Time. Again, thank you all for coming, gentlemen, we cant thank you enough. Thanks again. First ladies, infloouns and image on American History tv, examines the private lives and the public roles of the nations first ladies, through interviews with top historians. Tonight we look at the first two first ladies. Martha washington and abigail adams. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is, and if of raise your hand if you had heard of the gene harris murder trial before this class. The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution, is the true transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. The tools, the techniques and well talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is available in pod cast, find it where you listen to pod casts. To mark the 50th anniversary of the raid on a gay bar, stonewall at 50, the movement for lgbt civil rights. This is an hour. Well now turn to our next iteration of the commission speaker series. This one is titled stonewall at 50. I thank the commissioner for suggesting this months speaker. June has become known as pride month. In 1969 street demonstrations for lesbian and gay civil rights began at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in new york city. Many view this as a Critical Movement for lgbt rights. President barack obama proclaimed a site near the Stonewall Inn a national monument. As evidenced by the statement, the Commission Majority passed earlier today in support of the equality act, in the various reports and statements that the commission has issued in recent years. Discrimination on the basis of Sexual Orientation and gender identity is still prevalent in this country. I just read news yesterday that the new York Police Commissioner apologized for the actions of the new York Police Department during the stonewall uprising. Declaring that the actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive. Interactions between Police Officers and the Lgbtq Community has prompt ed discussion on civl rights use of force. Several surveys found high rates of contact between Law Enforcement and lgbt individuals, with high rates of Police Misconduct including harassment and abuse. The commission took in substantial evidence of discrimination persisting in these interactions. As much as we regret and call for the end of on going discrimination and inequity. I am grateful for this opportunity to mark the progress that we to that end, we now welcome historian david carter, who served as an adviser on the campaign to make the stonewall site a national monument. Mr. Carter has been working on the history of the lgbt Civil Rights Movement for a quarter of a century. His last book titled stonewall, the riots that sparked the gay rev lose, was published by st. Martins press in 2004. Carter was the consultant for the American Experience film stonewall uprising which won a George Foster peabody award in 2012. Mr. Carter, we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much. Your microphone is not on. If you dont mind pushing the talk button. Well be able to hear you better. Sure, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to thank the chairwoman for and other members of the commission for according me the honor of appearing before you. I have been asked to speak about my work on the history of the stonewall uprising, which is of course, the best known single event in the history of this movement. A sixday rebellion that began as the result of a police raid on june 28, 1969, on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay club in Greenwich Village. The facts are well established as is General Information about the Stonewall Club and how it operated. However, to understand the meaning of the event requires information that goes beyond these sets of facts, including these sets of facts, including information that has not become integrated into media accounts, documentaries, and museum exhibitions. Because one needs to be aware of a much greater context of the history beyond the events of the uprising to interpret the uprisings meaning and its historical implications accurately, i will not spend much time today on the uprising itself. But on this larger context. Homosexual acts have been illegal since the nations founding, but an increase in the intolerance of homosexuality seems to have taken root in this country around the time of the great depression. After world war ii, with the advent of the cold war and the red scare, exemplified by virulent anticommunism and the demand for total conformity that characterized the 1950s, laws aimed at homosexuals became so harsh that at times they were draconian. The Defense Department hardened its policies of excluding homosexual service men and women, tripling the world war ii discharge rate. And they reversed prior practice by generally giving less than honorable blue discharges. These punitive discharges stripped thousands of veterans of the benefits that had been promised them in the gi bill of rights. After lieutenant roy blick of the washington, d. C. Vice squad testified before the senate in 1950 that 5,000 homosexuals work for the government, a figure he had fabricated, the senate authorized an investigation into the matter by a subcommittee chaired by North Carolina senator clyde hoy. The subcommittees report stated