American Experience; Stonewall Uprising; Interview with David Carter, 1 of 3

This is part of the village. Okay. In 1969, or it was 1665, what do grandparents really mean to a gay person living in America? In the mid-1960s, there was only one well-known gay neighborhood in the entire United States, and that was Greenwich Village. It's where you had the most gay people living together, the most concentrated population, and so it was really the nation's first gay ghetto. This was well before the Castro in San Francisco, and that meant that people from all over the United States who were gay, who were looking for a refuge, came there. They came from as far away as Hawaii, as far away from Atlanta, Georgia, and from as close by as Queens. So it was a magnet. Now, when they got there, did they live up to the dream? Not really. No. Greenwich Village did not live up to the dream when gay people arrived there. And the reason is, because it was, it was freer the most places,

you had at least a possibility of finding community, but gay people were still hassled, especially in the mid-1960s. That was really the worst time. New York City was the most aggressive enforcer of laws against gay people in the mid-1960s in the United States. You had over 100 people being arrested each week in the time around 1965. And so it was, it was a contradiction. You know, it was a paradox. I think one reason. You circle back about 100 people as well. Sure. There were more than 100 people arrested for all kinds of things, but 100 people arrested for what kind of crimes? Yeah. Lighting it for one. Sure. That'd be great, thanks. You're okay. Tell me about that. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Okay. That's a little dry. Yeah. I was going to read glass of water and that. I did a glass of water. That sounded a little dry. Beard. I mean, here's the supposed to be this gay mecha, and there really are lots of gay people in New York. They're all coming here. Wow. How does that shit with the cops cracking down? What's going on there? Well, it's in part caused by the fact that New York City is often at the front edge of things, because it's such a large city. It has such a cosmopolitan population, all kinds of different people. So that also means that New York City was the first place to have vice quads. They were the first place to do stakeouts of homosexuals, to put mirrors, two-way mirrors, and bathrooms, and microphones, and park benches. So while socially, in some ways, New York City was more sophisticated, having a Bohemian center light-grantage village, where gay people could at least find others light themselves

and be tolerated, New York City was also cutting edge and catching homosexuals. And let's talk about that. Why would New York City want to have a big gay force on the streets? Who's behind it? How did it work? Well, it really started in the 1920s. Can you not say anything about that? Oh, yes. Okay. This kind of very organized police dragnet to catch homosexuals started mainly in the early 20th century when there were purity societies that came about. These were essentially organized because people were afraid of losing their folk ways. You had essentially European newer groups of immigrants coming over. And they brought new habits. And I think a lot of the population that had been here longer felt threatened by new folk ways coming. So they weren't threatened just by homosexuality. It began to be the threat initially that was perceived as afraid of, I think, a looser style of living,

which was seen as immoral in general. It was a more tolerance of sexuality or drinking. And that extended to homosexual sex. Anything that seemed new or alien became suspicious. So the roots go far back into the late 19th and early 20th centuries with fear of new groups and immigrants. And the situation worsened in the 1950s because of the red scare. But cartheism made the US government afraid of homosexuals. They were seen as security risks. People subject to blackmail. People who would be inclined to betray their country. People who would be inclined to be communists. Because homosexuality was seen as something so other. The idea was that if you were homosexual, who knew what you would do? You couldn't be trusted to do anything. I know I talked to a buddy about it. It's not possible to switch the atmosphere and get a good shot of something.

Yeah. That's the problem. I think we have something to do with it. Can you just sit up on the table and let me ask you just a rhetorical question. In the 1960s, you know, was gay sex illegal anywhere in America? What was the situation in terms of legality? In the 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state except for Illinois, every state. And the penalties were severe. You know, they ranged from capital punishment to being in jail for five or ten or fifteen years. It's such an important point. Okay. And I think it maybe ended with capital punishment. Okay. There. Okay. Sure. What was it imposed? Okay. In the 1960s, the penalties for homosexual sex ranged from a few years in prison to capital punishment. And while the capital punishment part was never carried out,

people were put away for many years at a time. It was rare, but it happened. And again, what states were homosexuality illegal? Homosexuality was illegal in every state in the United States except for Illinois. Okay. Yeah. It was illegal. You were illegal. It's a funny thing because it's the act of being... The act of being illegal. I think it's a homosexual. I'm not going to be able to be a homosexual. It's not illegal. No, no, no. Let me try to clarify that. Okay. Yes, the laws were aimed at sexual acts. However, there were so many social penalties of other kinds. So, for example, if you were a homosexual, you could be discharged from the armed forces.

