In a New Century: Essays on Queer History, Politics, and Community Life

25. Rethinking Queer History: Or, “Richard Nixon, Gay Liberationist”?

210 k 25 Re­ think­ ing Queer His­ tory Or, “Rich­ ard Nixon, Gay Lib­ er­ a­ tion­ ist”? The ­ amount of his­ tory that has been writ­ ten in the past gen­ er­ a­ tion about sex­ ual and gen­ der iden­ tity is ex­ traor­ di­ nary. At the time of the Stone­ wall up­ ris­ ing, in 1969, gay, les­ bian, bi­ sex­ ual, or trans­ gen­ der his­ tory was vir­ tu­ ally un­ imag­ in­ able. Now there is a large and grow­ ing body of his­ tor­ i­ cal writ­ ing on a wide range of top­ ics. Yet, for the most part, it re­ mains sep­ ar­ ate from and not in­ te­ grated with gen­ eral ac­ counts of US his­ tory. On the basis of re­ search I began doing in 2007 about Chi­ cago LGBT his­ tory, I de­ vel­ oped a talk, with the ­ attentiongrabbing title used for this chap­ ter, that I gave a num­ ber of times in the con­ text of the for­ ti­ eth an­ ni­ ver­ sary, in 2009, of Stone­ wall and gay lib­ er­ a­ tion. It is an ef­ fort to see queer his­ tory as ­ thoroughly en­ meshed in what often gets de­ scribed as “main­ stream” his­ tory. k On Fri­ day night of the last week­ end in June 1969, po­ lice from ­ Manhattan’s Sixth Pre­ cinct set out to raid the Stone­ wall Inn, a gay bar on Chris­ to­ pher An ear­ lier, ab­ bre­ vi­ ated ver­ sion of this essay ap­ peared in Jill Aus­ tin and Jen­ ni­ fer Brier, eds., Out in Chi­ cago: LGBT His­ tory at the Cross­ roads (Chi­ cago: Chi­ cago His­ tory Mu­ seum, 2011), 95–107. Rethinking Queer History 211­ Street in Green­ wich Vil­ lage. There were is­ sues with the Stone­ wall. It­ served liq­ uor with­ out an ap­ pro­ pri­ ate state li­ cense. It had ties to or­ ga­ nized crime. It ­ brought an un­ ruly and dis­ rep­ u­ ta­ ble ele­ ment to the neigh­ bor­ hood: too young, too counter­ cul­ tu­ ral, too flam­ boy­ ant in its dress, too dark­ skinned. But, even with­ out those is­ sues, the po­ lice might eas­ ily have tar­ geted Stone­ wall. Raids of gay and les­ bian bars, with or with­ out a pre­ text, and the ar­ rest of man­ ag­ ers, em­ ploy­ ees, and pa­ trons as well, were un­ re­ mark­ able oc­ cur­ rences in ­ American cit­ ies in the 1960s.1 Some­ thing else that was un­ re­ mark­ able in the ­ United ­ States in 1969 was the oc­ cur­ rence of mass dem­ on­ stra­ tions and pub­ lic dis­ or­ der. In New York, for in­ stance, the 1968–69 ­ school year saw the ­ American Fed­ er­ a­ tion of Teach­ ers, whose mem­ bers were pre­ dom­ i­ nantly white, go on ­ strike in­ protest ­ against the ac­ tions of a com­ mu­ nity ­ school board whose dis­ trict­ served a ­ mostly black and His­ panic stu­ dent pop­ u­ la­ tion. The com­ mu­ nity, for its part, had been hold­ ing ral­ lies and pro­ tests to build sup­ port for its goal of local con­ trol of ­ schools.2 In April and May of 1969, the ­ months pre­ ced­ ing the Stone­ wall raid, a co­ ali­ tion of ­ African ­ American and ­ Puerto Rican stu­ dents at the City Col­ lege of New York had shut down the cam­ pus for weeks. Their de­ mands in­ cluded not only the es­ tab­ lish­ ment of black and eth­ nic stud­ ies pro­ grams but also an open ad­ mis­ sions pol­ icy to allow every high ­ school grad­ u­ ate in New York City ac­ cess to a free col­ lege ed­ u­ ca­ tion in a pub­ lic uni­ ver­ sity. White stu­ dents and stu­ dents of color en­ gaged in ­ pitched bat­ tles on cam­ pus but then ­ joined ­ forces to fight the po­ lice when col­ lege ad­ min­ is­ tra­ tors in­ vited them on cam­ pus to re­ store order.3 Gay bar raids and urban up­ ris­ ings: both of them every­ day ­ events in the­ United ­ States in the late 1960s. What was not typ­ i­ cal was put­ ting those two phe­ nom­ ena to­ gether...