Tours ann arbor addition, its my honor to be here this evening when the one and only in the two wonderful cohost, before we began to get into official introduction, i would be remiss not to acknowledge the pain that our nation is feeling amidst the loss of black lives at the hands of our nation Law Enforcement into the black folks watching, your lives matter, my white pms, we must do better. For those looking to make a difference to her friends who i didnt apply in the meantime drag me in honor of silence of breonna taylor, georg george fld to many others. Thank you. If we could talk a little bit about the great work that we do in the programming for pride month. Hi everyone im joe schock, the director of ann arbor pride, i sit on the board of the center of ann arbor, we are so thrilled to be cosponsoring and we are looking forward to continue to serve our community during this difficult time, for those of you familiar, it is in august and will stay in august. We are moving to a virtual platform. What you can expect is the same kind of community and commodity that we have in the physical environment and we will still have our main stage with a wide righty of entertainers, poetry, burlesque, all kinds of fun stuff, yoga as well, will also have our famous drag queen storytime, arts and crafts and messages of love and care and we can do it without her wonderful sponsors. With a forward to connecting with you all and for more information please feel free to visit ann arbor price pride. Com. The queue so much. All these events are important and were thrilled to be partnering with you all, please talk to us about it. Thank you eric, i am john the vent director and were pleased to bring the event with you tonight these Virtual Events are in the Silver Lining in the weird time for Community Leaders and i dont know but would be able to happen with the travel schedule and everything else. Were pleased to provide the opportunities and were all staying safe and super thrilled to partner with her neighbors. You can buy the book, there is a buy button that will send you to our bookstore website and you can purchase other books, select titles are available for Curbside Pickup if youre coming in from ann arbor. All common at the end of the event for q a and you can feel free to ask questions. There is a q a function you can write your questions in their and ill be coming up to take a look. Please feel free to pus purchase books, bite erics book at the bookstore. Com and we would suggest if you like to sustain ongoing fundraising to make sure that is possible. You could do that by hitting the donate button, we thank you for being in attendance and supporting officers. Without further ado what i normally do i introduce our guests tonight. Eric is an awardwinning historian of lgbtq with politics, he graduated from Harvard College and received a phd in history from the university of cambridge where he was a gate scholar. The war is the first book. A novelist, screenwriter and aids historian. The 20th booklet the records show a political history and will be published in may of 2021, please welcome them both to your screen. Thank you. This is a great time this is a great time to talk about how movements get worn and progressed, i have a lot of questions, i want to ask a personal question first. What made you decide to do gay history and gay movement history. Its a good question. I did not start my academic career wanting to be historian, i started undergrad thinking is going to go to law school and get involved in politics or something and it was not until i watched the film milk as 18 or 19 then i realized, how did i not know the story earlier, how did i not learn about harvey in the important figure as a High School Student who is interested in American History and took several classes on it and even in my first year at harvard i had noisy of his name so then the realization, how did i not know his name, the next step was what other names joy not know. As you know so much of writing history is excavating what knowledge has not yet been introduced to the academia or to the public yet. So i soon stumbled upon the name who historians know, everyone within the queer history part of academia knows his name but the general public does not and even though there was an acknowledgment that he was the grandfather of the Gay Rights Movement, there had been an indepth study of his past, especially in the 1960s and especially not in the immediate aftermath of stonewall. Thats what i was working on the past seven years, yes historians are very important but how do we tell history in the context of the 1960s. If you realize quickly, it is not one mans story, this is a National Story of the black freedom, trans resistant and thats why it took a long time to write the book. But thats how i first got interested because so much of it has yet to be told. Lets start with the context. We know early in the first part of the 20th century, theres a lot of radical activity, the commonest party, socialist gets 900,000 votes, we have the antilynching movement, scottsboro, woman suffrage, and technology in europe. But then theres world war ii. World war ii has been theorized as a personal expansion, we see that for women and black people and gay people, there is an independent experience that takes place and then we emerge into the 50s. Can you set the stage nationally across the board what was going on in terms of rebellion and resistance. Two sides to the story, as you said postworld war ii america was a scary time because starting 49 50 you have a new threat within the commonest modest, the red scare and even though that was a Political Tool and David Johnson did phenomenal work showing how trying homosexuality to the red scare in the lavender scare was a convenient Political Tool especially for republicans in 1950 who were faced with the reality of mccarthys numbers of the security risks within the