Standing Tall Before Stonewall:
The First Gay Pickets

o photographs exist to dramatize the Stonewall rebellion of 1969. Fred McDarrah’s much-publicized picture of Greenwich Village street youths had been merely a carefully-posed afterthought used to accompany a Village Voice story about the uprising. The best ‘Stonewall visual’ that now exists is a work of pure imagination, a painting by F. Douglas Blanchard titled: Stonewall Chorus Line, Oil on canvas, 36" x 48", 1998.

Little known, however, is the fact that the actual faces of lesbian and gay protestors who dared to picket in America’s public arenas nearly a half-decade before Stonewall— have been preserved on film.

Thanks to a few far-sighted, pioneering photographers, we can now study these true revolutionaries face by face, and, in a number of cases, even, name by name. They emerged proudly in public view nearly five years in advance of the legendary Stonewall event. Because some historians are guilty of creating their own favorite legends, we’ve thus far heard little about these gutsy precursors.

With the arrival of a new century, however, historical revisionism must now take a back seat to photographic realism. Standing Tall Before Stonewall: The First Gay Pickets, a photo exhibit, opened June 5, 2000 at the William Way Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Community Center at 1315 Spruce Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The exhibit will run through July 29, 2000.

The exhibit showcases the gay pickets that took place in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C. between 1964 and 1969. In an era when most gay women and men tried to pass as straight, to hide or deny their sexual orientation, this show chronicles the first time that organized gay men and women stepped out of the closet and into the limelight.

They marched to demand equal treatment by the federal government and to insist that they be accorded all the rights promised by our country's founders in the Declaration of Independence, especially "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Some of the original picket signs from the 1960s will be on hand on opening night.

Also on view will be It Didn't All Start With Stonewall, a lively exhibit prepared by veteran activist Randolfe Wicker for his Manhattan storefront during New York's Gay Pride celebration in 1994, 25 years after Stonewall. It features gay and lesbian trailblazers starting in the 1920s. "We built the airplane," says Wicker of the groundwork laid by the early pickets, "and those queens from Stonewall just got in and flew away in it."

A powerful short documentary film, Gay Pioneers by Glenn Holsten, was shown in the William Way gallery during the June 5 opening of this show devoted to early activism. Happily, I’m one of the five talking heads in this groundbreaking film, along with my gay lib comrades Franklin Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Lilli Vincenz and Randolfe Wicker.

The photo exhibit of Standing Tall Before Stonewall: The First Gay Pickets was coordinated by Kay Tobin Lahusen, whose photographs of the early gay pickets are included along with those of other photographers.

Lahusen holds the distinction of being the first openly gay photojournalist. She frequently photographed, took part in, and reported on gay activism in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1972 she co-authored with Randy Wicker The Gay Crusaders, the first book of biographical sketches of gay and lesbian activists. She lives with her life partner, veteran gay activist Barbara Gittings, in Wilmington, Delaware.

JN is Senior Editor at GayToday: www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com

READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK

 Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)