. this is a special edition of american history tv, a sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on american history tv, like lectures in history, american artifacts, real america, the civil war, oral history, the presidency, and special event coverage about our history. enjoy american history tv now and every weekend on c-span3. here on american history tv, we take a look back at the 1969 stone wall riots and how they became a key turning point in the lgbtq rights movement.

up next we hear from his for in an marc stein, editor of the stone wall riots. he spoke with us from greenwich village. >> having to lie i feel is the saddest and the ugliest part of being a homosexual, when you have your first bad love experience, for instance, and you can't go to your brother or your sister and say i'm hurting. . >> at first i was very guilty, and then i realized that all the things that are taught you not only by society, but by psychiatrists, are just to fit you in a mold. i just rejected the mold, and when i rejected the mold, i was happier. >> independent organizations all across the country, there are somewhere between 60 and 75 independent groups across the

united states, maybe more now. they keep growing up overnight and this is a unified effort on the part of some 20 or 30 organizations on the east coast. the differences primarily are approach. certain groups, for example, tend to emphasize very militant confrontation tactics. other groups will emphasize a more educational approach, going out into areas where there are what you might call people who don't know very much about home oh sexuality. others will help people in need. this is a part of the effort. the effort today is to change the institutions that make life difficult for us. def did he host

. gay and proud, gay and proud! >> this is what the stonewall inn looks like today, a look at the demonstrations that took place in july 1969. and joining us from greenwich village, new york, and marc stein. he is the editor of the stonewall riots, the documentary history. thank you for being with us on c-span and c-span3, american history tv. we appreciate it. >> thanks very much for having me. >> take us back 50 years ago this week. what happened? >> well, the police in that period routinely raided gay bars, and that was certainly the case in new york city, and there was actually a raid on the stonewall inn a few days earlier, and on the night of june 27, the police began a

raid and things proceeded in a fairly routine manner. some patrons were allowed to exit the bar and some were detained. it was very common for the police to detain bar owners, bar managers, bartenders, people of color, people who transgressed gender, so in the lingo of the day transvestites or drag queens. so some were detained and some began exiting the bar. by that night, and by this time it was the early morning hours of june 28, patrons and passers by began gathering on the street outside. as the police tried to bring those they had detained into police wagons, the crowd began to erupt and over the next few nights, there ensued rioting in the streets, protests,

demonstrations. at one point the police were actually trapped inside the bar until reinforcements arrived, the tactical police or the riot control police were called and tried to reestablish order on the streets. but the rioting proceeded over the course of the next couple of weeks. >> why the dislocation, why the stonewall inn and why july of 1969? what triggered this particular set of riots? >> it's a complicated question. the stonewall inn was mafia owned and managed, was were many gay bars in new york city and some other american cities, and there was a system of payoffs whereby the bar owners and managers paid off the police in order to limit, although never completely restrict, police raids on the bars. but the police would raid the bars even if there were these payoff systems in place. there are a lot of different accounts of

why the police raided the bar that night. the payoff system might have broken down. there was a mayoral election that was going on, and that was often a time when police would raid bars as part of a crackdown on vice. so the city administration would appear to be promoting law and order. there were allegations of violations of liquor licensing laws, disorderly conduct, blackmailing, other allegations about the stonewall inn in particular. so that's probably why the stonewall itself was targeted. why june 1969, that's a question that historians have been debating for a long time. in global terms, 1968 was really a major year that witnessed rebel i don't knows and revolutions around rebellions and reactions around the world as well as

repression. so some would see the stonewall riots in 1969 as an outgrowth of the worldwide developments happening, and then there were local and national developments. as i mentioned, the mayoral election. there were just days, weeks before the riots took place, mayor john lindsey had lost the republican primary to be reelected. now, lindsey was known to be a friend of the gay community in the late '60s, and he ended up winning the election in 1969, but he did so on a third-party ticket. so in late june, nobody knew that he was going to end up winning. also around that time was a series of police killings of lgbtq people around the country, los angeles, berkeley, oakland, california, and new york city. and i think that contributed to the rage and the anger and the fury that lgbt people felt that night and in the days and weeks surrounding

