Gay New York
by David Bianco
Historians date the gay liberation movement to a few nights in 1969,
when New
York City queers took to the streets to protest police harassment of gay
bars. But the city's gay community can actually trace its roots back at
least
100 years.
In the last decades of the 19th century, many young people came to New
York
City from small towns, rural areas, and Europe, looking for the economic
opportunities. Among them were many queer folk who had felt isolated and
alone in their hometowns.
An array of saloons and dance halls catered to the social needs of the
new
urban dwellers, and patrons included numerous male "degenerates." Vice
squad
reports from the early 1900s show that gay men also frequented public
spaces
like parks and bathhouses looking for sex.
Because women led less public lives than men did, little is known about
lesbians in New York before the 1920s. However, many of the city's labor
organizers, social workers, suffragists, and academics of the time were
never-married women who lived in domestic arrangements with other women
and
had networks of close female friends.
Between the world wars, Bohemian culture, which embraced both artistic
and
sexual freedom, took root in Greenwich Village, making it a popular
haven for
gay men and lesbians. At the same time, a queer subculture blossomed in
Harlem. Many of the greatest contributors to the Harlem Renaissance of
1920-1935 were gay or bisexual.
After World War II, many discharged gay service members stayed on in New
York
instead of returning to small towns and disapproving families. In 1945 a
group of gay ex-soldiers formed the Veterans Benevolent Association, a
social
club that held dances and parties attracting hundreds of gay men.
Bars remained the center of gay male social life in New York throughout
the
1950s and early 1960s, helping to foster a sense of queer community.
Separate
women's clubs offered lesbians a way to meet friends and lovers.
Queer New York had its political side, too. Activist Randy Wicker
launched a
one-man campaign in 1962 to improve gay coverage in the media. Wicker's
efforts culminated in the running of a gay story on the front page of
the
New York Times in December 1963 -- a first for a mainstream
paper, though the
story had a less-than-positive slant.
In 1967 gay activist Craig Rodwell founded the first gay bookstore in
the
world in Greenwich Village. The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop was an ad
hoc
community center, where as much organizing took place as did book
buying.
After the historic riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969, New York
witnessed an explosion of gay and lesbian groups, like the National Gay
Task
Force (now NGLTF) and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which are
still active today.
New York City also took center stage during the AIDS crisis. The news
story
that broke in the July 3, 1981 issue of the New York Times --
"Rare Cancer
Seen in 41 Homosexuals" -- led to the organizing of a powerful array of
gay
social service organizations and activist groups in New York, like Gay
Men's
Health Crisis and ACT-UP.
Though times have changed, New York City has remained the symbolic heart
of
the gay and lesbian rights movement. In a June 1999 ceremony in the
Village,
the Stonewall Inn was officially placed on the National Register of
Historic
Places, the first gay site in the country to be so honored.
David Bianco, M.A., is the author of Gay Essentials (Alyson), a
collection of
his history columns. He can be reached at DaveBianco@aol.com.
For further reading:
Bérubé, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of
Gay Men
and Women in World War II (Plume, 1991).
Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making
of the
Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1994).
Schwarz, Judith. Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy: Greenwich Village,
1912-1940 (New Victoria, 1986).
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