American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, 2 of 3

. So you look at it, it looks, uh, it's beautiful. It's a bit of a last time, okay? Okay. Very good. Where are we? Could you, um, tell me, just sort of... Oh, one second. Could you hear a crowd? Yes, thank you. Again, you can hear a little... Pretty quiet, so far, I shouldn't say it, but now... Not what? No, slow car siren. You can hear a little text. Okay, I didn't move it out a little bit because of his body movements. How are we done? It's a type of... You know, it's, uh, if you can, um, uh, Jew, your best to move, not lean too far, because this mic is very unidirectional.

Okay. I want to make it too uptight about it. So if you move, I'm not going to scream. But if you move... All right. Mm-hmm. This is, um, sort of a quick question. Could you give me a list of, um, the kinds of patrons, the kinds of people who went to the Stonewall Inn? What to what? What are we looking at? The Stonewall pulled in everyone from every part of gay life, every, everyone from the street kids who were white and black kids from the South, which, who didn't hang out together back then, but did hang out together there. Uh, big museum people, medievalists, uh, all kinds of designers. Uh, it could go on and on and on. Uh, uh, boxers. There's a boxer named Emil Griffith used to go there. Um, it's, um, it's something that when a person was in the Stonewall, you could, I mean, I could never figure out how many people there.

When it was really crowded, it looked like there were thousands of people, and rooms weren't that big. Uh, but at the same time a person would think, well, where did these people come from? How did they get in here? Because you see, as you stood and watched outside, you wouldn't see that many people going in. Somehow the place filled up, and then someone would say something like, uh, someone of your friends, someone would give them a drink, and then, and then someone would say, that's from someone, and they would say, that's that boxer Emil Griffith. And, uh, so there was always different people around, and sometimes people would show up with tuxedos and things on, and so the whole range of, of gay life was there. So much of it hidden. Well, hidden in there, but not hidden at there. I mean, hidden, hidden not from each other. Hidden within the place, yes. Uh, hidden within the place is what gives it its, the freedom to, to let go a little. Uh, so because I've met people since Stonewall days

that told me they used to go there, uh, and I believe them, and they're, they're, they're usually people that work in different museums and places, and they're the right age, and they describe certain things, and I mean, I don't remember them, but I wouldn't know everyone in there. Can I talk to you about, like, what, you must have been there for sort of a regular night and raid, or were you, were you ever there for? Well, can you talk about in general? I, I think I was at the 10th of always when there was a raid, because the 10th of always, but when there was a raid, or just the cops coming to collect money, these are words that have, like, definitions that, like, who knows, how to interpret it, uh, always. The 10th of always they would do this, that was a, that little bar that didn't allow you to dance slow. Uh, they would flick on and off, like, a little plastic, you chandelier, and then, then everyone went and sat down. All of a sudden, they turned all the lights on, and everyone went and said, because 10th of always is really nuts.

It was an ice cream parlor, it wasn't even a bar, so it really looked like a CYO dance, because everyone would sat down at those little tables there, and there were queens that had, like, little bufon hair, do some little flips in everything, and, and then, uh, since, again, we were all teenagers in the early 20s, it was surrealistic in its madness, and, and then cops might come in, or not come in, because of whoever was at the door, doing something. It was very, iffy. I mean, we're used, it's your new raids existed, you saw one there, it was routine, at the Stonewall, they went in that week to do a routine raid, a couple of my support Friday night. Were you afraid of them? Were you not? What was your attitude about? You didn't want to be there when one happened, you didn't want to be near a raid, and, uh, there was a general kind of, in, we felt, like, something nasty was happening all the time, because the threat was always there. It was, there was something that was in the air,

this kind of, like, feeling among, I mean, I don't know what the police talked about among each other, but they, they seem to think that, like, they had to write any time to, like, say something nasty to you, or that, uh, gay life was, was theirs for the pickings. And how about the mafia? Were you aware of them there? Well, yeah, I grew up in a mafia town. So, you know, grew up in a mafia town, you don't know, you grew up in a mafia town, so I'm not saying that, like, oh, the mafia was there, I love the mafia. I mean, that's not true. I mean, it's, it's, because I grew up in the towns that, when you see the sopranos, that TV show, Lyndon and Elizabeth, they show both those things on the turnpike, both those exits. So, so, to go to a mafia bar was, was really easy for me to do, because it was, it was like, where I grew up. I mean, anything mafia, I mean, people hate you, it's been anything mafia is usually very safe. If you're, if you're the group they're making money off of at the time, they have their own way of taking care of you.

