In the Life: Ep. 1810, "Civil Disobedience"

[Host, Michael Billy] Coming up on, "In the Life, [Billy] Public assembly and the birth of the movement. [Richard Burns] We had to create settlement houses for this wave of queer immigrants into community. [Billy] A conversation with the two longest-serving LGBT executive directors Kevin Cathcart and Katherine Acey. [Kevin Cathcart] I think I'm part of the very first generation of people who really benefited from Stonewall. [Billy] And, an inspiring portrait of courage. [Storme DeLarverie] What you see is what to get. [Billy] All this and more on, "In the Life," [Announcer over theme music] "In the Life," is funded in part by, [Announcer] The H. van Ameringen Foundation. [Announcer] Arcus Foundation. [Announcer] Newpol Foundation. [Announcer] The Estate of Richard W. Weiland. [Announcer] And by the annual support of, "In the Life," members like you. [Billy] Welcome to, "In the Life." I'm Michael Billy. We don't really know for sure what happened when the Stonewall Inn was raided in June 1969. Some public accounts claim that young kids, drags and street queens were being held inside the bar, beaten by police officers. True or not, word circulated quickly to a growing crowd. They'd had enough, and decided to fight back. Continuing our summer of Stonewall series, "In the Life," takes a look at this act of civil disobedience. And how it ignited a movement of activism for LGBT rights. [Theme music] [Billy] Prior to the riots of June 1969, few LGBT groups publicly assembled, despite their constitutional right to do so. However, after Stonewall, a movement was born in which LGBT organizations sprang into existence. This next story from 2003, takes an historical look at gay spaces and the groups that sought to mobilize homosexuals. At a time when the fundamental meeting place, was the bar. [Richard Burns] Prior to the, the '69 riots, the only place where we could come together were bars. And those bars were not conducive to community organizing, they were often quite hostile to their own customers. [Burns] You know, we mark, the beginning of the contemporary, [Burns] queer liberation movement with the Stonewall riots. But we know that really our movement is much older than that. [Burns] Certainly, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, were, pioneers and heroes that, ah, risked so much, to begin to create a safe space, to be an openly gay man or lesbian. [Burns] These spaces that might be available to us if we were born into, an ethnically identified community or religiously identified community, were not available to us. And so, it's almost like we had to create settlement houses, for this wave of queer immigrants into community. And LGBT Community Centers are those settlement houses. [Music] [Bob Kohler] The Gay Liberation Front was, sort of, um, I guess, to be corny, was the answer to a lot of people's prayers. [Kohler] And they came out of nowhere. [Kohler] And, it was gone before you really could say, Gay Liberation Front. But what happened in that year, year and a half, [Kohler] changed so many lives. [Kohler] GLF was born at Alternate University. The first meeting, a group of people said let's meet. And see what we can do with the energy we have here from the riot. [Narrator, E. Lynn Harris] Alternate University, a radical new school in Greenwich Village, [Harris] offered unorthodox classes on everything from Marxism to karate. And on July 24th less than a month after Stonewall, [Harris] Alternate U, became the birthplace of the GLF. [Rich Wandel] It became the place for their first dances. Which was just unheard of, that you would publicize a homosexual dance. [Harris] But disagreements began on the very first night in the overcrowded room in Alternate U. [Harris] Some women felt alienated and left to form Radical Lesbians. The trans community split off to found Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. [Harris] And still others broke away and started the Gay Activist Alliance. [Wandel] The founders of the Gay Activist Alliance, from their point of view, ah, [Wandel] GLF was not sufficiently structured to get things done. And so they broke off and founded their own organization in December of 1969. [Wandel] They started talking really from the very beginning about, needing to find some kind of alternative to the bars. Which were seen as being syndicate run, ah, places that would encourage, ah, self hate rather than than an affirmation. [Wandel] So they managed to acquire an old firehouse on Wooster Street in Soho. [Wandel] And among other things they started to dance every Saturday night. [Wandel] You would have maybe a thousand, almost all men, a few women, coming to dance at what was clearly a political organization. And indeed there were times when they would hold demonstrations at 1:00 a.m. in the morning and literally take the