Friday, July 04, 2003
To the Editor of
The New York Blade:
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 Rebellion Veterans
Association.
Public officials who
supported the G.L.B.T. community in the 1970s were few and far between.
The ones who did were usually the result of being approached and
persuaded by the 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 G.L.B.T. 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 especially Willson Henderson and particularly Storme
DeLarverie, Jeremiah Newton, Mary Twist, Bert Coffman, Electra
O’Mara, Terri Van Dyke,
Dianne Yodice, Emile Griffith, Cristina Hayworth, Dave West, Rev.
Magora Kennedy, Charles Snyder, Ruthybird Campbell, Tony Viera, Ramon Bellido and so
few others who tirelessly give of themselves to keep the history of
everything "Stonewall" and the G.L.B.T. 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 beautiful 1969 “Stonewall Car”,
the rolling symbol of G.L.B.T. Pride! And now, thank you, New York
Blade.
LEIGH P. McMANUS
STONEWALL Newzletta
Manhattan, New York
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To the Blade Editor:
Yes, we all
now regret that there is no photographic history of the five nights of the 1969 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
television and press photographers from the Village on those five
nights, it was out of respect for the understandable 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 New York
Blade Editor:
As the legal advisor to the
STONEWALL Rebellion
Veterans
Association,
let me congratulate The New York Blade on
your fine feature story
about the legendary Stonewall veterans. It is nice that
someone in the G.L.B.T. community understands the debt the kids who are so
'out', supported 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 the
Stonewall Club and the lack of a Gay 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 with the
Beatles hairdo is not Stonewall vet Jeremiah Newton (as erroneously stated), but
Willson Henderson,
my client of many years’ standing. Actually, it is the
police department mug shot that I got back from his Stonewall arrest at
some point after the many court appearances from 1969 to 1970. As
a direct result of the Stonewall rebellion in 1969, by 1970 there
were sit-in demos galore at City Hall, the courts, and wherever.
Willson had been wrongfully arrested and, after we
vindicated him, we got his fingerprints and mug shots back. Allegedly.
I still think if he demanded them back now, he’d get yet
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, 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 legendary "Stonewall Car", the 1969 blue 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 from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the historic car as “the 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.
As Willson Henderson rightly
declares: "No Stonewall, no pride!"
HAL M. WEINER,
Legal Advisor
STONEWALL Veterans' Association
Founding General Counsel,
Gay Activists Alliance
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