I know I'm supposed to say horrible things about them, but in this situation I can't. So, even so, but it's an interesting irony, little exploitation going on, and there's, and there's protecting your, you can tell. Well, I think the best way people can look at it and see a parallel, is just to go to the movies and see things about, to think about the roaring twenties and prohibition. The mafia always takes care of prohibition. And any object or goods that can't be bought over the counter is sold under the counter, presented in some veiled, discreate behind the scenes way. And so, I mean, I'm not saying they don't have their, their raw nasty side, but I, I really didn't get to see that for the most part, except the 10th of always, when they wouldn't have a dance. So, what happened? Going into the background. It's a very sensitive mic, so, okay. You don't know when you just tell that? It's a really public document. Okay. So, Friday and June, what did it feel like at the night of the,

the first night of the rise? What was the weather like really headed and what was your point? I never think about the weather. I, I, that night was a night like any other night. I, I was, no one knew that that night was going to become something that people would ask questions about and it would be so important in history as it really is. It was a night where everyone left home or wherever you were staying then and then went out. And there was, I mean, there must be someone somewhere who says astrologically they figured it out, but I'm not one of those people. What did you do? What did you first see when you took the travel story? What I first saw was nothing at all. I mean, what I first saw was I went to the store and then the power hungry guy at the little door, little thing wouldn't let me in. So then, then I walked around for a little while. I did the same things I always, it was, it was just another night.

And then I came back and something was happening. Now to something is, I never had to talk about it because it's, it's, it's as the something envelops, it becomes like you're in the ocean with waves moving you around and around. And then as the something, grows, it's, it's on its own time zone too. It's like you ever go, like when someone in the family dies and you go to a funeral or there's certain events that happen that seem to like create something that's not like calendar time or minutes or moments. Because I don't actually remember the days sometimes. And there's a picture by Fred McDoward that I'm sure he took that when it was light out. And yet there's dark in the sky. I mean, there's all these, things. I was scared or do you remember seeing any actions? I was scared but not scared because it was a time of riots. And there had been riots on the Lower East Side that this, that the city didn't report about.

These, these were regular like neighborhood riots. That back then would have been called race riots. They were not reported in the 67, 68 because this New York City didn't want people to know that it had parts that were burning down in Manhattan, like Detroit and Newark. So like riot was something that if it happened, there was it happening, it was happening there. And so that it was kind of normal for a riot to happen. But this was our riot. And so like most of a riot is actually kind of like people don't like to hear, but it's kind of tedious. There's a lot of face off. There's a lot of like kind of dumb home of the air, just in the kind of like, I don't know what to call it. When there's this tension between the different groups like the cops standing there and waiting for someone to like throw something at them or are people doing something, it isn't for me. It was more of an ebb and flow.

I can't say I was wildly excited. So you weren't, were you inside or outside when you were police? I was outside. I usually was in there a lot, but that night, I missed the magic moment inside and outside. And then outside, I can't say how much time it took for a lot of people to be there. And then there it was happening. And for a reason that I can never fully explain, I kind of like, I didn't zone in or zone out. I zoned into another place where I was thinking of a Russian Orthodox Easter service, where people are outside of church. And they're waiting for the priest to say Christ is risen. And the doors are open and the Russian Orthodox Church. And when Russians are in with candles and it's Easter. So when those doors open,

see those doors never open. It was just that little slit of a window, that open. And so kaboom in the doors open. I could say that was a moment that I knew if I was thinking of a Russian Orthodox church. I mean, that was an involuntary thought that I had. It always plays back in the memory that I kept thinking, this is this like that church in Linden, where the Babushka lady stand out with candles and wait for the priest to go bang, bang on the door and say Christ is risen. So that was what went on in there. What is the meaning of that religious iconography for you? I mean, is there some parallel? Sure, the meaning is obvious. It's like Easter Passover, Passover goes, you go from slavery into freedom. Easter from death into life. I mean, whatever it is, the interpretation is kind of primal.

