Who threw the first brick at Stonewall?
“Some say it was Stormé DeLarverie”…
It's a question that calls attention to overlooked LGBT elders but also….
“Did Jason Mraz throw the first brick at Stonewall?...
“Judy Garland threw the first brick”...
“Scarlett Johansson”...
It became an inside joke about queer icons and straight allyship.
50 years after the police raided the Stonewall Inn and its patrons mounted resistance on the street outside, I still didn't know the answer to this question: who threw the first brick at Stonewall? What I did know is that I had heard this story over and over again:
“The gay rights movement was born in 1969 at a beloved gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall riots began when a drag queen, bereft by the death of Judy Garland, threw a brick at a police officer. The riot culminated in a rocket style kickline of drag Queens facing down tactical police in riot gear.”
It's a beautiful story… but it's not exactly true. So, I gathered some people who were at the Stonewall in 1969, some historians who had spent years studying LGBT history, and some contemporary Queer writers to ask them, what's wrong with this account of Stonewall? They helped me break it down bit by bit:
It didn't begin at stonewall. Before stonewall, we had the Daughters of Bilitis, we had the Mattachine Society, there was the “Sip-in” at Julius… “and the movement in the world take us back to 1897 in Berlin with the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld's Organization, which was the first gay rights group.
So, gay rights didn't begin at Stonewall. So why was Stonewall so important?
Because it led to the creation of the Gay Liberation movement.
"The Gay Liberation Front was born out of the ashes of Stonewall."
"The Gay Liberation Front is, literally, why we have everything we have today.
“They planned a march on the 1st anniversary of Stonewall…”
“And people forget that there were three pride parades. I was at the one in Los Angeles, in 1970. We had a big jar of Vaseline on a float. It was a real "in your face" float.”
Oh, wow! So here's a fundamental question about Stonewall: “Was it a riot?”
“What we did, we were cheering and dancing in the street… That's not a riot.
“It was just a loud and bawdy, fun group of guys until it turned into a riot.”
“It is called a riot, an uprising, a rebellion.”
“I like the word rebellion… Not “overthrow the government” rebellion. Rebelling from within.”
Next, was the Stonewall bar as idyllic as some media portrays it to have been?
The Stonewall Inn was a safe haven for the queer community.
“But it was a dump.”
“It was a hell hole!”
“Dirty…”
“Rundown…”
“Mafia run…”
“mafia sleazy bar, and they water down drinks…”
“They water down drinks!”
There was a much better bar called The Cherry Lane…”
“Kooky’s”
So the Stonewall was neither New York's only gay bar nor a specially beloved institution.
Now, let’s talk about that drag queen who started it all…
“They said that she threw the first shot glass at Stonewall. And it was the shot glass heard around the world…”
“One of the persistent myths of the Stonewall, is that Marsha threw the first cocktail glass.
Marsha herself said in an interview that I did with Marsha - I didn't get there until two.”
“I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock. And when I got downtown the place was already on fire, and it was a raid already.”
Marsha P Johnson's friend and fellow activist, Sylvia Rivera, is also sometimes credited with starting Stonewall
“Sylvia Rivera is known for throwing the first bottle at the Stonewall riots.”
Sylvia Rivera herself said in 2001:
“I have been given the credit for throwing the first molotov cocktail… But I always like to correct it - I threw the second one, I did not throw the first bottle...”
First of all, that comment was probably tongue in cheek. Second of all, it is not certain that Molotov cocktails were thrown at all. Regardless of what Rivera and Johnson did at Stonewall, their impact on the trans and gay movements can't be overstated.
"When I see people saying that Marsha and Sylvia were the ones who threw the first bricks... I want to remember them in a way that feels honest because their legacies extend far beyond that night."
However there was a gender non conforming person that several witnesses credit with catalysing Stonewall.
“She was very butch and she was tough. And the police were being rough with her and she was really fighting back.”
“We have four, independent accounts, who said that this woman's fight with the police is what tipped the scales and set it all off.”
“She called out to the crowd: “What are you doing? Why are you just standing there? Why don't you do something?”
Some people say that woman was Stormé DeLarverie, a lesbian who worked as a bouncer at the time.
“DeLarverie sometimes took credit, and sometimes denied her role but so far there's been no conclusive proof of who exactly that butch woman at Stonewall was.”
