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A policeon was dragging this queen and she was struggling, and he dragged her to the petty wagon and was right there and threw her in. He looked away for a second and you could see her foot and her sequined high heel come out and kick him on the shoulder. She just sent him flying six feet. He looked at us, He dusted herself off, and he went back into that wagon, and you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping,
ugly dripping and moaning. And he came out of the back of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and he closed the door. He turned around and said, all right, your faggots, you saw what you saw. Not get the fuck out of you. Well we always listened to.
But not this time.
Her kicking him was the first sign that this night would be like no other.
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South, I thought being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to un learn that by seeking out our history, and what I've found are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode, we'll meet Martin Boyce, a Stonewall regular who one night found himself in the middle of the
historic riot that would change everything. From My Heart podcast, I'm Jordan Gon Solve this and this is what we loved. I can't speak for all gay millennials, but I had no idea what Stonewall was until I was in my twenties. I grew up going to public school in Texas, and Stonewall just wasn't really something we learned about. It's funny, though, I do remember my first time going to Stonewall. I was eighteen years old and I had just moved to New York for college, and I was deeply closeted, but
I just wanted to dance with other gay people. I ended up getting into the bar using my Pennsylvania fake ID, and I remember looking at the window and there was this bright neon sign that said Stonewall. I didn't realize where I was, and I had no idea that almost fifty years before that night, I was at the site of the most important uprising in Queer American history. Almost half of Americans don't know what Stonewall is, so I wanted to talk to someone who's actually there. Martin Boyce.
My next guest was he's seventy six now, but on the first night of the Stonewall riots in June nineteen sixty nine, he was twenty one, five seven and skinny, with brunette hair that had blonde streaks in it.
He lived with his.
Father and grandmother in New York. At that time, bars could be shut down if any of their gay patrons were caught hugging or kissing, or even dancing with each other, and those gay patrons could be arrested for disorderly conduct. At that point in the sixties, queer people in New York had found a home in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village. The Stone Wall In was in the heart of the village, and it was one of those few places that queer
people could dance at. Even though they could still get arrested. That feeling of escaping their reality just to dance, even for a night was worth it. This was the queer culture that Martin was Immerston, Miss Martin. That's what they used to call you, right, what would they call me?
Well, I don't know. You have to reveal your personality to get an it was you. It was up to them.
Oh wow, Okay, hopefully I'll be lucky enough to get a name. So why don't we start off by talking about when you came out and what that was like. You were born in nineteen forty eight and you grew up basically in the fifteen and sixties. So tell me what it was like when you came out.
Hopeless. I mean, if you were a gay person, it was hopeless being gay in the fifties. It was the worst thing you could possibly be and there was no explanation, no understanding, or just accept it.
And how old were you when you came out?
Well, I came out officially at seventeen, but I was gay since I was seven. Everybody knew. Everyone's waiting for me to say, you know, I was gay, And finally I told my dad, you know I'm gay. If you want to throw me at the house, drow me at the house. And my father said, no, I love you.
Really. Yeah.
He was a working class cab driver, a real matro man, but he understood.
You'd seen all kinds of walks of life because he was just.
Nineteen thirty three, so he watched this horror for thirty forty years. Yeah, what horror, the torment of gay people.
M So, what about your grandma? What did she say?
My grandmother was like Italian Sicilian, and there she was, you know, with her shawl and her ear rings and her black hair. Cop parted in the middle. And my father said, you know, you got to tell your grandmother you're gay. I was like, I do and she said, yes, you gotta tell her. And I told my grandmother. I said to my grandmother, you know, Grandma, I'm gay. She said, what what does it mean. I said, well, you see, I'm homosexual. She goes, what is that? What does that mean?
I said, Grandma, she understood this. I'm a fairy and she said, oh, she said yeah. She said I chose your mother when you were born, the very day you were born. And that was that. I was out wow, because my grandmother was the one that said we're all gay now and then wow.
So you grew up in a pretty progressive very.
But in a non progressive world society.
Yeah, So tell me what it was like coming of age in the nineteen sixties.
The impression was incredible. And one day I went down to the trucks because we all went to the trucks.
When you said trucks, you mean the abandoned trucks that gay men would go find people to have sex with for cruising. Yeah, and how old were you?
Oh about eighteen?
Okay?
And we went down there. We'd always go down there, and it was always interesting because so forbidden, the trucks were open and elicit. I went down to the trucks and there was nobody there. I mean, nobody was there. That was really scary.