And I think that's where it came from in me. When I was a kid, I had seen the Easter, the Russian Orthodox Easter thing in high school. And because it was the town, I was in. And so that becomes part of my pictures inside. And again, it has a crowd of people outside. This has a crowd of people outside. It has something happening that transfers between one era into another and from life to death, from slavery to freedom. And again, those doors. So because in a Russian church service, the doors are very important. The opening of the doors is the transition from death to life. And now that you've had some, a lot of time to think about the meaning of the rise and how it's impacted the gay culture and struggle for human rights. What do you think that's the passing into the light? How do you think, and do you think it,

for you, is it in fact that? Well, I wouldn't express it as passing into the light. I phrase it as passing from death to life, or from passing from slavery to freedom. Because it's not the same as going from dying to death. That's usually the passing into the light thing. No, no, this is about your humanity being confirmed and set free and focused in a place of that freedom. And looking back on it, it takes on even more meaning. I mean, how that picture popped into my head then was just the way I would daydream at the time. But the daydreams, or nightdream, moment dreams, whatever they're called. I mean, it's a way that your mind deals with things. A picture. It's like when someone looks at someone they think is sexy back there, and they might say, oh, it looks like James Dean. I mean, that's the same process.

How about in terms of specific memories, do you remember a parking meter? The parking meter, I remember most as a sound. I remember mostly one moment. It's so, like, everything becomes decontextualized. I remember someone saying, Miss New Orleans threw a mulletow of cocktail. Miss New Orleans is throwing a mulletow of cocktail. Now, Miss New Orleans was impossible to describe. The southern queen was a little ditty. But I mean, someone who would definitely throw a mulletow of cocktail because she was on an edge. And that was an edge that needed to be gone over, gotten over across that night. And so so many people on the edge and you cross over into something better. And so, no, I can't say I was there like throwing a mulletow of cocktails that wouldn't be true. I was more swept up in the event as a way like waves.

And the kind of, like, something feeling that goes with that. Next day, did you feel it? No, next day, it blurs. The thing that, like, my memory that, as I get older, what forces itself into my memory the most, is the next couple of days, I don't exactly know what point they reopened the stone. But it was reopened in this crazy way where they had both doors open. But it was meaningless inside. It had all the lights on. It had, like, it just didn't feel right. It had too many lights on. Harley, anyone was there. The world had moved outside. And so, I was sad that I couldn't go dancing there anymore because I liked the place so much. And the next year was commemorated as the turning point in gay history,

and then ever since then it has been. And that it is. Before you go further to the next day, there's one video. I don't know if you saw Tony. I don't know if you saw the kick line. But I know you know the kids who are part of that scene that, you know, the street kids. Can you talk to me about the street kids and their role in the riots? You know, class maybe plays into that. Class is the major ingredient in the riot based mostly on, I guess, it could be summed up with that Bob Dylan line. We ain't got nothing to lose. It was like, okay, out in the street, the people that had regular jobs, meaning, I guess, what we call middle-class people, most of them were sadly ossified and frozen into life. Those of us that were the street kids, we didn't think much about the past or the future.

We were thinking about survival. So anything like that would set us off, especially the people that were more valuable, I guess, is the word, would go into action pretty quick. And that is the main factor, is the street kids not being afraid. But it's not thought about like we're not afraid. It just happens. It's instinctual. When people are really down and out and they're reduced to instinct, instinct takes over. And that's what took over. But instinct that it's best, that it's at its most humanly forceful way, which is every revolution happens that way. That's an old Marxist thing. That it takes the lump and proletariat, I hate that word, to make the move. And then the organizers move in after that. It's the same with the storming of what's that best deal.