And now ladies and gentlemen, Judy Garland!
Judy Garland’s funeral took place at Campbell's Funeral Home on the afternoon before the events of Stonewall.
"The patrons of the Stonewall used their grief over Judy's death to rise up and fight back."
But were the two events related?
“The worst question that people ask about Stonewall is whether it was caused by the death of Judy Garland.”
“If one looks at the accounts published in 1969, there's only one account that mentions Stonewall and Judy Garland, and that was written by a right wing columnist to mock the movement.”
“You’re trivializing our anger, and oppression of 2000 years to a singer…”
“so I went to Judy Garland’s funeral, and a lot of Stonewall queens did…”
“Oh it was like Noah's ark, all of judy's fans… God bless Judy Garland, but no, she was not the cause of the Stonewall riot…”
“No,”
So now, let's talk about that brick.
“One of the most derided representations of the first brick came from the 2015 movie, Stonewall.”
“Gay Power!”
“All anyone wants to talk about is, who threw the first brick…”
"Who threw the first brick?…
“People claim, ‘I threw the first brick!’”
“First of, it asks, ‘Were bricks thrown?’”
“Where were those bricks found?”
“Apparently, there was a construction site that had a pile of bricks.”
“I heard that last week.”
“Did they show you a picture of that construction site?”
“It’s possible that they were pulling rocks from the street… but I haven't determined where that would have been, unless it was in the park. If there's a tree pit, they're usually lined with something…”
“Around this tree there were these, stones. I pulled up the stones, I know, I threw stones, but I don't know if I threw a brick, I doubt it. I think I was a stones-man.”
“So objects were thrown that may, or may not have been bricks. But amidst all this chaos in the streets, did they really form a kickline while facing down police in riot gear?”
“No, there was not a kickline at Stonewall. There were many kicklines at Stonewall.”
“And I would gladly give you the lyrics:
We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls, we don't wear underwear to show our pubic hair"
“It was done to the tune of the Howdy Doody theme…”
“You're right, it is!”
All right, so we've worked out a framework for what happened at Stonewall that many people can, maybe, mostly agree on. But why does this even matter? Why are we nit-picking this to death?
“Because when we talk about what happened at Stonewall 50 years ago, we're also talking about issues that LGBT community is still wrestling with today, namely transphobia and racism.”
“There’s one graphic I'm thinking about in particular, “trans woman of colour throwing bricks at cops, gave me the right to get married”
“I think a lot of people cling on to these narratives because trans women of colour are often already sidelined.”
“I mean, there were some individual people of colour, but it was not a group of trans people of colour who started the rioting…”
“If people start telling stories, not as they were, but as they would like them to be, that procedure can be used by anybody for any purpose. So I think that we need to be consistent in the truth.”
“If we're demanding that our history be respected, then we have to respect it ourselves. You have to apply the same criteria to our history that would be worthwhile, that it would be accurate, that it would be well researched, we should recognise our warts as well as our, our flowers, as it were…”
“I mean, I think historical erasure are real. How do we tell a history of something, when our lives aren’t in archives? Speculative fiction and historically informed fiction, to me, are ways to answer that question, and it doesn't have to be true to be meaningful.”
“Stonewall was a messy evening. LGBT histories are very messy. I think that naming that, it doesn't take away from the importance of what happened.”
“I don't think anyone threw the first brick at Stonewall…”
“And at this point, I don't care who threw that first brick!”
“Oh, I don’t think it matters…”
“And it doesn't matter.”
“Like, it doesn't matter. It's OK that we don't know."
"If it wasn't a brick, it was a rock. If it wasn't a rock, it was a purse. If it wasn’t a purse, it was a shoe, if it wasn’t a shoe, it was a glass, if it wasn’t a glass, it was a dirty look…It was all of those things.”
“It wasn't just that day, it was days before, and it was many years after.”
It’s 50 years later, and we still can't agree on exactly what happened that night, but that's alright! Stonewall was about people reclaiming their own narratives from those that told them they were sick, or pitiful or didn't even exist.
“Part of telling your own story means living openly and partying at parades, but it also means contending with other peoples versions of that story, even if theirs don't match perfectly with yours. As Chrysanthemun Tran said, that can be messy, and that's OK. I love a messy party.”
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