entire, [Wandel] ah, dance to go harass the City Council Committee Member who is giving us trouble. [Deborah Edel] Lesbian Feminist Liberation, [Edel] LFL is what we called it, grew out of, [Edel] GLF, Gay Liberation Front and GAA, Gay Activist Alliance when the women felt that they needed to separate from the men. [Edel] Lesbian women, at that point, really needed their own space. We met first at, at the firehouse and then moved from there, [Edel] to around Union Square, and then eventually purchased one of the city buildings on 20th Street. [Edel] And there were just social gathering places for women. And they were wonderful and I miss that kind of space. [Candace Boyce] As black women we didn't think our needs were being met. I'm not saying that they weren't doing the work, but they weren't doing the work, we needed something else. [Boyce] So, you know, we went, we got us a space and we named ourselves Salsa Soul Sisters. [Boyce] We met at the Washington Square Methodist Church. [Boyce] And, and we met there for many years. [Music] [Edel] So Lesbian History Archives is a mixture of a museum and a family album. We have archival material and all the wonderful little things, um, that lesbian women have collected all their lives. [Edel] Back in the 1970s we would bring people together to have a space to talk and get to know each other. [Edel] I mean, this was back then, when there really were very few spaces that women could go to, to do anything. [Music] [Harris] In 1983, many of these divergent political and social groups came together when community leaders acquired an old schoolhouse. [Robert Woodworth] Like three hundred organizations existed. There was a lot of activity. [Woodworth] But it had no locus. Everybody was spread out in whatever found places they could be. [Woodworth] It was such a powerful idea to say, ah, we now can have a piece of real estate that's gay and lesbian owned. [Woodworth] It's ours. Nobody can take it away from us, and we have control over it. [Richard Burns] One of the functions of the center is to create a common ground, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and AIDS activists. Many organizations have been born here. There's some that people know better than others. Probably the most dramatic stories, is the birth of, Act Up, which happened in 1987 when Larry Kramer came. [Burns] He described what he saw as the epidemic in our community. [Burns] And put forth a call to action and, Act Up, was founded on that Tuesday night. [Chorus sings] There are still people who think that this is a white man's organization. When they come in the building, they must see us here. This is a support for all people. Our history and our culture needs a place to be born and then a place to to grow. [Applause] [Burns] Today there are about, [Burns] ah, probably over a hundred and seventy, [Burns] LGBT Community Centers around the United States. [Burns] When people come into a center, they're not just bringing their gay identity or their lesbian identity. [Burns] They're bringing the whole package. [Burns] Their race, their age, their religious identification. Whether or not they're a parent or want to be a parent. Their class. And we as a movement, if we're ever gonna get anywhere and achieve the justice that we want for queer people. We have to wake up and know that our agenda has to be justice for all people. And that we've got to consciously work with the choice movement, with the anti-death-penalty movement. With an economic justice agenda. In order to get this country where we all want it to be. [Theme music] [Music] [Billy] In 1973, Lambda Legal was a revolutionary idea. An organization whose principle mission was fighting for gay rights in the nation's courts. It was equally progressive in 1977, when a small group of women created the Estrella Foundation, addressing the lack of funding for women. Specifically lesbians and women of color working for social change. Kevin Cathcart and Katherine Acey, the leaders of these organizations are the two, longest-serving executive directors in the movement today. They sat down to discuss their lives and activism. The impact of Stonewall on their generation and the passion behind their work. [Kevin Cathcart] Hi Katherine. [Katherine Acey] Hey, there Kev. [Cathcart] I think we met a little more than twenty years ago. [Acey] You're looking good. [Cathcart] What brought you to a life of activism? [Acey] I come from a family that just believed in being kind and compassionate with others and giving of yourself, [Acey] to help others. I didn't officially come out until my late twenties. [Acey] And then got very involved in the queer movement. [Acey] How did you get involved? [Cathcart] I really became an activist when I was in college and a lot of it is connected to when I came out. [Cathcart] I grew up in New Jersey, in a very working-class