Arts & Entertainment
Steps to Stonewall
Early ‘60s D.C. protests laid groundwork for riots, activists say
Editor’s note: This story is reprinted from the June 5, 2009 edition of the Blade.
The widely held notion that 1969’s Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village were the start of the modern gay rights movement is inaccurate local activists say as they were meeting and picketing years before.
“When people say as you so often hear, that the gay movement started with Stonewall, if I have a chance under the circumstances in which it’s said, I invariably correct them very insistently,” says Frank Kameny, 84, a legendary gay activist widely recognized as one of the great leaders of the homophile movement, as it was then known. “And point out that the movement was just sort of 20 years old already and there was a groundwork.”
Kameny and others who were involved in the early years agree, though, that Stonewall’s influence can’t be overstated, through its significance wasn’t immediately apparent.
Kameny, Lilli Vincenz, Paul Kuntzler, the late Barbara Gittings, the late Jack Nichols and others had been involved in East Coast gay activism for years. An April 1965 picket at the White House by the Kameny-and-Nichols-founded Mattachine Society of Washington was the first of its kind, but involved a small group dressed — at Kameny’s insistence — in shirts and ties for the men and dresses or skirts for the women.
“Things culturally were very, very different then,” Kameny says, describing the scene of an early picket at the Civil Service Commission to protect the inability of gays to get security clearances. “In 1965, men’s shirts were white. Period. There were no other kinds. Dress was very conservative. It changed over the next half decade, changed very significantly … but in terms of those days, if we’re gonna picket to be employed, we have to look employable by their standards.”
A handful of gay groups existed on the East Coast and met regularly as the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). Those involved say it was a different world.
“Most gay people at the time were not interested in any kind of civil rights activity,” Vincenz, 71, says. “So we were seen as kind of Don Quixotes chasing windmills. I felt they could at least give us some money, but they didn’t do that either. They were worried about their careers and they thought it was a lost cause. They couldn’t imagine it. So I was seen as a crusader and so we were a small group.”
Kameny says it soon became obvious from ECHO gatherings that D.C.’s Mattachine Society was a trendsetter taking on the Civil Service Commission, the qualification of homosexuality as an illness by the American Psychiatric Association, security clearances, the military gay ban and more.
“All those things we were doing, nobody else was doing to any meaningful extent anywhere,” Kameny says. “We had ECHO meetings in October of each year in ’63, ’64 and ’65 and monthly meetings here in Washington, Philadelphia and New York over that period and the Washington Mattachine was doing things and reporting to everyone else what we were doing. Philadelphia had two women … the New York Mattachine had monthly meetings but they were just meetings, they weren’t accomplishing anything particularly. The things that were being done were being done by us here.”
Kuntzler met Kameny one night at the Chicken Hut, a gay D.C. bar, in late February of ’62 and found a kindred spirit. He remembers the sign he made to carry in the first White House protest.
“Jack (Nichols) saw my poster and wanted it, so I let him carry it,” Kuntzler, 67, says with a chuckle. “He ended up in the front of a photo carrying my sign.”
“That was the first time we had any visibility,” Vincenz, who’ll be honored as a Pride “superhero” with Kameny at this year’s Capital Pride parade, says. “Confidential magazine picked us up and put our pictures everywhere. … We’d never had any visibility before that actually.”
One of ECHO’s signature yearly events was an Independence Day protest each year at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The one held in 1969, though, which turned out to be ECHO’s last, was markedly different. Stonewall had happened less than a week before and changed things forever.
None of the Mattachine activists were involved in the Stonewall riots. Because it was a spontaneous event that quickly gathered steam during a then par-for-the-course police raid on the gay bar, the only people involved were those who happened to be at the Stonewall Inn, a seedy, Mafia-owned dive that attracted drag queens and homeless gay youth, that night. But they heard about it almost instantly.
“We were all in contact through ECHO, so we heard immediately of what had happened,” Vincenz says. “This was a big event that somebody had, so many people fought back against the police.”
Kameny doesn’t remember exactly whom he heard the news from first but says he was “elated.”
In Philadelphia just days later at the ECHO protest, it was clear the formal Mattachine members had some new allies.
“It looked very different,” Vincenz says. “People didn’t care about any dress rules. The Stonewall crowd came over and there we had, we weren’t supposed to have beards and sandals but now we had beards and sandals. I remember two women, black, white, holding a baby and holding hands. It was just new. And there was some of kind of disgruntlement by some of the old guard. This was a new influx of grassroots activists.”
While the Independence Day picket seemed slightly different, it became apparent that things were much different on June 28, 1970 for the first Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March, a one-year commemoration of Stonewall that morphed into the annual Pride parades.
Kameny, who attended, was dumbfounded by the turnout.