the stonewall riots. >> our conversation with marc stein. he is a professor of history at san francisco state university and he is the editor of this book, "the stonewall riots: a documentary history." we'll get to your calls in a moment. we're dividing our calls regionally and that number is (202) 748-8002. but if you could, describe physically where you are situated. >> directly behind me is the new stonewall national monument which was created during the obama administration. it's a small park, triangular park, and behind the park is the stonewall inn itself. it's the two-story building with beige stucko and alongside of it a three-story building that was also part of the stonewall inn. this is in greenwich village, in new york city, lower manhattan. >> what do the monuments

represent? >> well, when obama reference the stonewall alongside seneca falls in his inaugural address, it really signaled that lgbt activism, the lgbt movement was part of the broader movement for social justice in the united states. that was a very powerful symbolic statement on the part of obama as president of the united states, as the first african-american president of the united states. and then establishing this space, this monument here, is just another way of signaling the road that's been traveled over the last not just 50 years, but even longer to achieve lgbt quality, a still unfinished process, i might add, but it's quite complicated with the stonewall national monument because this is an action on

the part of the federal government which for many, many decades was quite oppressive towards lgbt people. still we have problems with federal policy. so there's a kind of paradox that the federal government has recognized this space and yet continues to adopt policies currently -- the best example might be the ban on transgender military service members. so there's that paradox of recognition by the federal government, but also ongoing struggles and problems with the federal government. >> and you mentioned the speech by president obama, his second inaugural speech on january 21, 2013, from the west front of the u.s. capitol. here's what he said. >> we, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths that all of us are created equal is the star that guides us

still, just as it guided our forebearers through seneca fall and selma and stonewall, just as it guided those men and women some of whom left footprints along this great mall to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone, to hear a king explain that our freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth. >> that was then now former president obama in 2013. one more point, marc, about your location, because the stonewall in itself is -- i guess the best way to say it is a rather cozy bar. it's not very big, is it? >> it's not very big in the large scheme of things, but actually it was known in 1969 as one of the larger gay bars in new york city and in greenwich village. it featured dancing. it featured go-go boys, and

so actually compared to some real holes in the wall, the stonewall inn was relatively spacious. >> and why were these important to the gay and lesbian community? >> well, it was basically illegal in many states. there were also state and local laws that regulated lgbt speech, that regulated lgbt participation in many aspects of public life. difficult to get government jobs at the local, state, and federal levels in 1969. bars, though, were a congregation place, were a place where lgbt people could come together, socialize together, enjoy time together, and in that sense some people argue that the bar was for the lgbt community what the church was for the african-american community or what the factory

was for the labor movement, the central space for gathering, becoming active, developing ideas about social justice and equality. >> in order to kind of get a sense of how the media covered the gay and less bean community back then, one which has been apologized for, the title of the program was homosexuals. >> a cbs survey shows that two out of three americans look upon homosexuals with disgust and fear. some said hatred. some say it is an illness. only 10% say it is a crime. and yet, and here is the paradox, the

majority of americans favor some form of punishment, even for acts among consenting adults. the homosexuals, bitterly aware of this respond by going underground, where they can act out as they want to, where they can experience the part of society that they call straight. >> and this is marc stein and i know you're familiar with that program. as you see that and hear that, your reaction. >> well, the media was changing in the second half of the 1960s, as was the lgbt movement, so i think that program was quite soundly criticized by the pre-stonewall lgbt movement, but there were other media stories that were more accepting and more open to change. one example would be the "new york times" manage published a major magazine published a

story. and more generally, the lgbt movement had success in the second half of the '60s, and that was certainly true in new york city. so under the lindsey administration, there was a decline in sexual entrapment practices on the part of police, a decline in arrests for sexual solicitation, some successes in court decisions that allowed gay bars a little more freedom to exist and to prosper and thrive. so things were changing in the second half of the 1960s. when we turn to civil rights them, media reports were interesting, conflicting, and ever changing. so in the first week, the "new york times" , new york post, new york daily news, did all cover the stonewall riots, but it was buried news, not prominent front-page news. the village voice did major stories on the stonewall riots and had

reporters on the scene, even trapped inside the bar during the riots. and those were much more significant stories. but it was really the alternative press and the lgbt press that covered the riots more sympathetically, more comprehensively, and those are the stories that historians rely on, along with oral histories, police reports, and photographs for rounding out the picture of what happened that week. >> and one of those, the documentary which we are featuring on c-span3s american history tv, our guest marc stein is joining us from greenwich village, new york, and he is also the author of "the stonewall riots: a documentary history," as we talk about stonewall, a turning point for the lgbt community. tom is on the phone from flint, michigan. good morning. >> good morning to both of you gentlemen and all the viewers. this will be pretty brief.