family. [Acey] Mm, hmm. [Cathcart] Ah, and one of the things that was always sort of a quest of mine, was this idea of meaningful work because, ah, In the world that I came from people had jobs, but they didn't have, you, you couldn't call it meaningful work in any way whatsoever, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I kept thinking there has to be, [Cathcart] something else and there has to be some other way, and then I started getting politically involved and then, you know, the movement was evolving at the same time that I was evolving. I was pretty repressed. [Cathcart] Ah, growing up, and I had no idea that I was gay. Ah, I'm not sure whether or not it was a surprise to anybody else. Ah, but it was sort of a surprise to me, and I figured it out pretty quickly once I was away from home and, [Cathcart] had a little more, ah, freedom in my life. You know I fell in love and it was all very exciting and then I realized, [Cathcart] but wait a minute there's prices to be paid for this in the world and that got me sort of fired up and angry. [Cathcart] I don't think I would have used the word activist at that time. [Acey] Mm, hmm. [Cathcart] Either it was a vocabulary that I wasn't, familiar with or I probably wouldn't be comfortable because I would have thought, well activists are like people in New York that are doing big things. Not, you know, people at a small state college in southern New Jersey, [Acey] Mm, hmm. organizing a little student group. [Acey] I came out in my late 20s, and I was kind of in shock. I was like, oh my goodness, [Acey] much like you it was not a surprise to many people around me, but a surprise to some. [Acey] But it was a bit of a process over, I think, many years. I, always loved women. I was involved in women's issues, um, I was an activist. So the coming out process was kind of scary at a personal level. My politics included, civil rights for LGBT people but, then I became much more connected and, um, felt it both in my gut, not just intellectually, ah, about what it meant to be out and to be active. [Cathcart] Where were you? [Acey] I was in New York. I had come to New York. I came to New York, um, in '74 to go to graduate school. When Stonewall happened, I wasn't really a part of the queer movement. I was a part of, [Acey] various social justice movements. I feel it's one huge marker of, ah, [Acey] of history of, ah, [Acey] people's resistance where folks even within the LGBT community, um, transgender folks, um, butch women, younger people stood up and resisted. And, you know, were a catalyst ignited something, that I believe was, brewing. I was in high school when Stonewall happened and of course, I didn't know about it when it first happened. All of my news about the wider world, including anything gay, I got from The Village Voice. [Cathcart] Ah, which I used to read in high school, so I would know there was a world out there. [Acey] Mm, hmm. Ah, but I think I'm part of the very first generation of people who really, ah, benefited from Stonewall because just as I was, reaching adulthood, the world had changed, and I mean that's what Stonewall, I think, is all about and what it means to me is that, [Cathcart] you know, people stood up and said no more, [Cathcart] um, and people said we want this to change and, and, started, fighting for equality and for recognition and for visibility. I mean it's it's hard to, [Acey] Yeah. [Cathcart] explain to people today, who were not around then. You know, sort of, what it was like in pre Stonewall, or even the immediate post Stonewall days. Ah, you know, we do a lot of work at Lambda Legal with, ah, young people in schools, for example, who are organizing gay straight alliances. Like, an unimaginable concept when I was in, ah, high school. There were, no gay people when I was in high school except for an occasional English teacher who people, [Acey] Mm, hmm. [Cathcart] talked about kind of behind their back. [Acey] Not a Gym teacher, an English teacher. [Cathcart] An English teacher. [Cathcart] The fact that we're the, the longest-serving E. D.s in, in the LGBT movement, says something about how new our movement is. Like we would not be the longest-serving E. D.s, even with our tenures, in almost any other movement that I can think of. [Acey] Mm, hmm. [Cathcart] It's because our community didn't have any institutions for so long and came to this, [Cathcart] so recently. You know, that Stonewall wasn't that long ago, and it took a long time after Stonewall, to build organizations that were then able to have staff and become institutions and do the work. [Acey] Mm, hmm. You know, I'm very lucky that I have been able to do this work for so long, ah, but, but it does say something about, just how impoverished in a certain way our community is for, institutions, for leadership. How many people died? Who would have