those who engage in overt acts of perversion like the emotional stability of normal persons, having concluded that, quote, one homosexual person can pollute an entire office, they saw that a purge would be the action. The Civil Commission complied by initiating an intense campaign. With lists of Government Employees and checking fingerprints of job applicants against the fbis fingerprint files. After Dwight Eisenhower became president , he signed executive order 10450 in april 1953, which added sexual perversion as a ground for government investigation and dismissal. The government shared police and military records with private employers, resulting in the dismissal of hundreds. While mccarthyism encouraged the toughening of laws towards homosexuals because they were believed to be security risks, americans puritan tradition was producing a furor over child molestation. Homosexuals were believed to be the main culprits. As the right wing demonization proceeded at pace, the negative qualities attributed to homosexuals overlapped until it became an assumption that any man or woman who was homosexual was so beyond the pale that she or he must also partake in the most forbidden ideological fruit of all, communism. As homosexuals became handy scapegoats for both of these postwar preoccupations, antihomosexual laws were made more severe. 29 states enacted new sexual psychopath laws and or revised existing ones and homosexuals were the primary targets. In almost all states, professional licenses could be provoked or denied because of homosexuals so professionals could lose their livelihoods. In 1971, 20 states had sex psychopath laws permitting them to detain homosexuals. In pennsylvania and california, sex offenders could be locked in a Mental Institution for life. And in seven states, they could be castrated. At californias atascadero hospital, men convicted of consensual sodomy were given shock therapy, castrated and had lobotomies performed on them. Its been pointed out that no specific statute outlawed being homosexual. And that only homosexual acts were illegal. While this is technically true, the effect of the entire body of laws and policies that the state employs to police the conduct of homosexual men and women was to make being gay a crime de facto. The harshness of these laws made judges generally unwilling to sentence homosexual men, lesbians, and transvestites to such inhumane sentences and instead they tended to hand out light fines or to place those convicted on probation, but the random or selective use of far harsher penalties and the potential threat of their use combined with other sanctions and harassment, major and minor, official and unofficial, were more than sufficient to keep the vast majority of homosexual men and women well within the lines that society had drawn for them. Having created all manner of sanctions to make it difficult for homosexuals to meet their own kind, the police aggressively patrolled the few places where homosexuals could minger. Bars, bath houses, and outdoor cruising places such as streets, parks, and beaches. Some jurisdictions planted microphones in park benches and used peep holes and twoway mirrors to spy on homosexuals in public rest rooms. While the law classified homosexuals as criminals and a scientific establishment used psychology to medicalize homosexuality into an illness, gay men and lesbians found almost universal moral condemnation from religions, whether mainstream or obscure. Thrice condemned as criminals, mentally ill, and as sinners, homosexuals faced a social reality in post world war ii america that was bleak, if not grim. To shift from the National Perspective to that of a single state, namely new york, one place that gay people sought as a refuge was Greenwich Village. The villages bohemian reputation first attracted gay people to the area around the turn of the 20th century. As they sensed that a place known for wide tolerance might accept even sexual nonconformists. As word increased and got out nation wide there were large numbers of gay people in Greenwich Village, more and more gay men and lesbians were drawn there. Eventually, new york had the largest gay population in the United States, and the village increasingly served as a center for the growing homosexual subculture. New york was also the city that most aggressively and systematically targeted gay men as criminals. Police vice squads, which new york city was the first to create, attempted to control homosexuals by observing locales were people congregated using decoys to entice them, and raiding gay bars and baths. When prohibition ended, new york created the state Liquor Authority or sla, and gave it practically total leeway in administering and enforcing these laws. The sla interpreted the laws so even the presence of homosexuals categorized as people who were lewd and dissolute in a bar, make that place disorderly and subject to closure. The result was new york city was the most vigorous investigator of homosexuals before world war ii. Responding to rightwing pressure after the war, new york city modernized its stakeout decoy and police raid operations and continued to haul in thousands of homosexuals. Sometimes just for socializing at a private party. More commonly, the Police Arrested them at bars and in cruising areas. By 1966, over 