American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with Howard Smith

OK, great, great, great, great, looks good. Where were you working in 1969? And what was your general assignment? I had a column in the village voice that ran from 66 all the way through 84. And it was a full page every week close up to the front. And it was called scenes. And I like to say this was when the voice was of kind of famous newspaper that had a lot of power. And we were very well read. And my column, the mandate when the editor thought up the idea for the column and created it for me and gave me that column to do and ran every single week. And he said, your job is to be a head of everybody, even people in the voice. I want you to spot every new trend, every new, whatever is coming along. And that was especially in sex, drugs, rock and roll. But it included almost anything, any of my interest, anything I was interested in. He gave me the column to do because he knew I already went to everything. I just like doing all of that. And so I was on top of everything.

And each column had five to 10 different items in it every week. This was back before there was a lot of other short form journalism around. And I was very lucky to get a column like that. In the 60s, the 60s were just really exploding. Everything was changing in every field in every way. And I was 30 in 66. So I was old enough to have a perspective on things and young enough to be part of the scene and be part of what I was writing about. So it was all about kind of participatory journalism, the new journalism, all of that. So a lot of it was in first-person things like that. And when you say the scene, OK, you're down in the village, it's the village voice. What do you mean explosive? What was amazing about that time? Or was it amazing? Well, every day it seemed there was a new band with a different sound. And I don't mean like there is now. Of course, there's still a new band every day. But brand new sounds, constantly coming out. Brand new ideas about anything.

I mean, if I had some of the columns here with me, it was just amazing what was going on all the time in the drug scene, in the radical political scene, in psychology, psychiatry, almost anything you could name, things were just changing. All the rules were off in the 60s. Everything was changing. I remember there was a group of radical psychiatrists that started a newsletter against the established psychiatric community. There was a group that came to see me. They were called the Crazy People's Liberation Front. So as somebody else, they walked in one day. They were called themselves just the crazies. But I went everywhere, went to every art gallery opening, every opening of every movie. The idea was to be there first. Very often, the stuff I would write up, I would then get phone calls. The first day, the voice would come out from assignment editors at newspapers, TV, radio, wanting, because I wrote briefly, I mean, short things.

And they would want to know, was there more there? Could they assign? And they wanted to know how to contact the people. So that was very common. So that was part of what gave that column power is that a lot of people were reading it who were also in the media. When you say ideas were being changed, overturned, questioned, was this a revolutionary spirit you're talking about? Yes, yes. What are you putting your own words? I'm sorry. Well, I can explain something clearly about that. In the sexual area, I'm a straight man. And everybody, all the rules were breaking there. And I often would be invited to swingers parties that very square people might be at. I mean, some years later, there was the Plato's retreat thing, but there was a lot that led up to that kind of thing. And that's an example where it was an age of experimentation. Nobody quite knew anymore what rules applied or didn't apply. And when I speak with young people today

about the sexual arena back then, they're kind of surprised at some of the things that I say. And the big difference that they can and to stand as sex is more casual now, it's more normal. But we were breaking a lot of boundaries. So when you were at a party and you picked up, you flirted with a girl at the party and she flirted with you and you might be back at her place or your place 15 minutes after you met her. You barely know each other's names. It wasn't just sex. It felt like we were part of some revolution. It wasn't just sex. It felt like we were part of this change sweeping American every area. And that's what makes it hard today for people to understand younger people. Because I believe everything I read, I'm sure it's correct. They're having sex at a very young age back then. Not so much. Now, what about gaze? How did they fit into this whole revolution? What's your perspective? Well, there were radical things going on all over.

There were riots about every possible type subject going on. There were anti-nukrallies, anti-certainly anti-vietnam rallies. I mean, there were rallies about everything. I often sat in on some of the planning meetings because people knew they could trust me. If they said, look, you can't write about this part of it. I wouldn't otherwise, I wouldn't be let in that close. I'd write up the event itself, let's say, or I could say it's going to happen, but I couldn't give all the little intricate detail about different things. And it hadn't spread that much just yet around when Stonewall happened to the gay community. That hadn't been completely radicalized yet. Most of the gay things that came across my desk about gay life, gay culture were not as far out. After Stonewall, it changed. Every press release, every phone call about anything gay that people wanted me to write up in my column. Now it had a much edgier, much more aggressive tone to it. I could see that immediately, that there was that change.

But it matched what was going on in the rest of society. Everything was becoming radicalized. The whole country was sweeping the country, not just the village. So when you say, it wasn't really happening in the gay community. So you're writing about all these wild subsets of society. But I'm not gay. So for all I know, maybe it was going on behind the scenes in gay culture, in gay politics. I wouldn't have been privy to that exactly. So when I would be approached by somebody, gay, it might be about some outrageous gay homoerotic calendar they wanted me to write up. It wasn't unusual if I put something in the voice circulation at that point was about 65,000, which was lower than it was just five years later. It was almost triple that. But even at that lower circulation, if I wrote up something like that,

they might get 5,000 orders. So I could kind of change things in that way. People were very responsive to the voice and to my column. So I was more writing up that type of thing. Or if a new gay group was thinking of forming and they were going to have their initial meeting, they might want me to announce that in the column. But it was more formal before Stonewall. If they came in for me to interview them, they it wasn't unusual that they'd come in in suits and ties after Stonewall, not. That's fine. Did you, what we should do today? Let's change it. Can you tell me? In short, some of you sure.