just a little context. i'm a navy veteran, a gay navy veteran and grew up in a very much catholic household. you know, this issue is portrayed many different ways by many different folks and corners of society, but what it really is is it's about love. it's not about sex per -- i mean so much. it's about love and, you know, good luck to anybody who is determined to fight love because, you know, you're really -- you're really fighting quite a force right there. and, you know, coming from a religious background, the last thing i'll mention is, you know, lgbtq issues are often by the religious right mentioned in the same breath as, oh, abortion

and a culture of death and innings of this nature. but there's so much in the bible that's just taken way out of context and, you know, adhered to selectively. so it's about love, period. have a wonderful weekend. >> hey, tom, if you could stay on the line just for a moment, have you personally felt discrimination as an openly gay american? >> well, i'm glad you asked that, and, you know, just because i value other viewers' time also as well as you two gentlemen, i served 20 years in the navy, retired, and i -- you know, i guess about 50% of it -- i'm sorry. my voice is kind of croakey this morning. but about 5% of it was sort of, quote, quote, don't ask, don't tell. the other 50%, my first ten

years in the military was under the republican preferred do ask and -- or, you know, we'll ask, and do tell. and that was particularly repressive and draconian, and you could land on the street out of a job in the military extremely easily. i think bill clinton takes a lot of grief for don't ask, don't tell but, in fact, it was a huge step forward from what was in place before that. and, yes, you know, steve, the last half of my sentence here will be repression, you know, growing up in a particularly religious household, you better believe it. and thanks for asking. >> tom, thank you. marc stein, what are you hearing in his story? >> well, i think it's interesting to see the movement as focused on issues of love.

the pre-stonewall movement we generally call the homophile movement, and that was chosen as the key term precisely because it referenced love rather than sex. but i would say that the gay liberation movement that started off stonewall and to some extent began even in the months before the riots i would say placed equal emphasis on love, intimacy, and sex. sex was very central to the early gay liberationiests. they wanted their sexual expression, their sexual identities to be recognized, affirmed, and validated. so for at least a few years, sex was quite central to the movement immediately after the stonewall riots. >> post stonewall riots in 1969, here is a look at some of the highlights for the gay, lgbtq

movement. they declared it no longer a mental illness and then in 1982, the first few years of the reagan administration, using aids for the first time. in 2015 the supreme court in a 5-4 ruling legalizing same sex marriage. the pentagon ends the ban on transgender people serving openly in the military, but president trump rescinded that ban involving transgender service. let's get to tonya, who is on the phone from new york city. good morning. >> good morning. yeah, i'm tonya walker. i'm an activist in new york city and i'm transgender and i'm kind of high up in the lgbt community here. i came out of the military to new york in 1986 and i met

marsha p. johnson down by the village in the piers. and i know that the gay community didn't like the drag queens. marsha p. johnson was a sex worker at the stonewall riots that night who was actually siding with the cops. and i know most of the photos and videos that we see -- am i talking? >> yes, you are on the air, tonya. >> oh, thanks. >> did you have another question or comment? >> yeah. and i wonder why he doesn't mention the black drag queens who were in front of the bar fighting that night, like marsha p. johnson. and there were others also a part of the gay rights movement. >> the caller is absolutely right. as far as we can determine, some of the leading roles in the riots were led by

african-americans, latin americans, drag queens. it's still quite uncertain as to whether they represented the majority of the people who participated in the riots, but there are many accounts that place them at the key moments leading the riots, displaying real courage, a campy courage, we might say. some individuals who were often credited with instigating the riots, leading the riots, sylvia rivera, marsha p. johnson, there's still conflicting accounts about when they were there, whether they were there. marsha p. johnson herself in many accounts explained that she wasn't there when the riots started, but she got there sometime later. so if we take her at her word, yes, she played an important role that night, and certainly other people of color did, transpeople did, but she may not have been there right when the riots started. >> let's go to dave in new york city. good morning. >> hi. good morning.

