AMERICAN EXPERIENCE PRESENTS STONEWALL
UPRISING
~ Documentary about
the Launch of Gay Rights Movement Premiering on PBS
~
April 2011
In 1969, homosexual acts were
illegal in every state except Illinois, and gays frequently
found themselves being hauled off to jail, their names
splashed in the next day's newspaper. The vast majority
of medical authorities at the time decreed homosexuality
a mental disorder and often prescribed brutal treatments,
including lobotomy. Even in Greenwich Village, where
thousands of gay people moved to escape the constant
oppression of their hometowns, patrons of gay bars were
accustomed to frequent police harassment.
But on June 28, 1969, the
gay community experienced what one Village Voice reporter
who was on the scene called its "Rosa Parks moment,"
when the N.Y.P.D. raided a Mafia-run gay bar, The Stonewall
Inn. For the first time ever, patrons refuse to be led
into paddy wagons, setting off a violent three day uprising
that launched the gay rights movement. Based on David
Carter's Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay
Revolution, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner's STONEWALL
UPRISING will premiere on the PBS series AMERICAN
EXPERIENCE on Monday, April 25, 2011 at 9:00 p.m.
(check local listings.)
Told through interviews with
Stonewall patrons, reporters and the policeman who led
the raid, Stonewall Uprising recalls the fervently hostile
climate that gays were forced to live in, when public
service announcements warned youngsters against predatory
homosexuals, respected news outlets reported on the
"homosexual problem," and police entrapment was rampant.
Being arrested could cost one their livelihood since
licenses to teach, practice law or medicine or even
cosmetology, were frequently denied or revoked.
But 1969's so-called "Summer
of Love" would be a time of radical change across America
including within the gay community. At the height of
that summer's social turmoil, the cops once again raided
Stonewall, but this time the patrons did not leave quietly.
Fighting back, they triggered three nights of pandemonium,
beating back a small army of tactical police armed with
tear gas and billy clubs. Once the dust settled, the
world realized a movement has been born. Exactly one
year later, America saw its first Gay Pride Parade as
thousands marched up Sixth Avenue.
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