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Friday, July 04, 2003
To the Editor:
One article in any periodical truly evoked the real “Spirit of Stonewall”:
Your writer, Larry Pfeil, Jr., covered the real thing, the veterans of the 1969
Stonewall Rebellion, in his comprehensive, evocative and emotional story, “Memories
Fade, Apathy Grows ... Who Will Tell Our Story?” (June 27, 2003).
He told of the local history of the grassroots civil-rights movement that
ignited on five nights at and in front of the historic Stonewall Club. He showed
photos of Stonewall Veterans then and now. And he presented some of the “Stonewall
Stories” he gleaned at the recent “Stonewall Symposium.”
I was there. Although we differ with his head-count in contrast with our signed “Attendance
Sheet,” his well-taken point is that there should be more support of
the renowned and open organization that dutifully represents the “SW-Vetz,” the
STONEWALL Veterans’ Association.
Public officials who supported the GLBT community in the 1970s were few and
far between. The ones who did were usually the result of being approached and
persuaded by S.V.A. and the Gay Activists Alliance.
Now most public officials seem more interested in the gay vote than gay history
and the gay movement. They are more interested in seeing which one has a bigger
contingency in the Pride Parade than paying their respects at the parade line-up
to the Stonewall Veterans.
It’s not the elected officials who legitimized the GLBT community but
the participants ion the Stonewall Rebellion. Let’s keep politics out
of it and be aware of those who inject it.
We thank Williamson Henderson, Emile Griffith, Storme
DeLarverie, Bert Coffman, Electra O’Mara, Terri Van Dyke,
Dianne Yodice, Cristina Hayworth, Dave West, Rev. Magora Kennedy and so
few others who tirelessly give of themselves to keep the history of
Stonewall and the GLBT community alive. There was a popular
post-Stonewall song by Freda (“Band of Gold”) Payne in the
early 1970s entitled “Cherish What is Dear to You While
It’s Near to You.”
Thank you Stonewall Veterans and your 1969 “Stonewall Car”, the
rolling symbol of GLBT Pride. And now, thank you, New York Blade.
LEIGH O. McMANUS
STONEWALL Newzletta
Manhattan, New York
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To the Editor:
Yes, we all regret there is no photographic history of the Stonewall Rebellion,
either on video tape or on candid shots, and while the general disinterest
in the mainstream media is historic, please do not forget the political climate
and attitudes of the times. Any photographer, be it a news photographer or simply a local wanting to record
the event would have been stoned by most of the participants of the rebellion.
Identifying images in photographs as homosexual in 1969 was a deeply rooted
taboo.
The photos of gay bars and gay life in the article in Life magazine a year
or two before Stonewall had the faces of the participants hidden in shadows,
if a homosexual was interviewed as such on a TV talk show, they either had
their face hidden with a black box, or wore a mask.
While it was the belief that the rebellion was not newsworthy that certainly kept TV
and press photographers from the Village on those five nights, it was out of respect
for the privacy of the participants of the rebellion that others did not photograph
the event.
You ask, was the world really that strange? Was the closet door truly so severely
locked in 1969? Yes it was, and that is what made the Stonewall Rebellion such a historic
event — and thank God, forever changed those attitudes.
DAVID GAARD
Greenwich Village
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To the Editor:
As the Legal Advisor to the STONEWALL Veterans' Association, let me congratulate
you on your fine feature story. It is nice that someone in the GLBT community
understands the debt the kids who are so out and comfortable today owe to these
veterans of what was surely a war; a war in which the few survived, between
homophobic medical professionals back in those days, Mafia-owned bars like
Stonewall, and the lack of a GLBT Community Center, GMHC, or any of the support
services available today. To say nothing of the recent decision last week of
the U.S. Supreme Court.
There is. however, a correction: The photograph of the handsome young man in
the Beatles hairdo is not Jeremiah Netwon (as erroneously stated), but Williamson Henderson, my client
of many years’ standing. Actually, it is the mug shot I got back from
his Stonewall arrest at some point in the 1969-70 period, when there were sit-in demos
galore at City Hall, the courts, and wherever. Williamson had been wrongfully
arrested, and when we vindicated him, we got his fingerprints and mug shots
back. Allegedly. (I still think if he demanded them back now, he’d get
another set.)
Pfeil correctly analyzes the situation; we must preserve for the future generations
the story, and the images and the people who started it all. If it were not
for the Stonewall Veterans, and the drag queens and trannies such as Marsha
and Sylvia Rivera, you would not have the community
assets and support groups you have today, from GLAAD and GMHC to the Lambda
Legal Defense and Education Fund for Gay Rights.
The visible symbol of course, is the Stonewall Car, the 1969 blue Cadillac
convertible in which I was finally privileged to ride down the lavender stripe
Sunday for the first time in 34 years. The late U.S. Senator Patrick Daniel Moynihan
called it a “visible rolling symbol of Gay Pride.”
Would that some of the local politicians currying the GLBT vote had your sense
of history. They too often ignore the car, the vets and the original issues,
some of which are still with us today. The disgusting caption in the New York Post of
the single shot of a person in drag was that paper’s only coverage of
a parade far larger than all the others in New York City.
HAL WEINER
Legal Advisor,
STONEWALL Veterans' Association
Founding General Counsel,
Gay Activists Alliance
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