thanks to c-span. i was 20 years old and, you know, i came down, grew up in long island, was a college student upstate and i would hitch down and go into the bars. julius was the other bar. all mafia run. and strange to me being sort of a macho kind of college student wearing square weight lifter bit, you know, young, wearing lacoste shirts. but the stonewall was an amazing place. and i would go in early in the evening before we went down, way down towards the river towards that new bar, danny's, which i haven't heard mentioned. so i went in at about 10:00 in the evening, to stonewall, maybe after some of them, just walked through. it seemed all right, seemed normal early in the evening. then i walked down to danny's. well, when i came back, maybe two hours later, it

was -- and i haven't heard this in the movie or the commentary that i saw on c-span last night, a wonderful program, of people that were there. but i would say the queens, they were the bravest. they were lighting garbage -- i saw this. they were lighting garbage pails on fire from the outside and throwing them in threw the big window at the -- you know, the police were inside at that point. who else, i don't know. and so i stood outside , i remember standing on the bumpers of two cabs that were parked right there in front of it. and this was the first night. i think i was there for the second night, you know, i was back on the island and it's hard to get in. so that's what i will never forget, that the police were sort of trapped inside at the point that i got back there, and they were lighting garbage cans

and throwing them in the window. that's all i want to say. that's really true. and, you know, it got a little better after that, a bit, but it took years, really, i would guess, to get to where we are now, years and years. decades and decades. i'm 70 now. >> dave, thanks for weighing in and sharing your own recollections from 50 years ago this week. marc stein, your reaction? >> yes, well, my book reprints 30 media reports and other accounts of the stonewall riots from 1969. it's quite interesting to see that the first accounts provided by the "new york times" , daily news, new york post, referred to the rioters as homosexuals or young homosexuals, but within a week, the voice, the lgbt press, were referring to the leading role played by what at the time were

referred to as transvestits or drag queens or street queens. and it was in the local newsletter of a local gay rights organization, the transperiodicals of the day, two of which didn't cover the riots, but the gay oriented madison society newsletter emphasized the prominent role played by street queens and by drag queens in the riots. so things are quite complicated. we also have the issue of translation 50 years later. we tend to today really police the boundaries between gay and transbut in 1969, many people like marsha p. johnson and sylvia rivera were comfortable referring to themselves as both gay and transvestite. they didn't see them as mutually exclusive.

>> to our viewers just tuning in, we're looking back 50 years after the stonewall riots. and our guest from greenwich village, new york, is marc stein, the author of a book about what happened 50 years ago. and on twitter, this apology for the way officers 50 years ago handled the situation. >> i think it would be irresponsible of me as we go through world pride month not to speak of the events at the stonewall inn in june of 1969. i'm certainly not going to stand up here and pretend to be an expert on what happened at stonewall. i do know what happened should not have happened. the actions taken by the nypd were wrong, plain and simple. the actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, i apologize. [ applause ] to the lgbtq

community, that this would never happen in nypd 2019. >> marc stein, a reaction to that apology from the new york city police commissioner. >> well, in general terms, i think the apology is a good first step, but it is just that, a first step. i'd like to see similar apologies by the police commissioners of the many cities where lgbtq people were killed in 1969 by the police. that would include los angeles, berkeley, california, oakland, california. those would be steps alongside the actions of the new york city police commissioner. but, in addition, are we seeing leadership from city mayors, from state governors, and then all the way to the federal government? we still have only a few states where lgbt history education is mandatory in the public

schools. we still have policies, local, state, and federal level, especially with respect to trans people that could be addressed. where is the funding for the lgbt history education, lgbt history museums? there's an effort underway right now in new york city. there's a long standing lgbt history museum in san francisco. we could see more of those projects funded by cities, state and local governments, more research into the history of lgbt abuse and harassment, including abuse and harassment by official government authorities. those would be steps that would build on what's really just a symbolic apology at this point. >> from new jersey, richard. good morning to you. >> good morning. i wanted to discuss the beginning of my coming out and going into new york. i used to go to the gay pride parades, but only went at