government were not very reliable, they are dubious, nonexisting numbers to begin with, went to start saying homosexuals are equally dangerous to National Security, then you start to see, this is much easier to find people who are arrested for homosexual activity and Public Restrooms or in gay bars, thats much easier to proof. So what started as a convenient Political Tool for delegitimizing the true administration, especially after eisenhower came into power a much more routinized apparatus for surveillance and persecution. You mentioned resistance, that is what provokes some of the very first iteration of gay pride whether hairy on the west coast in los angeles or more prominent in my book is firing committee. He was a victim of the gay purges or the lavender scare and because they were faced with the rationale of the government telling them that they were in moral and secretive and subject to blackmail at a security risk, he was working for the Defense Department and said that not logical, be all prove its logical but making my own arbitrary argument which is to be gay is not immoral, its a morally good and thats when i argued the first iteration of what we know silver each and every june. The dynamic of repression and resistance prewe know individuals act on and transform each other. So there are these expressions of resistance in the 50s, the montgomery boycott in 1955, enormous counterculture going on, where does firing committee sit in that. I think you cannot tell his story without also telling the story of the 60s and specifically without telling the stories of the black Freedom Movement, im so glad you brought up montgomery because i think so many people look at queer history increased activism in a vacuum which is unfortunate because if youre only looking at individuals and trends within isolated my normandy that was overwhelmingly white, then youre missing a large part of the story which is how, when and why they were drawing and borrowing from the other movements, one thing that a lot of generations dont know about, montgomery, rosa parks was not just the victim of persecution, she was chosen by the organizers because of her status as a very morally sound figure within the community, they rejected another potential victim because i believe she had been she was pregnant. For me too give them the credit of saying the black Freedom Movement recognizes the power, respectability of reclaiming morality for themselves and thats something that frank did a few years later after green burro, the citizens went on a visual level, you see the students dress very properly sitting peacefully at the counters while its a white racist who are very unequivocally morally corrupt, pouring ketchup on the students. There is no way to argue with that, i think it is in a way Performance Art because your quite literally provoking an image that can be transmitted across the world and i think that is something that he saw when he was deciding how to react to these claims by the government that he was in moral, he said im going to prove that that does not make any sense, thats completely arbitrary. You think his emphasis on masculine close for the men and lesbian for addresses would influence the black limit . Absolutely. There has been great studies done on black activism especially in the south where organizers would tell those marching, children or people at the church is congregating before march, dress as if youre going to church. Verbatim thats what they were told, it was a conscious strategy of we dont want to look like the antiwar folks, you have the same conversation within the home File Movement or the Gay Rights Movement where we dont want to be affiliated with the dirty browsers marching and causing trouble and smoking pot outside of the white house, we want to be in franks words, we want to be employed so we damn well better look employable. What i try to get out the book is the unintended consequences of that where he was essentially sacrificing individual aldi but also inclusion and i think that was something he ended up having to cope with and fix and adapt a bit too late but that was the big intervention at stonewall. What was the difference between sexology and the Homophile Movement. Sexology was a new field that was really contained within academia, it was a new study of human sexuality in one study that influenced not just rank but a large number of activist was a report, and gave a shaky methodology improve that there was a Minority Group that existed within america, a very large he used his own translation to make it and claim it was 10 homosexuals. So we gave them the numbers to say wait a Second Period if we organize and convince these people who are engaging in activity who may not consider themselves to be part of the Minority Group, if we convince them like the marxist convinced workers that they did not recognize, then we can wield political power. That is something that you see harriet representing and bring can be representing them. The Homophile Movement was very much a movement of activism. And rather just studying sexual activity, it was about promoting the rights of the sexual deviance and i think there was a relationship between them, you see activist allying, researchers like evelyn hooker, sexology magazine which was an academic journal with more of a popular audience, they say here is our numbers, were dealing with a regime that is telling us were immoral and we dont exist, you have the commission saying homosexual is not a noun and it does not exist. But it actually does. What were the concrete demands of the Homophile Movement and what were their strategies for achieving them . Prior to frank you see a glimmer of radicalism and he retreats respectability. Another was pushed back to that recently but i think you see at the very beginning for people who do not know in the context of mccarthy, you see the first organizing on a National Level of