140 pounds. By the time she got out, she’d lost 20 pounds and picked up a heroin habit. She teamed up with a straight hooker to hustle johns. They made a lot of money – enough to finance Sylvia’s habit and experiments with hormone treatments. After a few rounds of hormones, though, she decided she didn’t want to become any more feminine than she was naturally.

Jim was increasingly involved in the radical New Left political movement, but he was appalled by the rampant homophobia of its leaders. He started hanging out at Max’s Kansas City nightclub – the epicenter of the late 1960s avant-garde, which orbited around Andy Warhol. Although he found Warhol repellent, Jim was energized by the scene, and he used it as an opportunity to distribute the New Left publication he printed in his apartment.

Despite opposition, organizers grew more ambitious.

At 41, Foster was always the oldest person in the room at organizing meetings. He was exhilarated to be in the thick of things and utterly convinced of the movement’s importance. Ultimately, his efforts birthed the first national gay rights organization – the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, or NACHO, which was founded in 1966. This new organization fought for equal rights and, eventually, equal social status.

But NACHO was born into chaos. In the 1960s, arbitrary authority was under attack everywhere you looked. In this atmosphere, the assimilationist civil rights goals of NACHO seemed out of touch. That said, even the gay and lesbian young people who affiliated themselves with radical politics weren’t yet ready to come out. NACHO’s one radical stance – that homosexuality was neither abnormal nor unnatural – was still too much for them.

Craig’s dreams were also getting more ambitious. In 1967, he opened a bookstore for gay literature – the first in New York that didn’t also stock smut. In the gay community, the shop was a success. Jim would come and argue with Craig about politics for hours. Even Karla dropped in, although some of the male clientele shot her nasty looks for coming into their space.

The straight reaction was largely vitriolic. Some mornings Craig would find death threats and homophobic slurs scrawled on the front of the shop.

The bookstore carried pamphlets and buttons related to the homophile movement; it also had a community bulletin board, reflecting Craig’s desire for a more grassroots, action-oriented New York homophile movement. He was fed up with the gay bar scene in New York and how it was controlled by homophobic Mafia men who openly mocked their gay patrons – when they weren’t sleeping with them. The bars were the only public spaces most gay people could claim, and yet even these spaces weren’t really theirs.

For Craig, the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in the Village epitomized everything that was wrong with the bar scene. It was owned and operated by the Mafia, who paid the police to look the other way. The drinks were watered down and overpriced, and the whole place was filthy. Craig was also put off by a bouncer at the Stonewall who dealt drugs and accepted “tips” for “making introductions” between pretty young hustlers and their older admirers. But the Stonewall also had its staunch defenders as an oasis for gay men in New York, drawing street queens and stuffy uptowners alike. Some of the younger queens who frequented the Stonewall were homeless, camping out in the park directly across the street.

The clientele included the new kind of gay men beginning to emerge – long-haired hippies with radical political orientations like Jim and Craig, and finger-snapping, irreverent street queens like Sylvia who were unafraid to talk back. It would soon prove to be a potent cocktail.

One fateful summer night, everything changed.

On the evening of Friday, June 27, 1969, Sylvia was feeling wretched. Distraught over Judy Garland’s death and itching for heroin, she was in no mood to go out. But her friend Tammy wouldn’t take no for an answer. So Sylvia popped a “black beauty” – a prescription upper – and headed downtown to the Stonewall.

Heading home from his habitual nightcap at Max’s Kansas City, Jim noticed eight cops outside the Stonewall. At first he shrugged; police raids were customary. But this time, instead of fleeing the scene, a group of men were gathering around the cops, watching to see what would happen. Craig, who had also been on his way home, stopped as well. The air was tense with nervous energy.

The cops barreled through the door of the Stonewall, demanding that patrons line up and present their IDs for inspection. Normally, they would only arrest people who didn’t have IDs or those dressed in clothes associated with the opposite gender. They’d shove a few people, toss around some epithets, and then everyone would be back dancing. But tonight, people’s nerves were on edge. It seemed clear that this time would be different.

A cop shoved Sylvia and told her to get the hell out. Not everyone fared so well. A 45-year-old man was arrested for not having ID proving he was over 18. Someone else was arrested for talking back to a cop.

The police led prisoners out into the street and started loading them into a paddy wagon, as the increasingly hostile crowd jeered. A cop shoved a queen and told her to keep moving. She told him to stop touching her. He didn’t. She started swinging, and the scene exploded. The prisoners escaped the paddy wagon and ran away. People knocked down cops, kicked them, stole handcuff keys, and unlocked their friends. The crowd chanted “Pigs!” and “Gay Power!” As the police cowered against the crowd, people threw whatever objects they could find: coins, cans, even dog shit.