night because i didn't want to go near tv cameras, and my very best friend, who was a schoolteacher, said that he couldn't go to the gay pride parades until the evening time because he was afraid that he would definitely lose his job as a schoolteacher. he was a spanish and italian teacher in new jersey. and he absolutely loved his job as a foreign language teacher. i do remember enjoying halloween on christopher street. and then i think a big change was during the gay men's health crisis, i was with a friend, tony, in his store front when they first started the gay men's health crisis and they were setting up the telephone lines and things like that and these men who were much older than me, i was probably 21, 22, tony said --

because everybody was putting their name down on a piece of paper, and tony leaned over to them and said he's extremely young, he's petrified that his name will be on anything. so in that store front with the gay men's health crisis, i didn't put my name on that piece of paper because the first thing i thought about as the nazi and gay concentration camps and that i would be put in a camp and possibly killed for being gay. >> thank you. and the stonewall is just behind you, marc stein, and that's become an iconic place for gay and lesbian. as you hear his story, what's your reaction? >> i think it's interesting to look back at the early pride marches and parades. the first took place in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the stonewall

riots. there had been earlier commemorations, in philadelphia in front of independence hall. those began in 1965 and were held for five consecutive years, but the decision was made by movement activists in the fall of 1969 to switch the annual recognition of the lgbt struggle from philadelphia and independence hall to stonewall and new york city. and that became the what we now know today as the gay pride parades, and eventually that, of course, spread around the united states and around the world. but those early pride marches, pride parades, in 1971, 1972, 1973, it was quite brave to participate, and it was uncertain whether there would be violence from harassers who might come and confront the participants. it was unclear whether the police would grant permits and, in fact, in los angeles in 1970 it

was only shortly before what was called christopher street west that the parade organizers received official police permits to conduct the march. and they only did so under a judge's order. so those first recognitions and commemorations of the stonewall rebellion required a lot of courage on the part of the organizers and the participants. but many of us believe that that's really when the stonewall riots acquired the significance that they have today. there had been other lgbt protests and demonstrations before stonewall, but stonewall became central to the way that we naire eight lgbt history really because of what happened there. >> i want to put it in perspective, walter jenkins,

one of the closest aides to lyndon johnson, he was married, the father of six children, and this is a photograph of walter jenkins, who was forced out of the white house after he had a sexual liaison with another man at the ymca here in washington, d. c., and he was charged with a crime on morals charges. and i mention that from 1964 today where we are today to pete buttigieg, openly guy, running for the presidential nomination. as you look at that arc of history, what does that tell you? >> openly lgbt candidates began running for office in the united states before stonewall and weren't generally successful, but there began to be successes in the early 1970s. the first actually were in ann arbor, michigan, and city council members came out as gay and lesbian and then ran and won election. then there was a

state senator elected, noble, and harvey milk winning election for the board of supervisors in san francisco. so successes in running for congress then shortly thereafter, a few governors by now. there are still, though, have been a kind of limit to that kind of success in electoral and appointive office. so we have yet to have an openly lgbt cabinet member. we've yet to have an openly lgbt vice president or president. >> is the country -- do you think the country would elect an openly gay man as president in 2020? >> it's an interesting question and i think buttigieg is showing the country that it is imaginable, it is possible. but, you know, i would also remind everyone that we have yet to have a woman president of the united states, so there are many groups in american society who

have yet to be represented at the highest levels of government, and i think it is certainly possible and maybe even likely that in our lifetimes there will be an openly lgbt member of the supreme court or president. >> and we'll show you a list, as we hear from dan in ontario, california. good morning. >> heldo. it's ontario, canada. but here in canada, it's basically become a nonissue. i notice in the united states there's a lot of attention paid to even the terminology that's used, like lgbtq, and it's just unfamiliar here and i'm sort of wondering if i can just get

your opinion on the difference between how it's dealt with and then the language that's used and how that's evolved as well. >> thank you, dan. >> well, i actually lived in canada, in toronto, for 16 years so i know something about what you're talking about with respect to canada. thinking back up to the stonewall moment, it was actually exactly at that moment that a number of countries began to partially decriminalize decriminal sex acts. and there's been controversy about the formal government apology for the criminalization of lgbt people and the unfinished nature of those reforms that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. but i understand that there's been action even this month,