It's the same kind of thing. As quick call it up, what were the police trying to take away that first night? What the police were trying to take away. I mean, they weren't letting us dance. If there's one place in the world where you can dance and feel yourself fully as a person. And that's gone or threatened with being taken away. That's like those words are fighting words. That gets you going. But again, saying things like those words are fighting words. The advantage is like a dance. It just happens. It's like you hear the music, you dance, you hold each other. The event happens, everyone fights back. But that's a hell of a lot of rage. I mean, that's not just... Yeah, but people have a hell of a rage, don't even know they have it. Until a year's later, when, like, I don't know, when some of it siphons off or something. I mean, it's still all there in me.

I mean, I can still feel it. And I feel all the resentments I felt still. I feel good too. Was anybody looking after you? Do you want to talk a little bit about Bob Kohler? Bob Kohler was an amazing person. Because Bob Kohler, at the time, if someone would have come up to me at the time and said, Bob Kohler, he said, he's a nice man. Because I was a kid. I didn't know how amazingly nice good he was. Because I think, without him, a lot of us would have been dead. Because he just knew how to deflect the worst things in us. He would give people, like, no, a sandwich. Maybe this is that. But it was the talking. He had this little dog. And I didn't know for years that he was afraid we were going to murder this dog. And he thought we were going to cook his dog or something like that. I mean, I never heard, like, I heard David Carter's interviews with him, like, only last year. And I heard things that back then, I don't think I could have heard.

Because he described us all as a red tag bunch. And it's true. But the things about the dog, the dog, then, was McGoo. And everyone was like, we were kids. So the dog was a cute little dog. And the dog, and like, everyone go, oh, let me walk the dog. Let people walk the dog. But they never got too far away. Because he really thought they were going to turn that dog into hot dogs. What did you go, were you part of the scene over by the river or the trucks? Or everyone was part of the scene over the river by the trucks. The trucks were another place that, like, what was magnificent about the trucks? Okay, for people doing it with the trucks, or the trucks were parked trucks that were there to do God knows what. I mean, to wait to be loaded up with whatever they're going to ship the next day. That people wouldn't have sex. But not just a person here. I'm talking about, like, a few hundred people in there. So you're outside, and you see, like, two people walking toward these trucks. And you think, oh, I think I'll go in there. You go in there, and there's like a lot of people in there. It's all dark. Then the cops come up and make what used to be called

the bubblegum machine. That was back then a cop car only had one light on the top that spun around. And so the cop car was referred to among the street kids as the bubblegum machine. And also the cops were referred to as lily-law, beddy-bedsch, paddy-pig, these different things. Okay, if the cops would pull up, this was actually funny. Because the cops really didn't go overly assertive most of the time at the trucks with pushing people around. They're like, it's him. Maybe they did. Other people might have seen him. But what was astonishing about the trucks was like, I mean, it's a terrible metaphor, but it's like in the old days, when you used to spray roaches in the little hole and seven million would run out. That's what the trucks were like. I was like, you couldn't believe how many people were in those trucks. And these were all these people. There were Wall Street jobs and everything. They were scattered. Boom. Every which way. So the trucks were like a world on its own terms. And that whole waterfront area now that looks like Milwaukee or some other city. I mean, go down there. It's so horrible,

although it's sodding all over the place and everything. This is New York. I mean, thank God it still has that drain pipe with those condoms coming out. I can be reminded that it's New York. But like, because that's really funny that pipe. Because this... Did you, you know, one of the things... You want to talk about what kind of meat came after the riots in terms of a... Were you aware of any kind of sense of organizations? Well, in retrospect... I look them back. I can say, okay, there were people I met back then, like Bill Weaver, Marty Robinson. These were all organizational types. Now, when I would talk to them before Stonewell, they were always speaking politics. Some of them were Marxists. They were very into like, you know, really talking politics, articulating it well. And they would always be, like, in different degrees around the street. It's even though they weren't the street kids. But there wasn't like a big line between us and them. Even though they were like, again, not hanging around all the time,

they organized... It seems very quickly. I mean, I can't say exactly when it starts. But things like GLF, I think it was Galibration Front, happened pretty quick, like in a month or a day or so. I mean, I can't... Did you... Did you create Broadway? I just know the name. I knew different people. Did you have a go to March in any of that, like, the Christopher Street Liberation Day? I went to the first Stonewell Commemoration. I went to some GLF dances. But I never got really into it. And I mean, I was... I was friends with a guy named Pete Wilson, who was a big organizer, and Marty Robinson. But it was more like just hanging out with them. It wasn't political organizing. So it sounds like... I mean, is there anything you want to say, but personally, I know there's myths around this whole... these riots.