And that was not normal, not normal.
And all of a sudden I heard a voice saying, girl, save yourself, Please, girl, save yourself. And I was like, what's going on with the coming of that? Boys, please listen to me. You gotta listen to me, listen. And then I looked under the car finally because that's where the sound seemed to be coming. And there was miss.
Marsha you mean Marcia P. Johnson.
Oh wow, I knew her. And she was very nice. I mean, you know who I was standing up and that's where I know she was. She always wanted somebody, anybody of danger. She was that kind of queen.
And Grandma, really, what was she warning you about?
There was a group of boys and their wife beat her t shirts with bats. They saw me because they were trying to.
Beat you up.
Oh they were going to come out there and beat me. Oh they were Those bats were ready to move.
You could tell because they knew you were gay.
Oh of course I was obviously gay. You could see that blood was the only thing that was satisfied them. And then a truck drive across the way at the highway towards the river called me into the car. He thought what was happening? And I ran over him, got into the car and he took me to Fourth Street to get the bus to go home, and I saved myself. Every day was a danger like that.
So growing up in the nineteen sixties, being gay in the nineteen sixties, you were always scared that people were gonna beat you up.
Of course, I remember my father tried to teach me how to use a knife. He showed me how to stick it in somebody, but then you had to turn it wow to twist it inside, and I thought, I can't do this.
He had taught you that because you were gay, and he knew you needed to defend yourself.
Yes, you could not walk down the street. Two queens walking down the street. One had to watch him. One had to talk, and then you talked and she watched because you turned that corner and it could be a catastrophe.
Wow, how are you meeting people? Because there was no grinder back then.
No, no, your crew. You go to the streets. The streets that night were alive. There were certain areas to certain streets that were alive. New York and the sixties the streets were everything. I mean in the sixties you didn't make plans. You left your house and by five in the morning you'd come home. But you would experience these amazing things in between.
And what was it like going to a gay bar back then? Because it was illegal, right, it was.
Illegal and it was stuffy. You were trained right away to being a raid.
What do you mean a raid?
Well, if you went to a gay ball, you had to know how to deal with the raid.
The cops.
The cops, depending on if they're paid off or if they were not paid off, house via the raid would be. They would tell you what to do in a raid. I mean, like who would tell you other capele we met right away on the streets always they would just tell you in a matter of conversation, what to do. In to May, it sounds very simple. The life would
go on, and of if they did. You stayed in front of your drink, you grabbed your ID, you moved away from anybody who were close to or cruising or getting close to, and you wait for them to come in. They break down the door. They were going to punish you. They were gonna let you know that you were not legitimated. They were going to let you know your place in this world. My dad thought the way I looked when I was going out, and he said, you know what,
He said, here's the cookie jar. There's money in it for your bail. And he said, whenever you got one, call called me and.
I'll bail you out with the money and the cook You do right. He just did even finish right. So let me get this straight, Martin. It is the sixties, and every time you go outside you're worried about getting beaten up, and every time you go to a bar, you're worried about the police coming to arrest you. Your dad is teaching you from an early age how to protect yourself, and you have just accepted this is what life is for a gay person.
There was nothing else you could do. This is the way life was, and this is the way you had to live. So why not enjoy what you had? A little you had and gays that developed an amazing culture, a culture that was really worthy of living.
So let's talk about Stonewall. How did you hear about it?
Oh? Everybody heard about stone was the moment it opened. The whole thing was. You could dance there and it was a dump.
What do you mean a dump?
It was a horrible physical place. It was just uncared for, unclean. So we washed it black walls. I remember seeing the place one afternoon and my friend had to go in there and what a dump? What a non entity?
In the daylight you saw it in this Oh it was horrible.
It was horrible place. But at night it was magic. People made it magic.
What was the difference.
The difference was the attitude of the people and the jukebox. The jukebox was the heart and the center of the entire bar.
So it was all about just losing yourself on the dance floor.
Yes, and also from Harlem and Brooklyn came the black queens. So they'd come and they practiced their routines in front of us. They were doing something in front of the jukebox. It was incredible, this new kind of dancing, new kind of performance. It was called Vogan later but we didn't have a name. And the queens were tried out on the Stonewall crowd during the weekdays. It was fantastic, really something else to see. Nobody spoke, everybody watched. They were
the queens doing this new thing, this hip thing. We were like the privilege to be part of.
This is the music. Tell me what was your favorite song that was playing?
