Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 26, No. 05, Ed. 1 Friday, June 19, 2009 Page: 18 of 96
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stonewall
REBELLION
Continued from Page 1
go quietly, they started a rebellion that lasted
five nights.
"Fighting back gives you your dignity," Fiske
says.
Another Stonewall veteran, Jeremiah
Newton, says, "1. was there the first night and
the last night. Just another young person watch-
ing a senseless spectacle caused by the idiocy of
the N.Y.C. police.
"I knew that something very different was
happening, and I didn't want to get arrested as I
didn't have rich parents around to bail me out of
jail. This was the night of the day of Judy
Garland's wake and people — the gay commu-
nity — were Very upset," Newton recalls.
"Thousands were at her public wake earlier in
the day and emotions were high. Judy's life
seemed to be a metaphor for so many people
who were crowding Christopher Street that
night/early morning. Something did happen.
All the ingredients were there."
Even though he wanted to avoid it,
Henderson was among the 13 people who were
arrested. He was charged with resisting arrest,
disorderly conduct, being underage, inciting a
riot and cross-dressing.
"Cross-dressing," he says. "I was wearing
clogs."
Henderson says he told the police he was
underage in hopes that would get him released.
Instead, it added a charge.
He was first taken to the hospital and then to
jail; he wasn't released until Saturday night
/
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY PETER FISKE
Scenes from the Stonewall Inn in the 1960s.
when a friend's parents bailed him out.
What triggered the arrests, Henderson says,
was that the owners of Stonewall Inn refused to
pay off the police.
"The Mafia ran it," Henderson says, "The
police had been there before, got paid off and
they'd leave. This night was different. It couldn't
be they didn't have the money."
He says that maybe they just had had enough
and refused to pay. That presented the interest-
ing irony of the Mafia tiring of extortion by the
police.
By 2 a.m., about 200 people who had escaped
the raid and other people from the neighbor-
hood had gathered on Christopher Street and in
Sheridan Square Park across the street from the
bar. As word spread, hundreds more arrived to
join in the demonstration. The crowd spilled
over onto neighboring Morton and Grove
streets.
A myth often associated with the first night is
that the raid spawned a riot. Each of the
Stonewall veterans bristles at that description.
Henderson jokes, "One of the transgender
girls, Terri Ann Jordan Van Dyke, 18, doled out
the machine guns."
"Riot," he says, implies looting, assaults,
bombings, breaking store windows and burning
cars.
"If it was a riot, would Stonewall Inn have
been declared a National Historic Landmark?"
Henderson asks.
"It was rebellion," he and other Stonewall
veterans repeat.
The protests were peaceful and no property
was destroyed, they said, adding that the only
property damaged was at the Stonewall Inn —
and the police did that.
Reports of the crowd size vary, but
Henderson says the largest group gathered on
Saturday night. He describes that and subse-
quent nights as a demonstration. Six people
were arrested for disorderly conduct on
Saturday night and three on Sunday night.
It rained on Monday and Tuesday "so the
rebellion was postponed," according to the
Stonewall Veterans' Association Web site. But
then the rain stopped, and on Wednesday and
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Nash, Tammye. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 26, No. 05, Ed. 1 Friday, June 19, 2009, newspaper, June 19, 2009; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth239069/m1/18/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.