“I remember … seeing this vast horde of people and I was absolutely speechless,” he says. “Flowing in like a river into the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. If nothing else, there it was in front of one’s eyes. It would have been impossible in terms of anything movement-wise prior to that. We had clearly overstepped a line. We had transitioned.”
Cliff Witt, a longtime local D.C. gay activist, accompanied Vincenz to the parade as a camera assistant for the film she made called “Gay and Proud.”
“I had heard of Stonewall before, but I don’t remember how I first heard,” he says. “I had many trepidations. You could not be gay in those days. Lilli was out through her Mattachine work. I agreed that I would be like the press, running along side, but not part of it.”
Back home in Washington, huge changes were underway. The Mattachine Society was winding down, eclipsed somewhat by the newly formed Gay Activist Alliance (GAA, which became the Gay & Lesbian Activist Alliance in the ‘80s), a spin-off of a similar New York group.
Stonewall’s significance is almost universally recognized but it’s not the whole story players active then say.
Kuntzler says Stonewall-type events were also brewing in Washington around that time. He recalls a May 1969 night at D.C.’s Plus One, a gay bar on 8th Street, S.E. It didn’t turn violent and wasn’t as dramatic as Stonewall, but the long line of gay men waiting to get in that Thursday night didn’t turn and run when a mammoth flock of police cars arrived.
“They hardly paid any attention (to the cops),” Kuntzler says. “It just didn’t work, so the cops went away. This was a liberation in a way, too. It was indicative of a profound psychological shift that had started.”
“It was like Stonewall started the mainstream gays,” Witt says. “It sort of started the organization of the gay liberation movement as we came to know it. … It became more militant and demanding and in your face. We weren’t polite any longer.”
Kameny puts it succinctly: “I feel we created a mindset without which Stonewall would not have occurred at all.”
Out & About
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
In-person gathering to be held at Tom’s Watch Bar
Modern Military Association of America will host “Pride in Service: An LGBTQ+ Military Happy Hour” on Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. at Tom’s Watch Bar.
This in-person gathering is the perfect chance to connect, share stories, and celebrate the diversity within the military community. Come relax, meet fellow LGBTQ+ service members and allies, and enjoy a fun, supportive atmosphere. Don’t miss out on an evening full of pride, camaraderie, and good vibes. Visit Eventbrite for more details.
Friday, September 11
Go Gay DC will host “Out in DC LGBTQ+ Community Social” at 7 p.m. at Hotel Zena.This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Women in their Twenties and Thirties will meet at 8 p.m. on Zoom. This is a social discussion group for queer women in the Washington, D.C. area. For more details, visit Facebook.
Saturday, September 12
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host screenings of “Princess Sparkles” and “Kiloran Bay” at 1:30 p.m. “Kiloran Bay” is a 13-minute musical short set amid the wild beauty of the Scottish Hebrides and the fierce joy of a wedding cèilidh. “Princess Sparkles” is about a girl who accidentally signs up to pet-sit a princess only to discover she’s actually a nippy, Fox News-watching pig. More details are available on the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
Sunday, September 13
“Nellie’s DC Drag Brunch” will be at 12 p.m. at Nellie’s Sports Bar. Come get served like a queen by a queen. Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets are $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, September 14
“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10:00a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Tuesday, September 15
Center Bi Pan+ Roundtable will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is an opportunity for people to gather in order to discuss issues related to bisexuality or as Bi individuals in a private setting. Visit Facebook or Meetup for more information.
Wednesday, September 16
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center will host “Movement for Healing” at 3 p.m. This trauma- and yoga therapy–informed class is designed to help guests gently reconnect with their body and their breath. Through mindful movement, somatic awareness, and grounding practices, guests will explore how to release tension, increase mobility, and cultivate a deeper sense of safety and ease within. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Thursday, September 17
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website.
Books
Historiography with heart
Pioneering author John D’Emilio continues to enlighten us in new book ‘Making Gay History’
‘Making Gay History, Memoir of a Scholar-Activist’
By John D’Emilio
Dukeupress.edu/making-gay-history
“Dear Dr. Kameny,” wrote the earnest graduate history student almost 50 years ago. “As you know, the academic community only rarely deemed the lives of gay men and women to be worthy of serious scholarly study. To my knowledge, no American history faculty at a major university has yet sponsored a dissertation that deals with gays historically.”
That student was a young man from the Bronx who would change all that. His name is John D’Emilio.