So it was really great. I knew good music, the kind of music that queens wanted to hear. And they controlled that jukebox and drawed it. And every time I would go to the jukebox, I was allowed.
You got the jukebox access because they liked you.
Oh, I was no problem. I was on a little pedestal and one day my friend left New York City and I got very sad and I got up and I played I'm Leaving on a Jet playing by Peter Poul and Mary, a folk group.
Folk music at Stonewall.
They did not like it. I was ostracized. I was not allowed to the jukebox again. I told my dad he knew street culture and he said, queens are just the same like everybody else. He said, I'll give w your allowed. Just buy your berry drink to go let your back. I did. I had no money left. It was all spent on them. And the day came and I was all right. They came me, they opened up. I had the way to the jukebox, one quarter, the only quarter I had. I played E nine Bretha Franklin,
respect and the queens started dancing. The crowd started cheering, and I was back. I was back in the centrals. Com I remember to this day that year, I remember that feeling they gave me one more chance.
When Martin was coming of age, life as a queer person wasn't easy in New York. Police raids were common for queer people just trying to dance with their friends. Homosexual acts were illegal, and being gay was still officially considered a mental illness. Stonewall was a respite from all of this. From the outside, it didn't look like much, but inside it was a safe haven where queer people
could let loose. The physical building was two stories tall, had a red brick exterior, and was mostly surrounded by narrow streets. On the hot summer night, of June twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, Martin was excited to go to Stonewall with his best friend Bertie. It was a full moon. They were dressed up in what he calls scare drag. Scare drag isn't dressing in drag. It's sort of like tying up your T shirt to show a little belly
button and putting on some mascara. So that night Martin slipped on a tight pink boatnecked T shirt that was cropped at the bottom. He put on his eyeliner and headed to the village. Stone Wall was already full though, and they didn't end up getting in, so he and Bertie sat at a stoop right by the bar to figure out where to go next, and they started seeing some commotion. It was eight cops who were raiding the bar.
As they kicked the patrons out onto the street. Martin and Bertie saw some of their friends outside Stonewall and ran into the action. So tell me a little bit about that night and what actually happened.
We were sitting on a stoop up from Stonewoo and then I heard all this commotion and these lights down Stonewol and it was police cause, and the crowd behind me, rushing rushing behind. I could feel them talking about a raid, and I looked down. I did, there's a raid. It was happening. I could tell this just look a ray really was ray. And the queen that created a semi
circuit around the bar. A police one was dragging this queen in this open area in between the semicircle and the doors of the bar, and she was struggling, and he dragged her to the petty wagon and was right there and threw her in. He looked away for a second, and she could see her foot and her sequined high heel come out and kick him on the shoulder and send him flying. She just sent him flying six feet.
But he got up, he looked at us, He dusted himself off, and he went back into that wagon, and you heard flesh and bone against metal and dripping, ugly dripping and moaning, and he came out of the back of the car triumphant, and everybody went silent, and he closed the door. He turned around and said, all right, your faggots, your soldier saw get the fuck out of here. Well we always listened, but not this time. And then we started moving towards him. Step by step, I saw
the hairs on his neckro up. He gulped, and he ran into the Stonemall barn. They all ran into the barn. The cops well, all of a sudden, everybody started throwing things in their pockets, pennies at first, because there was copper, and we started throwing that and throwing it against the door. It's one queen, she went. She got all these orange peels from orange shop, and we threw those, and they brought bottles. We started throwing those a garbage can a beer, and we kept doing.
That because the cops are inside, right.
And because the adrenaline it had to be released, It could no longer be contained. Something I look a made us all warriors, and they knew it, and they knew they were in danger. Their guns there were times, meant nothing.
Right now they were outnumbered.
They had not expected such fierce resistance.
And this was different from other raids that.
You had been to, completely different. We always listen to them. We dis first when it tell us dispersed. We shook our heads, we locked our wounds. We took our losses again and again and again, but not that night. Her kicking him was the first sign that this night would be like no other.
It sounds so different from the Martin that was compliant with the cops and running away from the guys with the bats. What had changed for you?
All of us were angry. No one we're oppressed, No one had been mistreated. And why we contributed to society. We did their hair, we did their nails, we made their art.
Martin, What was going through your minds at that point?