Shocked by the crowd’s unexpected fury, the cops retreated inside the bar and called for backup. The crowd whooped in triumph and pent-up rage.

Soon, the sound of sirens came down the street; it was the fearsome Tactical Patrol Force, or TPF, a highly trained riot-control unit armed with billy clubs and tear gas. They moved up Christopher Street in a formation inspired by a Roman legion. Craig knelt down and took photographs.

As the TPF approached, the crowd dispersed, only to reform at the rear of the unit; this happened several times. The riot cops would spin around to find themselves faced with a chorus line of mocking queens, kicking their heels like Rockettes and rebelliously singing:

We are the Stonewall girls,

We wear our hair in curls.

We wear no underwear,

We show our pubic hair!

It wasn’t until after 3:00 a.m. that the cops finally cleared the streets, and an uneasy calm settled. It wasn’t to last.

The Stonewall riots sparked new confidence – and a new plan of action.

The next day, as word got out, people came down to Christopher Street to gawk at the damage. The police had smashed up the Stonewall and pocketed the money from the cash register.

As the summer Saturday night fell, a block party atmosphere developed on Christopher Street. “Stars” from the previous night’s battle campily posed for pictures, and gay couples openly kissed on the street. People chanted “Gay Power!” and chorus lines continued to belt out refrains of “We are the Stonewall girls.”

The cops were out as well, batons and shields in hand. But they couldn’t cow the crowd; including curious straights and leftists excited to fight cops, it now numbered in the thousands. Whenever a car turned onto the street, the crowd would surround it, rocking it back and forth until the terrified passengers were grateful to make a hasty exit. The cops beat people indiscriminately, determined to go to any length to quell the demonstration. Skirmishes continued until 4:00 a.m.

Not all gay people were energized by the carrying-on at Stonewall. Wealthy gay people from Fire Island tended to characterize Stonewall as the demented work of “stoned, tacky queens.” Some even praised the closing of what for years had been perceived as a sleazy, embarrassing part of their community.

On Sunday night, the police were spoiling for trouble. “Start something . . . just start something,” one cop repeated over and over. “I’d like to break your ass wide open.” One brave young man retorted, “What a Freudian comment, officer!”

But by 1:00 a.m. the TPF had cleared the area, and the crowds dispersed. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who was gay, popped over to check the recovery efforts inside the Stonewall. He said that gay men had “lost that wounded look” that they’d had ten years before.

Rain quelled the tension for the next few days, but thousands of people came back on Wednesday night, throwing bottles and lighting trash cans on fire. Cops openly beat people up and left them bleeding on the street. That was the last night of the Stonewall riots.

For Craig, Stonewall made clear that a new day had dawned – requiring different, more militant tactics. He was done with pleading for inclusion in a society he felt was inherently misguided. What had happened at Stonewall should be commemorated with pride, not shame; the Christopher Street Liberation Day would become New York’s first Pride march the following year.

A few days later, Mattachine called a meeting designed to derail the very type of demonstrations Craig had in mind. But the young people of Mattachine had had enough. They didn’t want acceptance; they wanted respect. Jim gave an impassioned speech calling for more riots and violence, and it was received with wild applause. He led a group of about 40 like-minded people out of the meeting and into a neighboring space. That night was the first meeting of their new militant group: the Gay Liberation Front.

The first Pride parade marked the potential for a better future for gay and lesbian people.

The Stonewall riots didn’t start the gay revolution. But they became a symbolic event that has served as a motivating force and rallying cry ever since.

In the immediate aftermath of Stonewall, gay men and lesbians felt a flood of energy and were eager to continue challenging the stereotypes.

In the Gay Liberation Front, Karla found a group of suddenly visible young gay and lesbian people with experience in prior radical struggles. They brought a rich set of insights from the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the antiwar struggle, and the countercultural revolution. Within this group, Karla shared the optimistic view that results were the inevitable outcome of action.

Another group formed, too – the Gay Activists Alliance, which focused specifically on securing rights for gay people. Foster became a supporter and helped them rent an old firehouse in SoHo that turned into a nexus for all branches of the homophile movement, as well as a popular dancefloor.