“I must be able to uncover ‘manuscript’ sources, that is unpublished and unique historical materials,” he explained to D.C. gay civil rights pioneer Dr. Franklin E. Kameny who lived in a house stacked to the ceiling with “unique historical materials.” In reality, these were piles of correspondence with government officials and politicians, legal filings, mimeograph copies, gay newspapers, press releases, Mattachine Society brochures and picket signs. Frank Kameny, a self-described “pack rat,” invited D’Emilio into his private world of papers and memorabilia to begin uncovering an erased and forgotten pre-Stonewall history. This was one of many such research forays into “basements, garages and overcrowded living rooms” across America conducted by John D’Emilio. He was a young man on fire to complete a Ph.D. dissertation at the frontier of a distant galaxy — writing a scholarly gay and lesbian history backed by original research where there had been none, only a void.
Reading D’Emilio’s memoir “Making Gay History” (2026, Duke University Press) one has the sense of watching an emerging galaxy spinning around a galactic core of New York scholars and their mentors, young activists, and community historians throbbing with the New York City energy celebrated by Walt Whitman a century before in his epic poem “Mannahatta”. Spinning out of the ‘60s anti-Vietnam War activism; Marxist historical analysis, the Stonewall riots and gay liberation, we can see it coalescing around this one history student’s search for a dissertation topic and himself piecing together a new history that “no one had yet written about … a pioneering work in this newly emerging field.” D’Emilio pitches his idea for a dissertation that “spanned the length of U.S. history, moving from the religious teachings that shaped law and social attitudes … to how the federal government dealt with the increasing visibility of a homosexual world in the twentieth century.” With the blessings of Columbia’s Department of History, he completed his dissertation leading to the publication of his groundbreaking history: “Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States” (1983). When he received his first copy of the bound book in the mail, he “cradled the book in my arm holding it close to my chest….It was as if I had fathered a child.”
More so, D’Emilio fathered a new history. Historiography is the story of how history gets written, conducting original research, uncovering the data and creating the narrative(s) — often a snoozing read of academic process. But not this historiography. “Making Gay History” is a historiography with heart.
“Nothing was going to stop me from giving everything I had to this effort at making change in society and myself,” he declares while connecting with others who share his “boundless excitement for the collection of documents.” There were many others in this spiral with D’Emilio who are mentioned and play important roles. In the spiral were Jonathan Ned Katz (“Gay American History”, 1976); Allan Berube (“Coming Our Under Fire” 1990), Martin Duberman (“Hidden from History”, 1989); Daughters of Bilitis activists Del Martin and Barbara Gittings; Civil War historian Eric Foner and author/activist Larry Kramer. No libertarians among them. Well, maybe the divine Bette Midler who was well known for performing uptown at the Continental Baths who makes an appearance at a Washington Square rally.
He craved his parents’ approval. Among the most riveting scenes in the memoir are a series of family dinners in the Bronx with his old-school parents who go into near shock when he tells them he is gay. How to evade this any longer, especially now that his dissertation is going to be on homosexuality? It is a moving and hilarious sequence. After he says it out loud, “I am gay”: “No. No. No!” his father gasps. “This can’t be true. It can’t be.” D’Emilio thinks, “Oh my God, he’s going to die. I’ve killed my father.”
The D’Emilios — Vincent and Sophie — so resemble the wonderful Castorinis in “Moonstruck,” I am thinking “Oh my God, this is Cher coming out to her parents Cosmo and Rose.” The young graduate student survives the family dramatics even more certain that this was not just his success but “a gay liberation success.” From the family dinner table to the streets, he writes how he marched in the 1973 Pride parade beneath a banner held high: “Gay Socialists.” This man is a born scholar-activist.
D’Emilio does not seem able to pull back. There are passages that veer into autobiographical minutia, detail about the grind to earn a living from the University of North Carolina Greensboro to the University of Illinois Chicago. He writes, ”I would be living on less than half my usual salary for the year, but with the small amount of royalties that I got for my three books, plus some occasional speaking gigs and dipping into savings…”. Much of this is gray matter compared to the galaxy John D’Emilio helped energize that even now brightens our sky.
Charles Francis is president of The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. and author of “Archive Activism: Memoir of a ‘Uniquely Nasty’ Journey” (University of North Texas, 2023)
Comings & Goings
LGBTQ Military Happy Hour set for Sept. 15
Calendar: September 11-17
Multi-billion-dollar 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund to continue until 2090
Ind. prosecutor declines to press charges over false Buttigieg child welfare complaint
New book examines fashionista Audrey Smaltz’s fabulous life
Blade Foundation to host fundraiser in Rehoboth on Sept. 12
Actress takes on bisexual ‘Ma’ Rainey in new Round House production
Iceland implements gender-neutral blood donor rules
Everton Blair makes history as first openly gay congressman from Ga.
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Books4 days agoNew book examines fashionista Audrey Smaltz’s fabulous life
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Out & About4 days ago
Blade Foundation to host fundraiser in Rehoboth on Sept. 12
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Theater4 days ago
Actress takes on bisexual ‘Ma’ Rainey in new Round House production
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Iceland3 days ago
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