You didn't think of anything. I can't even think now what I thought. It didn't matter anymore, and we could think anymore. You didn't think, You just thought. And then this queen she went and she got light of fluid from the optimo on seventh AVENU, my god, and then she just threw a matchine and lit the whole place up. The riot started. And a riot is not what you think. It's not like you stand there and you think you're in a twirl in a swirl in a kaleidoscope, and
you're smelling burning garbage and sweat, and nothing's clear. It's all swirled. And then it stopped. And there I was looking at the window of stormwall, and there was Miss New Orleans just on the window. Sill. She's a very unfortunate queen. She was ugly, she had very bad skin, Miss New Orleans, Miss Doorians. But I have never seen such fire in anybody's eyes. This queen meant to avenge
all the indignities that she suffered. And she jumped down and she grabbed the parking meter and almost single handedly broke it out of the contrecrete. They helped her when they realized what she was trying to do, and they started ramming the door.
The parking meter that's in the concrete ground. She took that out of the ground.
She broke the ground.
That's the level of rage.
Oh, she was determined. They used as a battering ram. They started smashing down the door, and we're going to break in, and all of a sudden, the crowd parted and there they came. They called in the Tactico Police Force.
Oh shit, the swat team.
Headshields, body shiels, gas masks, every kind of equipment. And they were really, you could tell, curious that they were called in to fight a bunch of fagots. They couldn't believe it. They were trained for something else al together, and here was a bunch of fagots that they thought they could see in their eyes they were going to put this out in two minutes. He's going to take them two minister and the entire thing. So like this
is an incredible thing. They did this kick line. All the queens got together, held each other's arms and did a rock cat kick and say, we are the village. Girls, we wear our hair, and girls, we wear our dungarees above our nelly knees.
Oh it sounds like you guys weren't even afraid.
No, there was nothing to lose, and they charged and we ran.
It's estimated that perhaps as many as two thousand protesters were there with Martin that night. They were throwing empty beer bottles at the cops and battling the tactical patrol force. But Martin and his friends had an advantage. They knew the neighborhood of Greenwich Village better than anyone else. The village isn't like the rest of New York. It doesn't follow the grid system. It's old and has unusual diagonal
street patterns that curve and twist at random points. The cops couldn't keep up.
We knew the village, and that's a military advantage that we had all these men who did not know these things.
You knew. You and the rest of the queens. You guys knew exactly every nook and cranny and turned of the West village.
We singled doorway, every place to go pee. We knew everything about the village, everything, And they chased us. They thought they were going to end it. It didn't worry. We controlled the street. They didn't wipe the street out. They didn't get us in patty wagons. We were still holding the ground. Oh my god. And then do one was coming, Oh my god. And I was on a stoop. I was really exhausted, and of course he was this queen. She was blotting her head bleeding.
Wow.
And then six feet away from her was this cop who was so tired, leaning against the fence. Didn't arrest her because over it was just over.
Oh shit. So this this image is the sun is coming up, and you have a queen who was running away from the cop, and the cop and the queen and are standing next to each other. Both over.
The street was smoking, garbage, kins were smoking. There was a trail of glass, beautiful when some picked it up, like of diamonds.
There's tears coming down your face? How come?
Well, I haven't talked about this in a while, just remembering it. It was a great event. Sometimes I think it's just an event, and I don't realize what a great event it was. And it was.
Martin Boyce had just taken part in the Stonewall Riots, a rebellion that would change the way gay people were treated in America. But that wasn't yet clear to Martin. In fact, as he was going home from stone Wall that morning, he was anxious that there was going to be backlash and a lot of it. What do you do? Did you go home? Oh?
I went home.
What time is it?
Oh? Must be five thirty. Now, wow, my father got phone calls. I got into the house and he goes. He put his paper down. He said to me, it's about time you guys did something.
It was about time.
I was so stunned that he said. I just went to bed. I had it. I was just like too much of me. And then about three or four days later, I knew the backlace was coming. And I was walking up eighty seventh Street. Everybody was walking dogs and things like. It was just the afternoon.
Yeah.
So this very very butched black man a sensation worker throwing cobbage bags into the back of the truck. And he saw me, and he glared at me, and he moved towards me and lived his hand in the black salute.
Wow, it was his.
Fist up and power in that power bout his head. He blinked. Nobody was walking dogs anymore, Nobody was calling for cabs to do that. In front of a fag. The entire block was like, what is going on?
There's like solidarity there.
It was a real moment, and I realized, there's hope.
So what was the first thing that you thought really changed?
The psychiatric people? The medical association, there's the chitaes voting us not.
Sick, mentally ill?
Right.
