It Did Not Start With Stonewall

Our revolution didn't start with Stonewall. African-American lesbian elders tell the tales of gay New York life in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx before the world-altering Stonewall rebellion. In this clip they recall, raids and suffocating laws and racial discrimination faced within the gay community.

We paid an awful lot of dues

so that the younger people of today

can feel the freedom to walk along holding hands.

It did not start with Stonewall.

They used to have something in Harlem called Funmaker's Ball

and they would do that every Thanksgiving.

And we would go to the Funmaker's Ball,

and that's really when the cops would be nasty

cause the gay guys would come and dress up like women,

and people would come in and enjoy themselves,

and they'd stand outside and get the guys as they came out,

and the women sometimes, and arrest them.

When we were younger, uh,

because we did not have any role models,

uh, roles were defined,

people were into playing roles,

and people dressed and acted out whatever role that they,

uh, found, that they were suited for.

And, um, it was a law at that time

that you had to wear 3 pieces of female clothing,

or else they would uh take you to jail for impersonation.

During this time of Stonewall, um, I was not living in New York at the time.

And, uh, so I missed that.

But I had been involved in many raids and harassment by the police

in my own community.

We had a very viable, uh, black lesbian and gay community

in different, not only in Harlem,

but in Brooklyn, and in The Bronx, and

uh, I can't say too much for Queens and Staten Island

because they're a foreign country.

And what happened was,

that, um, the um bars downtown, uh, weren't making money.

And someone discovered that there was a lot of money being spent in Harlem.

And in other black communities.

And they systematically either burnt them down

closed them down

or they started having a lot of problems with police,

um, for different violations and stuff and things like that.

And as bar after bar and club after club closed down

clubs in The Village that years prior did not welcome the, uh, citizens of these neighbourhoods

and South Bronx, and Jamaica and Harlem,

they let you in and took your money,

but they still did not treat you any better.

Until the current lesbian and gay community

acknowledges that there were contributions

made by other lesbians and gay men of all colours,

to the freedom of lesbians and gays prior to Stonewall,

there will always be some...[cuts off]