Is there anything you want to... Do you think people are just, like, not clear about or anything more debunked? I mean, what do they mean to you? Well, there's a lot of myths. I mean, the first myth that... I mean, I know this is going to hurt some people's feelings, but as far as I'm concerned, Judy Garland has nothing to do with it. Bob Kohler was always funny about that. Because Bob Kohler was, I think, his 30s or 40s back then. And we were in our teens or early 20s. And Bob Kohler knew Judy Garland had nothing to do. And he always said to me, he'd say, Tommy, to you and those kids, Judy Garland was just an old lady. I mean, she wasn't part of your world. It was like, you know, generations defined themselves by their music and everything. So Judy Garland, if she's significant in that, she's significant as another world going out, maybe. But like those people that think that, like, there was some organized mourning effort going on for her that night. And that group of queens were, like, put over the edge because someone had desecrated Judy Garland's memory. That's a little too far out. For the queens, did you remember kick dance?

Anything? The kick dance, I remember. But the kick dance, I remember more the different versions of it before it got solidified into, like, there's like 20 different versions of that song. And that, because that song was, like, high school cheerleaders sing it there, just put in the name. It's like, how do you duty tone? And then people put in the name of their high school. They say, we are the linden girls. So all these kids come from all over the country, and they just bring the cheers with them. But the last two lines were always changing. It's from, like, we wear our sweaters tight. We give the boys a fry. We wear no underwear. We show our people. It was always changing the last two lines. So there's like many versions of that. Is there something symbolic to you or psychologically meaningful about somehow the flame queens kind of thumb in their nose with authority? So blatantly for the first time?

Well, see, I wouldn't have called the flame queens, flame queens. There's like different terminology. I would call them scaerdrag. And it's, um, thumb in your nose that authority was just a part of life. I mean, that wasn't something that had no parentheses around it. That was just the way we were. I mean, authority was, was, I mean, I cannot even begin to describe how alienated our alien authority figures work to us. Normal people were alien to us. Every day, anyone's were alien to us. So, so, so, like, authority was, was like, that was like the Nazis or something as far as we were concerned. It was so far out. It was just too far removed to even, we, I mean, because the term like authority figures wasn't used back then. That was just lily law, patty pick, Betty Bage.

It was done in our little street talk. No, no, no kind of like analysis of that, except there's a, you know, the reality of it going on. Do you think that, um, the, the expression of, of, you know, the sort of violence in the riots were a necessary, that they can teach us something about how, how revolution happens. Oh, they teach us over and over again. How it happens. That's the only way it happens. And you said, um, sorry, my voice won't. Can you say the riots? Oh, sure. I mean, if you look in history, I mean, there's always some nice people saying things like, oh, people should get equal wages and everything like that back in the labor movement. And then there's a bunch of riots that happen. And suddenly people do start to get equal wages. I mean, as much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. And because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation. And, and as, as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked.

And that's the way some of history, I'm not saying all of history, because I don't even like to think that that's a reality. But I know it is a reality, that without the violence of that event, the moderation of today would not exist. And so each revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, every revolution that comes along, has a violent aspect to it. It is, I don't know why it has to happen that way. I wish people could just sit down and play patty cake or something, and flip a coin and eat cupcakes together or something, and have it work out. But it doesn't seem to be that way. I mean, but I'm glad things are where they are now, because like, I wouldn't call it violent now in the gay movement. But I mean, there could be violence

because his violence committed on us. And still. And as long as there's people making gay people into some kind of second-class citizen, either through psychology, through religion, whatever, there's going to be twisted people who take that as an excuse to hurt gay people, and then there's going to be gay people who fight back. And so violence is going to happen toward us. Violence might happen from us. I'm old, belongs to a new generation now.