In nineteen fifty two, the American Psychiatric Association had classified homosexuality as a mental illness. During this time, queer people could be subjected to brain surgeries called lobotomies. These surgeries severed entire parts of the brain with the goal of decreasing same sex attraction. Performed on young, healthy people, it could lead to epilepsy, dementia, and sometimes death. But after stonewall, gay activists were empowered to organize and push back, and
after intense protesting. The American Psychiatric Association voted in nineteen seventy three to remove that classification. Gays were no longer considered mentally ill. A lot of people attribute that change to Stonewall.
That was the first change. You couldn't have anymore. They couldn't force you have abod anymore because you weren't sick anymore.
That's a big deal.
It's a very big deal. It's a very big deal. I knew people that were sent away, like everybody remembered somebody gone, the great queens that were gone, homeless, mental institutions, lobotomies.
You know, Martin. People always associate Stonewall with liberation. When did you actually feel liberated the first gay march, Yeah, tell me about that.
Well, there was going to be a march a year later, and there was trouble in the city and everybody knew something was going to happen and watch. So it was not the best idea to have a gay march.
You thought you might get beat up or something.
We were sure were gonna get beat up.
One year to the day of Stonewall, in nineteen seventy the very first Pride marches were held all over the country to commemorate the first anniversary of the riots. That's why Pride Isn't. The march in New York was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day. Christopher Street is in the heart of Greenwich Village. For Martin, it felt like the first time that queer people from all walks of life had come together. Usually folks just stayed in their clicks.
Martin and his best friend Bertie decided they were going to go, but they were really anxious. Queer people at the time didn't really gather together in broad daylight. It was dangerous and they thought they might be some of the only ones to show up. So before heading to the demonstration, Martin and Bertie took a valuum to calm their nerves. They marched fifty blocks till they got to Central Park, where they realized that there were thousands of people with them.
We heard that the gay group had gotten a license, couldn't bleat it to march up sixth Avenue, and you know, there was a call to us to join, all right. Me and Bertie said, you know, well we're gonna do it. We get down there and we started. I remember him grabbing my arm. I grabbed his arm and was mashing it. But on the way up it was this black woman. She was cutting windows up in this building and she
waved her claw to us. And then there were people that were shouting encouragement, tourists and people that were just like my dad, like go ahead, keep going.
Man.
They knew you were gay, but oh my god, they knew that you have to be blind. I see that, and all of a sudden Bertie turned around to me and said, we're in the middle. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable, and we begetting to fifty seventh Street. They stopped us. Then the track stopped and a couple was near me. I said, I knew you did this. I knew you stop us. I knew it. Said I didn't stop you. There's too many of you. You can't get into the park right away. I said, really, He said, yeah, you
gotta wait. And true enough, in the south part of the park we're all getting in. The hells were covered with gay people, covered with gay people. Now, we never saw each other before in the daytime.
Really where when wow? Because you guys only met each other at night in the dark, in the dark, we knew.
About each other. We imagined each other. We knew all that, but we never really looked at each other. And multitudes are gay people covering the hills was incredible and nothing was happening because all these gay people were feeling a sense of wonder seeing other gay people. And Bertie looked at me and said, you know what I think?
Where people? What do you mean when you say when Bertie said we are people, what does that mean?
We weren't before. We're just a bunch of gay groups. And all of a sudden, Bertie noticed that all these gays were like together.
So for the first time you felt like you were a part of something.
Right, that this really was gay depression.
Wow, it's crazy for me to be sitting across from you because we're two different generations. And I can't help but think about the fact that I'm able to go to gay bars and it's because of you, know what you did all those years ago, And I just wonder, from your perspective, what do you think the impact of stonewall has been on the generations after you?
Every older gay person wants to pass the torch to a younger gay person. It's true, I'm amazed at young people all all the the gay world. I've never seen so many eager hands ready to grab that. George. I'm married today because of what your generation did. So the depth is inter there's an exchange, yes, because SOA is not a story of liberation.
For us.
It was a story of frustration and desperation. The next generation made a story of liberation.
So, in other words, what you're saying is that each generation adds something to the conversation about liberation, absol And for as much as we are grateful to you, you're grateful to absolutely. Wow.
Yeah, Absolutely, But.
We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvis. New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in to tell your story, email us at but We Loved at gmail dot com, or send us a message on Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our executive producers
are Me, Maya Howard and Katrina Norble. Fact checking by Marisa Brown, Original music by Steve Bone special thanks to Jay Bronson and rockel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.