In These Times: The gay-rights movement did not begin with the Stonewall riots in 1969

[marmar]

Queer Prehistory
The gay-rights movement did not begin with the Stonewall riots in 1969.

By Doug Ireland


Myth has it that the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village were the first open queer rebellion against discrimination. Not so. In 1965, the first queer sit-ins on record took place at a late-night Philadelphia coffee shop and lunch counter called Dewey’s, a popular hangout for young gays, lesbians and drag queens.

The establishment began refusing service to this LGBT clientele, prompting a protest rally on April 25, 1965. Dewey’s management turned away more than 150 patrons while the demonstration went on outside. Four teens resisted efforts to force them out and were arrested and later convicted of disorderly conduct. In the ensuing weeks, Dewey’s patrons and others from Philadelphia’s gay community set up an informational picket line protesting the lunch counter’s treatment of gender-variant youth. On May 2, activists staged another sit-in, and the police were again called, but this time made no arrests. The restaurant backed down, and promised “an immediate cessation of all indiscriminate denials of service.”

In August 1966, there was a riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, a 24-hour San Francisco eatery popular with drag queens and other gender-benders, hustlers, runaway teens and cruising gays. The Compton’s management had begun calling police to roust this nonconformist clientele, and one night a drag queen precipitated the riot by throwing a cup of coffee into the face of a cop who was trying to drag her away. Plates, trays, cups and silverware were soon hurtling through the air, police paddy wagons arrived, and street fighting broke out. Some of the 60 or so rioting drag queens hit the cops with their heavy purses, a police car was vandalized and a newspaper stand was burned down. The Compton’s Riot eventually led to the appointment of the first police liaison to the gay community.

These are just two of the many nuggets of little-known or forgotten queer history to be found in Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights, June 2009), the new anthology edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca, himself a veteran of the earliest gay liberation struggles, and today a San Francisco-based gender-bending performance artist. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4550/queer_prehistory

[Deja Q]

1. The most vocalized event becomes reality. Real firsts, of any sort of event, are rarely known.

Right down to "July 4th", and further back, it is not without precedent.