Lgbt movement in the 1960s
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions at the end of June favoring gay marriage. One ruling struck down federal restrictions in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of , the other cleared the way for gay marriages in California. With the rapid recent progress of the same-sex attracted rights movement, including changes in public attitudes, some see parallels with the earlier African-American civil rights movement. Is the comparison valid? What’s different this time? Illinois history professor Kevin Mumford specializes in the history of both movements, and is active on a book about black gay history. He spoke with News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
You say that some gay rights advocates crave to characterize recent events as the normal business of America doing civil rights – to view continuity with the shadowy civil rights movement. But what’s flawed in that comparison?
First, it is manageable to forget the context and duration of the civil rights movement. After the Civil War, African-Americans had full citizenship, elected local and federal representatives, and then, through aggression and fraud, were stripped of voting rights. Up-to-date civil rights activists struggled fo
LGBTQ+ Living History: The Transformative ’60s and ’70s
In a six-part series, we highlight a limited of the moments, movements, and people that made their mark on Cal&#;s LGBTQ+ history. We relocate through the decades, launch in an era of secrecy and continuing through today.
The transformative &#;60s and &#;70s
The gay rights movement saw some forward motion in the s. Dr. John Oliver coined the term &#;transgender&#; in his book Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. Activism percolated. It exploded, in a meaning, in June with the Stonewall Riots in Fresh York City—a response to a police raid that took place at the Greenwich Village bar The Stonewall Inn.
In , two groups formed on the UC Berkeley campus: Students for Gay Power and Gay Liberation Front. According to William Benemann ’71, M.L.S. ’75 (former Berkeley Law archivist, author, and founder of the Queer Bears Collection in the University Archives), the Homosexual Liberation Front was very radical for its moment. &#;They were too &#;out&#; for me and most of us at that time,&#; he says. &#;Being in the closet is about controlling your story. I felt I couldn&#;t trust them with my story. They were very courageous people though.&#;
Written by: Jim Downs, Connecticut College
By the end of this section, you will:
- Explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from to
After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Black Dominance movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American culture. Gay people organized to resist oppression and request just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a New York Urban area police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a same-sex attracted bar, sparked riots in
Around the same hour, biologist Alfred Kinsey began a massive study of human sexuality in the United States. Like Magnus Hirschfield and other scholars who studied sexuality, including Havelock Ellis, a prominent British scholar who published research on transgender psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8, men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, saying that it could not be confined to basic categories of homosexual and heterosexual. To evaluate
Barbara Gittings Helps Lead First 'Annual Reminder' Protests
Vice squads–police units devoted to “cleaning up” undesirable parts of urban life–routinely raided the bars frequented by Homosexual people. Laws against people of the same sex dancing together or wearing clothing made for the opposite sex were used as justification to arrest patrons. By the s in New York Metropolis, the mafia owned many of these establishments and its members would bribe officers in order to avoid fines. Sometimes the arrangement meant that patrons would be forewarned of a pending raid in time to change their clothing and stop dancing. That wasn’t true during the early morning hours of June 28 , when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.
When they arrived at Stonewall, the police locked the doors so that no one could escape as they conducted arrests. As certain patrons were released, they unified a large crowd that had been gathering outside the bar. Those chosen for arrest started resisting the police officers with the encouragement of the jeering crowd. Violence broke out and the crowd overwhelmed police, who were forced to call in reinforcements. The conflict lasted into the ne
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