WRITING ON THE WALL

David Carter talked to Gloria Teal with PBS.  The scribe penned the tome, Stonewall:  The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution.  

The book was turned into a TV project then a box-office release, Stonewall Uprising.  We posted the trailer earlier in June.

Teal: Stonewall could have easily been forgotten as a brief civil disturbance. Instead, it’s marked as the beginning of the modern struggle for gay civil rights. Why is that?

Carter: Stonewall is only significant because it created the Gay Liberation Movement. I’m glad people are interested in the Stonewall riots, but they also need to be interested in the gay liberation movement because Stonewall would have had no historical interest had it not led to the gay liberation movement. The first announcement of the Gay Liberation Front said, “We formed because of Stonewall.” Their first march was on the one month anniversary of the riots. Just to concentrate on Stonewall without going into groups like the Gay Liberation Front or the Gay Activists Alliance is like studying the fall of the Bastille but absolutely knowing nothing about the French Revolution.

The real change that Stonewall made was it transformed gay rights into a movement, by taking a very militant stand and taking it to the level of the street. I think it also allowed gay people to begin to see themselves differently. I was a 17-year-old in Jessup, Ga., and I remember hearing news of the Gay Liberation Front confronting people who were oppressing gay people, and I saw people standing up and courageously and successfully fighting back. That did change my mentality. You are not in an impossible situation with no hope. You can fight back, and you can possibly win.