the age of sexual deviance in trying to achieve the end of the gate purges or the lavender scare, but because simoni came from the communist party, literally they were members and quite involved or they were travelers, the early activists initiated their own purges of the communists, those who have threatened their own political progress. So after 53, you see that respectability were becomes a matter of simile improving to the world that we are good, moral upstanding citizens and that is the case all the way up until frank canady in 1961 when he and a few other allies who say wait a second, the goal should not be fitting in an convincing other people that were good people, we need to lobby, ticket, demanding more from change so it becomes more militant and for frank someone who was a victim of the gate purges was kicked out of the government and his job, never allowed to work in the field of astronomy again because all those jobs require security clearance. His goal was ending the gate purges and continued fighting all the way into the repeal dont ask dont tell, that was a continuation of the exact same phenomenon. There were different priorities especially lesbian groups and we said we have our own unique problem that are not as related to men getting caught in Public Restrooms and fighting for the end of the todd amis laws or indecent conduct. So you see in the book a lot of the conversations of what the priority should be. Ultimately i think you see that it needs to be a conversation on how to prioritize the most marginalized numbers, not just those who manage to get a job but those who are homeless and did not have federal jobs to begin with. They are undocumented now. I asked you to prepare a section to read from your book, since the gay movement was a movement and struggling as a police, i think you have a section to share with us. Absolutely. Im going to read for my section because of looking for a Good Opportunity to read from it especially given the current history that were living through in frank does make an appearance because he was not at stonewall, forgive me for anyone looking for a feature on frank, but i think it shows the conflict weve been talking about. On the night of june 27, avon ritter wearing his mother dressed in toronto by 200 other patrons sat as stonewall in. Lack walls, black ceiling, blacked out windows and weak drinks. But it played the supremes and rolling stones. Had gogo dancers, i felt safe. As hes shot there, a group of nypd officers were outside, two female officers were inside posing and watching. Within a year after he criticized the mafia ownership of gay bars, the city was taking action. The last three weeks of june and conducted five grades with different clubs like stonewall and bars that sold liquor without a license, the reason occurred in the Election Campaign when homosexual spiked. Indeed the rise against gay bars look good for who conducted them. The City Government could give numbers, there were easy arrest, the drag queens never fought back. Everybody behaves the officer in charge recalled. It was like were going down to grab the bags and at 1 20 a. M. The officer entered in the music turned off and the bright white lights turned on. Witter ran for the bathroom she thought she could escape through a window. As she reached the door and arm grabbed her, youre not going anywhere said the officer. The police dragged her back to the bar and pushed her up against the wall along with other patrons who defined gender norms. They demanded identification and they performed the second duty of the evening, they took the trans women to the bathroom with the policewoman exam of the genitalia. If patrons did not wear the three cover items of clothing, they were arrested. Usually this is an examination to scare the transvestites into confession. Usually the officers led them into the bathroom and emitted. But in the second rate in a single week, and that night the patrons in th drag resisted authority. Get your hands off me, dont touch me. Female officers had five transplants. The officers release the humiliated women and arrested her. Officers told another group of detained patrons identified by one witness to stand against the black wall. Male officers push them, frisk them and touch them. The gay man in the bar stood in a single file line and one by one after trying identification, he exited. As he waited outside, they struck a pose with and applaud in the crowd went inside. They called their friends from payphones thalamus. Group festive. They were in proper dress then arrived, a Police Officer showed one of them and she hit him back with her purse. He hit her with his club. A Village Voice reporter heard food and someone suggest they tip over the police wagon and officer led them to the police man full of clothing. When he returns to retrieve another, ritter stops out, the officer begged her to stop. Please, its my birthday she is 18, she was sobbing in her makeup running. The officers surrounded by angry patrons look the other way. Ritter ran for the crowd outnumbering 400 in the band drove away. Officers brought another patron who identified as a woman wearing crutcher, neil close in handcuffs. One noticed a black leather suit and others described as a fancy go to bar drag forbush dyke. She put up a struggle reported the boys, dyke wrote one witness, lost her mind on west village. Taking, cursing, screaming and fighting. Twice she escaped from the police car for before getting caught. After the second time they grab into the patron into the car, voice, witness recalled and shouted female, why do you guys do something, was at that moment that this became explosive, limp risk were forgotten, beer cans and bottles were he did the windows and coins descended on the cops which cries a police brutality, fag it cops, the interruption began. Officers retreated backward and bolted the door of the bar. The mob used, the swung