Craig needed to find soldiers to bring about the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee. He turned to Foster, whose politics had proved sound despite his square appearance. Foster also took kindly to Craig, a hard worker among unrealistic – and, yes, stoned – dreamers. They, along with eight other volunteers, organized a march through midtown Manhattan and up through Central Park. The Police Commission insisted on security bonds totaling $1.25 million against potential damages, but an ACLU suit at the last minute caused a judge to strike down the unprecedented demand.

All of our heroes were in New York for what became the first Gay Pride parade except for Karla, who attended the sister march in Los Angeles. Everyone was enthusiastic except Yvonne, who wasn’t sure she wanted to attend. Being gay, for her, had mostly been about getting high and dating lots of women. She didn’t know if she was ready to get political. But she set her alarm anyway, just in case.

At 2:00 p.m., an hour before the march was set to begin, Craig was dispirited. Only about a thousand people had turned out, and the mood seemed ominous. But he was cheered up by some of the signs he saw. “BETTER BLATANT THAN LATENT” was a favorite. Having decided to attend, Yvonne caught up with the march around 34th Street. Joining was a major turning point for her. Her identity as a lesbian was no longer about partying; it was now about committing to her own liberation.

Counting the numbers, Foster excitedly realized that the size of the march had more than doubled; at least two thousand people were there. Paraders poured into Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, elated. For each person, the march was a testimony to overcoming a difficult past – with a potentially better future in view.

Final Summary

The key message in these summaries:

The Stonewall riots in 1969 weren’t just the beginning of the gay rights movement or the reason we celebrate Gay Pride in June. They were the culmination of journeys of self-acceptance for a wide variety of gay and lesbian people. Stonewall showed a generation of gay people that they didn’t have to be ashamed of themselves – and that they should demand and expect rights and respect from mainstream society, too.

About the author

Martin Duberman is a historian, lifelong New Yorker, and gay rights activist. He came out as a gay man in a New York Times essay in 1973 and has since written prolifically about civil rights issues and myriad other topics.

Genres

Psychology, 20th Century U.S. History, Domestic Politics, History, LGBT, Queer, Politics, Gay, Social Movements, Social Justice, New York, Historical, Social Issues, Activism, LGBTQ+, Human Rights

Table of Contents

Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
THE CAST
PART ONE GROWING UP
PART TWO YOUNG ADULTHOOD
PART THREE THE EARLY SIXTIES
PART FOUR THE MID-SIXTIES
PART FIVE THE LATE SIXTIES
PART SIX 1969
PART SEVEN POST-STONEWALL: 1969–70
EPILOGUE: 1992
NOTES
INDEX
About the Author
Copyright Page

Review

“Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed America” by Martin Duberman is a compelling and comprehensive exploration of the historic events surrounding the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. This book serves as a definitive account of the pivotal moment that ignited the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and forever changed the course of American history.

Duberman skillfully reconstructs the social and political landscape of the late 1960s, providing a vivid backdrop to the Stonewall Riots. Through meticulous research and firsthand accounts, the book delves deep into the lives of the individuals who played significant roles in the uprising, from Marsha P. Johnson to Sylvia Rivera, showcasing their courage and determination. The author also pays attention to the broader historical context, emphasizing the pervasive discrimination, police harassment, and societal prejudice faced by LGBTQ+ individuals at the time.

The book not only narrates the events of those fateful nights but also dissects the complexities of the LGBTQ+ community itself, offering insights into the diversity of perspectives and experiences within the movement. It addresses the tensions and disagreements among activists, highlighting the challenges they faced in uniting under a common cause.

Duberman’s writing is both informative and emotionally resonant. He captures the sense of urgency and the raw emotions that fueled the Stonewall uprising, making the reader feel a profound connection to the people involved. The author’s engaging narrative style makes the historical account accessible and engaging.

“Stonewall” goes beyond the riot itself, exploring the aftermath and the lasting impact it had on the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It traces the evolution of LGBTQ+ activism in the United States, from the formation of organizations like the Gay Liberation Front to the gradual progress made in the fight for equal rights.

Martin Duberman’s “Stonewall” is a masterfully written and deeply moving account of a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history. The book not only honors the bravery of those who stood up at Stonewall but also underscores the importance of collective action and solidarity in the fight for social justice.

One of the book’s strengths is its meticulous research and attention to detail. Duberman weaves together a narrative that is rich in historical context, offering readers a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in the late 1960s. It also highlights the often-overlooked contributions of transgender women and people of color to the movement.

“Stonewall” stands as an essential read for anyone interested in LGBTQ+ history and civil rights. It is a testament to the power of marginalized communities coming together to demand change, and it provides valuable insights into the ongoing struggle for equality and acceptance.