100 men were arrested each week for homosexual solicitation in new york city, as the result of Police Entrapment. Making it impossible for bars to legally serve homosexuals created a situation that could only lead to criminals stepping in. The mafia entered into the vacuum to run gay bars, which in turn set up a scenario for Police Corruption and the exploitation of the bars customers. These last were not likely to complain because they had nowhere else to go and because they feared the mob. The corruption spread as the police and sla agents were paid off by the mafia, the lawyers charged homosexual clients caught between the mafia, the police, and the slas exorbitant fees, part of which was used to bribe judges. Such repression resulted in resistance. The First Organization to begin organized ongoing political resistance to the oppression of gay people was the society founded in 1951. However, because of the intent rightward shift the nation experienced in the 1950s, the early radical spirit of that organization was lost. The approach then changed to relying on psychiatrists to say that homosexuals were not criminals, but mentally ill persons who needed therapy. The movement also hoped to educate the public to be more tolerant. These approaches constituted a strategy that became known as the education and Research Approach of the homophile. Frank was one of the citizens caught up in the dragnet. A harvard educated astronomer, he had been hired we the army map service, but was fired when the government discovered he was homosexual. After failing to get his job back in spite of doing all he could as an individual, he turned to an organizational approach. His last gambit had been a petition he sent to the u. S. Supreme court to hear his case. Inspired by basic principles of american democracy, the black Civil Rights Movement, and sociologists assertion that homosexuals are valid minority, he argued that the government should not only not persecute homosexuals but should work to end discrimination against them. He used the analysis from his Supreme Court petition when he started an organization in washington, d. C. Be the Mattachine Society of washington, to argue that the Homophile Movement is a Civil Rights Movement that should settle for nothing les than full equality. No one had ever enunciated that approach before. It was beyond radical at that time. It was a lonely voice, but he soon won a few activists over to his side. With each passing year, won more support. In 1964, he was invited to give a speech to the society of new york. There, he articulated publicly the arguments he had crafted in his Supreme Court petition. He also urged that new york city activists work to accomplish two goals. To end Police Entrapment and to legalize gay bars. The speech so electrified the mattachine member that the next year, they threw out the officers who supported the old education and Research Approach and elected a slate of militants to pursue a civil rights strategy. He became president and following advice, succeeded in ending the new york city Police Department entrapment of gay men and gradually made significant progress toward legalizing gay bars. Pardon me. The Stonewall Inn club opened during this period of progress toward the legalization of gay bars. It became popular because it was the only gay club in new york city where dancing was allowed regularly. But more particularly, where slow dancing was allowed. It was also the citys Largest Gay Club and was located just a block and a half from the very heart of the gay male social area, the intersection of christopher street and greenwich avenue. The club was broadly tolerant about who was admitted and thus became popular with a wide Cross Section of the community. At the same time, it was a mafia bar that was run only to exploit the community ripe for exploitation. So it charged exorbitant prices for drinks. It was also dirty and sold questionable mafia alcohol. But while most customers were willing to put up with these features to have a place to dance and socialize, some customers feared worse. One of the managers of the stonewall was a career criminal named ed murphy, a gay man who was arrested in the mid60s for running an Extensive National operation blackmailing homosexuals murphy found via a prostitution ring. He used an office above the stonewall in the late 1960s to run a prostitution ring. The stonewalls waiters were also used to collect information on their customers, especially those with more lucrative careers. When the new York Police Department received a query from interpol about bonds surfacing on european streets, they investigated and determined they were stolen by wall street employee who had been blackmailed because of his homosexuality. Further investigation pointed to the area around the stonewall as the likely origin of the blackmailing operation. At a time of extensive investigation into Police Corruption in new york city, seymour pine, a Police Officer with a reputation for being honest, had been transferred against his wishes to head the First Division of the public moral squad. Soon thereafter, he was summoned to a meeting with his captain and ordered to put the stonewall out of business because of its connection with the mafia blackmail operation. After some more routine raids on the stonewall, pi