been longer serving leaders? [Acey] Hmm. Um. In the epidemic, along the way. Yeah. That's an interesting take on it. I kind of look at it slightly differently, but I could see your point. I, I never expected to be anyplace for twenty more and almost twenty two years. [Acey] In the same job, and in some ways I've been at the same organization with the same title, but it's been a different job. [Cathcart] It's changed constantly, right. [Acey] You know, when I started at Estrella, I was the only staff person. Now there's nineteen. It's been exciting because the movement has been evolving. The organization, has evolved and it's pushed me. [Acey] There were times when I thought I was leaving and then there was a new challenge in something that pulled me back in, and, um, and, more than just something, it is the work, I mean, I am privileged in this position to meet, activists and cultural workers doing, you know, justice work and, human rights work, all over the world. and so, their passion, their struggle, their victories pull me in, um, all the time. [Acey] It's hard to leave that. There's one story I just, love telling these last couple of months because it's an incredible story of organizing and, and, um, But it's an example of, why keep doing this. It's about China and this evolving, [Acey] ah, movement there. And China, you know, has been very difficult for LGBT folks and particularly for, um, queer women and trans people, but for all. And two years ago, there was a Leadership Institute that brought a hundred, ah, LBT women together, from sixteen to in their sixties. [Acey] Um, traveled for hours to, and some for days to get to this site. And out of it grew new organizations and another Institute happened in five different regions in China. And out of that now has emerged more organization as in there's one and it's a young trans person. And they have a, a small center. [Acey] And, a hotline. [Acey] That is, being volunteered just by a parent, by his parent. And she was like, oh China. Hotline. Trans person. Lesbian, bisexual, trans women organizing, and a parent, you know. [Acey] Breaks all kinds of stereotypes of what we think is possible in China. And what we think, you know, about what, Chinese families might think of in China knowing you know what we know about some of the repression of, sexual orientation and sexuality, so that's, that's one of the things that keeps me going to know, um, that, really a thousand queer lives were touched by these Leadership Institutes and out of it grew organizations. [Acey] And with young people and old people, [Acey] ah, being able to be more or their full selves. And that's, to me that makes the big difference to be able to get up and go to work in the morning. [Music] [Billy] Just as there are many accounts of what fueled the Stonewall Riots. There are just as many rumors as to who threw the punch that started a revolution. Some say it was, Storme DeLarverie, a legendary drag performer in the, "Jewel Box Review." But who is Storme? In 1999, SAGE, an organization for gay and lesbian seniors, honored her with its lifetime achievement award for, in their words, "Her courage and enthusiasm in crashing the gates of segregation and for the gender-bending example she showed the world." [Charles Kaiser] Gay people are always looking for, [Kaiser] role models. It's a cliche, but it's true, and she's as good one as we're going to find. [Kaiser] Someone who's learned how to grow up and, grow to a great age and not grow old and still be enthusiastic about life. And still capable of making new friendships. And, ah, you know, understands more about what life is about than most people. [Storme DeLarverie] Who's Storme? I'm a human being that survived. I've helped other people survive. [Curtis Fuller & Red Garland, play Jazz trumpet, "Stormy Weather" under narration] [Narrator Katherine Linton] Storme DeLarverie was born to a wealthy white father and a black mother in New Orleans Christmas Eve, 1920. [Linton] Caught between two worlds from the day she was born. Her father had her privately educated while her grandfather raised her. ["Stormy Weather," continues.] [DeLarverie] Well he finally told me because everybody, the white kids were beating me up, the black kids were beating, everybody was jumping on me. It wasn't for, because of my father's money, it was, because of, being bi, being a Negro with a white face. Yeah, so he told me, if I didn't stop running, I'd be running the rest of my life. And, when I was fifteen I stopped running, and I haven't run a day since. [Linton, over jazz music] After leaving home, Storme sang with jazz bands across the country. Developing the silvery baritone that would serve her well in her next incarnation. So I tried to do the proper thing, you know. Wear men's clothes on stage and wear women's clothes on the street. I got picked up twice