removing from the canadian criminal code some of the other criminal statutes that have been used to target lgbt people. so it's important to remember it's not just sodomy that was criminalized in same sex sex. others were harassed and abused as crimes. and in canada, a variety of other criminal statutes. >> you're doing a great job. i know the trucks behind you sometimes can drown out the noise, but we appreciate it. we should point out you are at the park that is part of the national parks service on christopher street directly across from the stonewall inn and it's, of course, open to the public. my guest is marc stein, earned his doctorate from the university of pennsylvania. tom is on the phone from

washington, new jersey. good morning. >> good morning to everyone at c-span and good morning to professor stein. just a quick comment. i am a supporter of c-span. i've been watching you guys for years. i would just like to say, a little quick story. i knew about stonewall and how much and it was a catalyst for the lgbt movement. i was walking alone one day in manhattan and by pure accident i came across the stonewall memorial park. it is a very good feeling knowing that i was standing inadvertently at a catalyst for such a remarkable social justice movement. so i was briefly taken aback. i want to thank everyone at c-span and professor stein for shedding

light on the subject and how remarkable the movement has been. thank you all for your time. i appreciate it. >> thank you for the call, and marc stein, let me take his point and move it one step further. how do you teach stonewall? how should teachers educate this generation in terms of exactly what happened? its significant 50 years later? >> well, i think many of us have been trying to improve lgbt history education in colleges, universities, and high schools for some years. it's really important, i think, to be integrated into the general narratives of american history. it's one thing to be taught in colleges and universities, but it's another thing entirely when the history of the stonewall riots gets incorporated into the general american history courses so a number of us are working very hard on that right now. i think many of us try to teach

that stonewall followed 20 years of political organizing by lgbt people, so there was a pre-stonewall movement. many of us try to teach the much broader history of sexual and gender difference, stretching back centuries, and then, of course, it's important to follow the story after the stonewall riots. how did the gay liberation movement develop in the 1970s, the lesbian feminist movement, the transgender movement, how did they organize autonomous lgbt movements growing particularly strong in the late 1970s, how did all of that change in the 1980s, with the aids crisis. then what were the changes in more recent decades, with legalization, but also the complications of what it means to be recognized by local and

state governments and the possibility that it might be limited, compromised, might be unfinished in a variety of ways. so i think that's what a lot of us try to teach when we emphasize lgbt history. >> and, of course, you have spent probably more time than most historians looking back at the events of stonewall. what has surprised you the most. . >> i think the 50-year commemoration, i think many of us knew that there would be an explosion of public interest, but i think as i was working on my new book, i think maybe i understatement estimated the extent of the public interest. that's gratifying. it's an opportunity for us to teach about stonewall specifically but also teach about broader lgbt history and broader history of social justice movements and to connect the past to the present so that's i think an important

aspects. i guess it's also frustrating, we still do see many of the myths circulate about stonewall, claims that the stonewall riots started the lgbt movement when we know there was a preexisting movement. we see a lot of photographs being circulated on the internet that purport to be from the stonewall riots, but are not from the stonewall riots. we actually have quite limited photographic evidence of what was going on and really only one image published in the new york daily news that captures the confrontation between the police if and the rioters. so the internet creates the problem. it, of course, creates many opportunities, but it also creates the problems of once a problematic representation is presented on the internet and then it can go viral and spread, and then we end up with lots of misinformation and misinterpretation. >> our next caller is from

ithaca, new york. welcome back to the conversation. good morning. are you with us? ? >> it's pastor michael vincent crea, c-r-e-a, and my ministry is egalitarian, one world life systems. stonewall needs not just to be a historical site, it needs to be an insight into our history. and i think mr. stein will agree that not only the come men ration of these events -- i didn't come out

until i -- i was wrongly fired, and one of the things they fired me for was being guy, in senegal, and then also i wrote -- in the peace corps. my last paper at catholic university was same gendered marriages, and what we do not realize is that what we need is a vehicle with the capacity of uphold those self-evident truths. and so what we would like, what i think we need, while all the talk and everything is good about the reparations, about voting rights, about equal access, i got fired for standing up for a transgendered woman to use the woman's bathroom, that we need human rights courts. >> i'm going to stop you there

