1960 gay rights
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 1996, the other cleared the way for gay marriages in California. With the rapid recent progress of the queer 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 operational on a book about black gay history. He spoke with News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
You say that some gay rights advocates need to characterize recent events as the normal business of America doing civil rights – to notice continuity with the inky civil rights movement. But what’s flawed in that comparison?
First, it is straightforward 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 force and fraud, were stripped of voting rights. Up-to-date civil rights activists battle
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 1960 to 1980
After World War II, the civil rights movement had a profound impact on other groups demanding their rights. The feminist movement, the Black Power movement, the environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the American Indian Movement sought equality, rights, and empowerment in American society. Gay people organized to resist oppression and ask for just treatment, and they were especially galvanized after a New York Town police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay block, sparked riots in 1969.
Around the matching time, 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 trans person psychology, Kinsey believed sexuality could be studied as a science. He interviewed more than 8,000 men and argued that sexuality existed on a spectrum, saying that it could not be confined to uncomplicated categories of gay and heterosex
Barbara Gittings Helps Lead First 'Annual Reminder' Protests
Vice squads–police units passionate to “cleaning up” undesirable parts of urban life–routinely raided the bars frequented by LGBTQ+ 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 1960s in New York City, 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 end dancing. That wasn’t true during the early morning hours of June 28 1969, 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 joined 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 int
LGBTQ+ Living History: The Transformative ’60s and ’70s
In a six-part series, we highlight a few of the moments, movements, and people that made their mark on Cal’s LGBTQ+ history. We move through the decades, commencing in an era of secrecy and continuing through today.
The transformative ’60s and ’70s
The gay rights movement saw some forward motion in the 1960s. Dr. John Oliver coined the term “transgender” in his publication Sexual Hygiene and Pathology. Activism percolated. It exploded, in a sense, in June 1969 with the Stonewall Riots in New York City—a response to a police raid that took place at the Greenwich Village bar The Stonewall Inn.
In 1969, two groups formed on the UC Berkeley campus: Students for Gay Dominance and Gay Liberation Front. According to William Benemann ’71, M.L.S. ’75 (former Berkeley Law archivist, author, and founder of the Male lover Bears Collection in the University Archives), the Gay Liberation Front was very radical for its time. “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 coul