Next
year will be the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. In the
early morning hours, gay men and lesbians fought back against the
police raid of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. After
that event, which began in the early morning of June 28,1969, Gay
Liberation had joined the lexicon of Women’s Liberation, Black
Liberation, and Chicano Liberation.
There
are phenomenal lives and stories connected to that night that should
not be forgotten or erased. One is that of Stormé DeLarverie—who
had been fighting back all her life and fought back that night.
Stormé
had a tough Southern upbringing. She was born in Louisiana in 1920;
since she had no birth certificate, she chose Dec. 24 as her
birthday. Her mother was a Black servant in the house of her father,
who was white. They made sure she got an education, but growing up
biracial in the South was a continual fight.
She
told Kirk Klocke in an interview that she still had scars on her
leg from when bullies hung her by the leg from a fence post. Her
brother had to take her down, and she wore a brace for years. She
started singing as a teenager in New Orleans jazz clubs until she
came out as a lesbian at 18 and moved to Chicago, which is where her
singing career really began.
She
met a dancer named Diana, the love of her life, and went on the
road with Doc Bender and Danny Brown. Finally, she could be herself
and was respected as a singer. Together they created the Jewel Box
Revue, an extravaganza with 25 high-kicking drag queens and songs
sung by Stormé, the baritone who always dressed in a white tuxedo.
It was the first racially integrated drag revue in the country. She
was the emcee and music director for 14 years.
They
toured the country, and starting in 1957, their popular shows could
be seen twice a week at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Stormé was
also a bouncer for lesbian bars in Greenwich Village.
Stonewall
Inn
The
Stonewall Inn was Mafia owned and operated. Before you could enter,
you had to be checked through a peephole; if you were not gay or
lesbian you could not come in. Organized crime kept the gay bars
racially segregated and most of the bars for people of color were on
42nd Street and in Harlem. There were, of course, exceptions to the
color bar.
There
are varying descriptions of the patrons of The Stonewall Inn, but
also some general agreement. The owners of Stonewall were one of the
few that allowed same-sex couples to dance together. They had a
system of blinking lights to warn everyone of an impending raid.
The
bar drew patrons from different parts of the city. They were mostly
closeted gay men (probably married to women), college boys, and
homeless gay youth. It was not primarily a drag bar. There were
lesbian bars in Greenwich Village too, and some lesbians also
went to the Stonewall.
Stormé
was involved in forming the Stonewall Veterans Association and was
later elected vice president. They often had panels of speakers, and
over the decades she was always quick to remind later generations
what it was like before Stonewall: Lesbians and gay men could receive
a $70 fine for “looking at someone with desire.”
You
could be arrested for not wearing a certain number of “gender
appropriate articles of clothing.” This meant that lesbians
who might be wearing a three-piece suit had to be able to show they
were also wearing a bra and stockings. If not, they could be thrown
in jail.
Stormé’s
recollection
Stormé
recalled her part in the uprising at a public, videotaped event
sponsored by the Stonewall Veterans Association. She started at the
beginning: “The cops were parading patrons out of the front door of
the Stonewall at about 2 a.m. in the morning. I saw this one boy
being taken out by three cops, only one in uniform. Three to one.
I told my pals, ‘I know him! That is Williamson, my friend Sonia
Jane’s friend.
“Williamson
briefly broke loose but they grabbed the back of his jacket and
pulled him right down on the cement street. One of them did a drop
kick on him. Another cop senselessly hit him from the back. Right
after that a cop said to me, ‘move faggot,’ thinking I was a gay
guy. I said, ‘I will not and don’t you dare touch me.’ With
that the cop shoved me, and I instinctively punched him in the face.”
Four
officers then attacked her and handcuffed her in response. When she
pointed out that she was cuffed too tightly, one officer hit her head
with a billy club. As she was bleeding from the head, she turned to
the crowd and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?” After
a long struggle, she was dragged towards a police van, and that was
when everything exploded. Many who were there recall her call to
arms.
Stormé
was always clear: “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was
civil disobedience. It was no damn riot.”
Of
course she was correct. Stonewall was not a one-night riot. Thousands
of gays and lesbians rose up for six nights. There was organizing
during the day and returning to the Stonewall Inn every night for six
nights. Out of the uprising grew two activist organizations, the Gay
Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance, and three gay and
lesbian newspapers.
Erasing
Black lesbians
Claire
Heuchan wrote an article for AfterEllen.com entitled,
“We Need to Talk about Misogyny and the LGBT Community’s Erasure
of Black Lesbian History.”
(See: http://www.afterellen.com/general-news/561237-we-need-to-talk-about-misogyny-and-the-lgbt-communitys-erasure-of-black-lesbian-history )
Heuchan
focused in the article on the erasing of Stormé from some of the
“official” histories of Stonewall. She was cut from the 1995 and
the 2015 “Stonewall” films as well as from many histories of that
period—and most recently in a press release by the National Center
For Lesbian Rights.
Heuchan
pointed out, “Lesbian history is hard to find, Black
representation, female representation, and lesbian representation are
not always straightforward to find, especially when you are looking
for all three at once. Stormé, in all her Black butch magnificence,
put herself at extraordinary risk to fight injustice and she deserves
to be remembered for it. It was Stormé who led the resistance of
homophobic police brutality at the Stonewall Inn.”
After
Stonewall
For
years, Stormé worked as a bouncer at lesbian bars, such as the Cubby
Hole in the West Village. Stormé became a self appointed guardian of
lesbians in Greenwich Village, patrolling the streets for the next 30
years. For many she was known as the Sheriff of Greenwich Village.
She was legally armed and would not put up with any form of
intolerance, bullying, or abuse of lesbians in the Village. She was a
fearless protector of lesbian spaces.
Her
longtime friend Lisa Cannistraci bought a lesbian bar and named it
Henrietta Hudson; she hired Stormé as the bouncer. When Stormé
could no longer work, the women she protected came back to protect
her until she died on May 29, 2014, at 93. Cannistraci summed up
Stormé’s life: “She was a superhero, a vigilante defender of the
defenseless.”
>> The article above was written by Ann Montague and is reprinted from Socialist Action.
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