and give our guest a chance to respond. thank you for sharing our story. marc stein? >> one of the things the caller emphasized was religion and the oppressive role played by religion and the potentially liberating role played by religion. before the stonewall riots, religious leaders were important allies of the movement, along with the american civil liberties union which was perhaps the most important ally of the pre-stonewall movement. in san francisco there was a council on religion and the homosexual which featured a number of ministers who allied with the lgbt activists of that day and really made important ground-breaking efforts in california, and those efforts continued after stonewall, so i think there's often a tendency now to think of the religious community as hostile to or at odds with lgbt aspirations, but, in fact, religious communities

are divided and we've now had for several decades religious denominations who are in the forefront of fighting for lgbt inclusion and rights and others who are in the forefront of opposing lgbt liberation, and even within some of those denominations that have been hostile, there's divisions within. and so efforts within even the catholic church or the mormon church to promote lgbt acceptance and lgbt rights. so religious communities in the united states and elsewhere have been an important site of struggle along with the other sites of struggle that we think about, our schools, the media, popular culture, law, politics. >> 50 years after the riots, which moved into early july, what does the rainbow flag which is behind you represent to you as a historian? >> the rainbow flag emerged as one of several symbols and icons of the lgbt movement, and the

many colors were meant to celebrate the diversity of the lgbt movement and community. so to emphasize that it's not an all-white community, it's not an all-middle-class community, it's not all men, but rather encompasses people from all background, all social groups in american society and in the global community, and there have been calls to expand the colors on the rainbow flag to even further emphasize the diversity of the lgbt community's movement and activism.

to know that. and second, as a historian, are you concerned, i'm concerned as a white male about injustice for anybody who is not white over the last couple of years. i'm wondering if that is historian, do you have a view, are we going backwards as a society? not just for lgbtq, but in general in terms of social justice. answers to those questions would be very helpful. thank you. tony, thank you for the call mr. stein? >> the first question, quantification is difficult. we have lots of surveys stretching back to the kinsey studies in the 1940s and 50s. if the question is asked nearly, we get reports of one

to 325 to 10% of the population . if the question is asked broadly, we start to have much larger numbers so when we think of , that is invoked to use a much broader array of people and if it represents everybody to us ever had a moment of same sex desires, anybody who has transgressed gender, we start to get much larger percentages. we may even say 100% of the population is potentially although not of course , that everybody lives that life and claims that identity. it depends on how we asked the question, how we define both letters of the alphabet. with respect to the current moment and whether we are making progress and taking a step back, i think in many respects, these things tend to happen in cycles. there were important reforms

during the obama administration. of we seen in many areas of social justice, a retrenchment and reaction during the trump administration. there been limits to that because we have three branches of the federal government. we have state and local government and some of which are continuing to make important strides. it is complicated. and, sometimes we have two steps forward and one step back. sometimes we have one step forward and two steps back. it depends on the question we are asking. in certain aspects of law, there has been progress. in other aspects, there has been a retrenchment and we go back to your first question, the notion that we each had to claim strict identities. and we need to avoid dealing with the complexity of gender and sexual fluidity. maybe we are not at a such a great moment. i see more and more insistence

that people claim strict identities and don't embrace possible transformation, possible fluidity of gender and sexual ivy. >> this headline from the new york daily news and it reads as follows. homo--nest greeted, queen bees are stinging mad. mark stein, would you think of that headline? >> well, it was characteristic of some of the mainstream press coverage of the stonewall riots. because my books offer 30 accounts of the stonewall riots, we get to see, we get to compare how the mainstream newspapers and magazines cover the riots to alternative papers like the village voice and in new york, the east village other, and then periodicals like the berkeley tribe and we get to see lgbt press coverage

birkes member. >> this is the way for mainstream newspapers to get readers, to get interest and it can be complicated to use those sources but they are important sources and they help us understand how it is people learned about stonewall. and even with the actual magazines of the day, time and newsweek did not cover stonewall until the floral. until october, it took several months before the magazines of the united states saw stonewall as something significant and worthy of coverage. >> he spoke earlier about the importance of the bars and taverns for the and lesbian community. young is a professor at santa claire university. the world. ck at

