Gr 9 Up-"In 1969, homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois." With that statement, this film, based on David Carter's Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (St. Martin's Press, 2004), sets the stage for a drama that culminates with the birth of the modern Gay Pride movement. Forty years ago, the idea of being "out and proud" was inconceivable to the men and women—some of them teenagers themselves in the late 1960s—who share their recollections in interviews. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness. Laws against "lewd conduct" and "masquerading" were used to persecute those who dared to gather at the Mafia-run "gay bars." Despite this, GLBT people who had watched or participated in civil rights campaigns began forming their own "homophile movement" and connecting through groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. After months of escalating crack-downs and arrests, when six police officers were sent to raid the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village in June 1969, they found themselves outnumbered. Instead of meekly submitting, the bar's patrons fought back, and they were quickly joined by a crowd of thousands outside. The riots were followed by what would become known as the first Gay Pride parade. Directors Kate Davis and David Heilbroner interweave archival footage from news coverage and educational films produced in the 1950s and 1960s with contemporary interviews of actual participants. Former Mayor Ed Koch, author Eric Marcus, and law professor William Eskridge provide historical information to set the events in context. The primary source materials, interviewee biographies, teacher's guide, and more supporting resources are available online. Highly recommended for school and public libraries.— Beth Gallego, Los Angeles Public Library, CA

In the late 1960s, homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois; now the news routinely covers the latest on gay marriages. So the subtitle says it all--or does it? The six days of riots sparked by police action in the early morning of June 28, 1969, against a popular Greenwich Village gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, constituted a homosexual shot heard round the world that transformed an American subculture. Carter's carefully researched, well-crafted writing portrays Stonewall as part of a larger civil and human rights movement and a spur to the gay rights movement. Stonewall precipitated great change--the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, for instance--and that leads Carter to examine the socio-politico-cultural convergence that resulted in the riots. Hundred of interviews figure into Carter's thorough exploration that dispels long-held myths and provides fresh facts about a freedom fight some liken to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A history of the week that forged a revolution and brought aboveground a thriving subculture. Freelancer Carter's debut focuses primarily on detailing the events of those six stormy days in 1969, but Carter first delineates homosexual life in New York during that period to explain exactly why Stonewall exploded. He discusses the evolution of Greenwich Village as a bohemian enclave and Christopher Street as a milieu for gay culture. Perhaps because New York had particularly harsh anti-homosexual laws, he surmises, the city spawned some of the first gay and lesbian activist societies. Carter considers Stonewall itself a fusion event. Certainly the riot was a product of the charged political and social scene of the late '60s, but it's also significant that the raid took place on a summer Friday, late enough at night so that lots of the many customers had downed a good few drinks by the time the cops arrived. The slowness of the raid and the inspired, furious resistance of a few patrons who would not go quietly into the paddy wagons meant that the customers' friends had plenty of time to assemble at Stonewall, the city's largest gay bar, located in what was for all purposes a gay ghetto, at the center of a nexus of transportation that made getting there easy. The gathering crowd was in a militant mood. For Morty Manfred, a gay Columbia student who was at Stonewall that night, as for many others, one question had to be answered: "Why do we have to put up with this shit?" They didn't, and six days later gays and lesbians had proven that point. Considering all that went before, the ongoing repression and corruption, and the scent of social and political liberation in the air, Carter's eloquent account makes it clear that something was bound to catch fire. Stonewall's unique place in the gay community made it an obvious tinderbox. A complete, full-bodied portrait, with lots of flesh on the bones of a strong narrative structure. (8 b&w photos, not seen)