for being a drag queen. Well, the guy that arrested me once for being a drag queen came and saw me, and he said, "you don't have it tied," I said, "Well, "If I'm not tying my tie right, why don't you come in every night and show me how I'm supposed to tie it," and he did. To this day, I can tie a bowtie without even looking in the mirror. It'll be perfect. And he was always laughing. He was a nice man. He was only doing his job, you know. [Linton over jazz music] In 1955, Storme became the one girl in the, "Jewel Box Review," [Linton] A traveling musical show of gender deception. While her girlfriend watched from the wings, Storme would now perform as a man. Somebody told me that I couldn't do it and that I would completely ruin my reputation, and that people, didn't I have enough problems, being black? I said, I didn't have any problem with it, everybody else did. [Kaiser] She made a very handsome, man. [Chuckles] It worked for her. [Linton over crowd noise] In June of 1969, in New York City, Storme found herself at the epicenter of the Stonewall riots. [Linton over sirens] If there was a friend in need, Storme would be there. [DeLarverie] That was no riot, everybody said it was a riot. It was, it was a, a, a, It was a disobedience, and then they started fighting back. It was a rebellion. And once they got the hang of it. They rebelled quite well. [Kaiser] Well, many different people say that there was a cross-dressing lesbian who sparked the Stonewall riots. But, to the best of my knowledge no one had ever found someone who fit the description quite as well as she does, until I interviewed her and she said the cop hit me and I hit him back. I walked away with him. And I was bleeding but he was laying on the ground. Out. She says I was there, and I did this. But then when I read an account of the cross-dressing lesbian who started the riot, she said, "Oh, I know who that was, but I'm not going to say." Well, I got into it by accident. And then, ah, Charles Kaiser, when he wrote his book, "Gay Metropolis," was trying to figure out how it started. When the fight really started, they were just running around, you know, calling names and things and throwing toilet paper down from the windows and what-have-you. And I had just walked up. I used to come in whenever I came in town to go down to see if anybody needed help or if they were in jail, I could get 'em out, what I could do. Well, I looked like I was twenty, but, when that happened that was forty, forty eight years old. [Linton] In the month following those fateful nights, Storme's girlfriend of twenty six years passed away, [Linton] and Storme gave up her performing career. [Linton] Whether or not Storme threw that first punch, there is no doubt she has since embraced her role as caretaker. [Linton] Today she's a presence throughout New York's West Village and Chelsea neighborhoods. Sometimes I feel like half the universe is my family. [Street noise, chatter, Storme loving on dog] [Kaiser] She's still going strong. And she thinks it's because she loves life so much. [Kaiser] I mean, it's as simple as that. It's because she hasn't grown old or bitter. She's grown [Kaiser] mature and still loving and still enthusiastic. And I think she, draws a lot of strength from the younger women who she sees in her job. And she acts as mother confessor to many of them. [Kaiser] And, ah, she has a very large and enthusiastic support group. [Ginny D'Antonio] She lives her life quietly and does much of what she does, um, [D'Antonio] very quietly, sometimes anonymously. [D'Antonio] You know, she's happy doing that because what matters to her is that she does what she does, not that it, you know, makes a big splash. This is who I am. Remember the expression? What you see, is what you get. [Chuckles] [LP sings, "Comin' Home"] When I look back, I guess I only remember. [LP sings] The good and sometimes the bad. [Billy] The growth of the internet has allowed our movement to connect and organize in ways that can only be dreamt of forty years ago. Imagine what we can achieve in the next forty years. In dreams for the movement, we're asking you to share your vision with us. What are your dreams for the next forty years of the LGBT movement? Visit our website at, inthelifetv.org, to find out how you can submit your videos. [Billy] Your most inspiring dreams will be featured on TV in our October season premiere episode. I'm Michael Billy. Thanks for tuning in and please join us next month. [Song] There's a peace. [Song] There's a peace that comes, [Song] but don't make me cry. [Announcer over theme music] "In the Life," is funded in part by, [Announcer] The H. van Ameringen Foundation. [Announcer] Arcus Foundation. [Announcer] Newpol Foundation. [Announcer] The Estate of Richard W. Weiland. [Announcer] And by the annual support of, "In the Life," members like you. [Theme music]