>> and lesbians who came of age in the 40s, 50s and 60s speak over and over and over again of how they risk their reputations, their marriages, their families, their livelihoods by going to bars. because, the bars saved their lives. they kept them from despairing that they were the only ones. kept them from believing that society was right that they were sick and criminal and will be better off dead. in the bars and nightclubs they found hookups and one night stands. they also found partners and lovers and friends and people who accepted them as a word. they didn't have to carry out the exhausting work of pretending to be straight. they could be sbthemselves and being true to yourself is very precious, it is worth a lot of risk. lesbians during this period suffered several discriminations, even most men

saw women as inferior. in the days before widespread feminism, the lesbian bar was the truly rare place where women were not pressured to cater to men. a lesbian in the 1940s said we can throw off our girdles and dresses and our high heels. that was a uniform. lesbians could wear pants and be free from straightman's unwanted sexual attention. that is from a net younger from the santa claire university. i want to move beyond the riots in june and early july 1969 and asked mark stein what happened next after the stonewall demonstrations? >> well, initially, the existing rights organizations in new york city, the madison society, try to harness the energies unleashed by the riots. in a rare follow-up protests

and demonstrations in greenwich village, also in queens new york were a public park had been a site of harassment by vigilantes of lgbt people. it became clear that the older organizations were not going to be the main vehicles for the future. there emerged new organizations, the first major one in new york city was called the liberation front . there was also the queens liberation front, radical lesbians formed representing lesbian feminist politics. groups like third world, key revolution asian formed and then the activists alliance in new york which was a little less radical than the initial liberation front. the liberation front and other organizations i mentioned were committed to alliances with

the black panthers, with the antiwar movement, with women's liberation. they participated in marches and demonstrations of those groups and they were calling for radical restructuring of american society. asexual restructuring, a social restructuring and a political restructuring. they activists alliance decided to focus more exclusively on rights and that set the trend for what followed for the next several years. they were very influential and powerful and very active organizations in new york city and similar organizations around the country. >> let me ask you about recent movements. why was case so significant? >> over time, the issues and priorities of the lgbtq movement changed. the more mainstream aspect of

the lgbt movement began prioritizing including in the military, inclusion and marriage, inclusion in family life, inclusion in religion. that was contested within the lgbt movement. many people thought that the radical revolutionaries of the liberation movement were antiwar. they do want inclusion in the military. they were opposed to monogamy and conventional family life. and, there is attention, nevertheless for many people, the goal of the lgbt movement was broad acceptance, equality in all aspects of american life and ed windsor and the struggle for same sex marriage was the aspect of that part of the lgbt movement. her role , it was central to establishing, achieving this major long-standing goal of the lgbt movement which was for

those people who want to marry , for those lgbt people who want to marry, they have the legal right to do so. >> in 2016, during one of the pride marches, ranges from the national park service joined in the pride movement. what does that tell you about where police and authorities were and 69 and where we are today? >> well, i again today there is conflicting feelings about the participation of the police, the military, elected officials, representatives a local state and federal government. on the one hand, it represents acceptance and inclusion and it is a far cry from the situation 50 years ago, on the other hand, have those levels a government, local, state and federal, locally acknowledge the long- standing acts of harassment,

abuse and violence committed in the name of local state and federal government. are they fully addressing today's cutting-edge issues. right? there is that double edged aspect of participation of local state and federal officials including representatives of the national park service. are they doing everything they could be to make up for past wrongs and to address ongoing struggles? >> in half a minute, the cover of your book represents what in your mind? why did you selected? >> well, it is a photograph from the week of the stonewall riots. it is a stage photograph. we really only had one image of the confrontation between protesters and the police and we don't even have the original. most versions of people look at our a grainy image of a newspaper photograph. but these photographs were staged, mostly taken the

evening of june 28. the second night of writing. these were a group of participants who gathered and staged a fair case on this very street. the represent the diversity of the participation. we see people who look to us to be african-americans,, puerto ricans, we see the youthful energy of the participants. we see a camp, we saying same sex affection and intimacy in the series of photographs. in some respect, it captures some of what was going on during the week of the writing. >> author, historian and history professor at san francisco state university, mark stein, is joining us think you very much for being with us. >> thank you very much for having m