You could be denied... You could have a license taken away. If you were a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, even a hair cutter, you could have your license taken away. You could be thrown out of your apartment as you can today in many states, you know, with impunity. Because you're homosexual. So, while there was no law per se that said it was illegal to be a homosexual, the whole nexus of laws and policies that existed and that were enforced meant that it was de facto illegal to be homosexual. Not de jure, but de facto. Okay. I don't hear it. I don't know if that likes really actually very unique. So, you come to New York. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. Just for the incase you don't understand what it is. Okay. In practical terms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. While there was no law on the book that made being homosexual against the law, the way the law worked in practical terms, it really meant that if you were a homosexual, you were outlawed. You were and considered an outlaw, a criminal. And how many states were in what years were you talking about? Well, it was only in the early 1960s. I think it was 1961 perhaps that Illinois got rid of their laws against homosexual sex. So, it was only in the early 1960s that once date, Illinois made gay sex legal. So, that was the only one. So, if you can say every, every state. Okay. In the 1960s. Sure. Okay. Homosexual sex was completely illegal. Okay. Okay. In the 1960s, in every state except for Illinois, homosexual sex was illegal. Thank you. People came to New York and you know we talked a lot about the street kids who were part of the Stonewall. But was gay life just about kids who were living on the street?

What was their spectrum of homosexual lifestyle and how can you describe that? In the 1960s in New York City, people who were homosexual ran the gamut. You know, there were those who were totally in the closet. There were those who were very open, although those were few and far between. But many gay people, you know, really lived their lives very quietly, maybe going to the bars rarely. Many people never went to a gay bar. They met just other people socially. Some people read, read, read their isolated lives. I think there were many gay people in New York City whose lives revolved around a cultural community. You know, very involved in the arts. You had a wealthy click who would go to the Plaza Hotel and all the Broadway shows and the operas. You had more learning clicks. You had working class men who probably didn't tend to identify as homosexual but were homosexual.

They wouldn't have bought a magazine. They wouldn't have been aware of the homophile movement. So it covered the spectrum. Of course, there were lesbians. There were many people who were bisexual. It was a very complex society that covered the waterfront, really. And while this was going on, here's a big spectrum of people. Gay people. Hippies were coming out of the club. Hippies were living, you know, free-loved lifestyles. It's both on the street. Women were marching demanding equal pay. I don't know what I figured out. I'll be talking over the sand in case I'm getting lucky and stuff. And yet, what were these gay people who were lunching at the Plaza and having decent careers? Were they allowed to be free? What was going on in the mid-60s? Even if you had a good job and you were gay, were you free to be gay openly?

No. In the mid-1960s, while many Americans were getting more freedom, actually I would say homosexuals were generally getting less. They kept on finding new categories to ban. The clamp down that had begun in McCarthyism was carried on and sometimes extended. So it was a very, again, it was a contradictory paradoxical or confused. It was really an anti-intuitive thing because it was an era of freedom. But in this era, gay people were not getting more free. And at times, it was getting worse at them. The New York City in the 1960s suffered under several bad regimes. There was the regime of Mayor Wagner. Ed Koch came along and Carol Gritzer, very ambitious politicians, who were trying to make a name for themselves. They found a lot of attention in the media and votes by getting gay people entrapped and fired from their jobs.

You had Ed Murphy, who was very involved in the gay club scene, who was blackmailing gay people. You had Francis Cardinal Spellman here, who was a man in the closet, but who was very involved in censorship and campaigning against gay rights. So it was very, you know, gay people really the last in line of the 1960s groups to get any kind of freedom or to demand that freedom. I think it was beginning to come about organically, not through the gay movement so much, but by what was happening in the arts and in larger society. For example, the musical Hair, which came out around 67, had gay affirming lyrics. You had the beat poets have been writing and reading their poetry in public for a decade with positive portrayals of homosexuality and homosexual sex. You had underground films, you know, many of Andy Warhol's films had a homo erotic or actually a homosexual celebration of homosexuality in some of those films.

Kimsey may have been dead, but Masters in Johnson, when the headline headlines. This is a time when the sexual revolution was going on. Ideas about gender were being questioned by renewed feminist movement. So I think that it was because of all these things going on in the larger society, the big push for freedom by everyone and militancy. People were being encouraged to question everything. I came from a small town in South Georgia, 7,000 people, very conservative. My high school year, my senior year of high school, we started an underground newspaper there. So if kids are starting an underground newspaper in just Georgia at that time, you see, I think it was just part of the feeling of the time, the zeitgeist, that everybody was demanding freedom. And gay people, they didn't really have any allies.

You know, the left, the position of the left or most liberals would be, well, don't put homosexuals in jail. But they would mock homosexuality, they would consider homosexuality mental illness, they would consider it disgusting. You probably only had a few liberal individuals and a few weak liberal organizations that would stand up to some extent for homosexual rise. I think what finally had to happen is that gay people had to do it for themselves. They had to demand that they be given respect and freedom. And I think that's what the Stonewall rights were about.