TRUTH MATTERS when we talk about Stonewall, Thoughs on the opening of the New York Public Library STONEWALL REBELLION Exhibition

STONEWALL: PLEASE READ: THE TRUTH IS SOMETIMES SHOCKING.     

I was shocked to see the word "RIOT" used continually in the NYPL STONEWALL/50 exhibition handout. As someone who was actually standing on Christopher street in front of the mafia bar known as the Stonewall inn from 10:15 until the streets had been reopened to traffic at 1:15. I know it was not a riot. That is when 6 gay men and I: included were Mark Seigal, Marty Robinson, and Michael Brown gathered together at the junction of where  Waverly meets Waverly.

We were excited by the night's activities and wanted to continue what had been released.  We attempted to conspire together to figure out how to continue the energy released that first night.

We succeeded!

No one who was actually present inside or outside the bar can justify calling what happened a "riot." Under no known definition of 'riot" does the spontaneous release of oppression each of us experienced that might meet the definition of "riot." There was no crowd out of control, no looting, no hospital admissions, no fire department report... What did happen  was each of us present on the street experienced at a particular flashpoint the spark of freedom and liberation as we became visible to each other and threw off the internalized homophobia and for once collectively challenged the external homophobia and the policing that the mob, the state, and the church had imposed on each of .us.

To try to place a straight 60's template on what happened diminishes who was there and how we as gay men acted that first night. When David Scott shares his first-hand, eye-witness experience. He says: it seemed more like a collective celebration.

It troubles me deeply that an institution like the New York Public Library which is known around the world as an esteemed research center would use language that misrepresents the reality of what happened. I would have thought they would have known better.  As to the confabulators who say different, are simply not telling the truth.

There were no bricks thrown,, No Slyvia Rivera, no ripping of parking meters out of the cement (really dear!) no setting fire to the building, Yes Marsha, who was my friend, did show up around 12: 15. Marsha hung out on the sidelines.    

Whatever happened to the phrase "The truth will set you free"?  

The second night was much more militant according to a revised memory by Lucian K. Truscott IV a straight writer (and a long time friend)...but again the events of the second did not meet the definition of riot.

I am saddened that people would rather believe false myth than the truly radical event that took place that actually changed history for homosexuals male and female of all gender expression everywhere.

What happened that first night seeded the desire for visibility, equality, and acceptance of same-sex desire and erotic expression. Wanting to be seen as expressing emotion, desire, and personhood as a natural part of human behavior.

Language matters to me ...and I hope to you.  What took place the first night of the Stonewall rebellion changed history and gave a new definition to being a gay man or a lesbian of any gender expression.

I use the word rebellion because it best represents to me what actually did happen.  Rebellion,  in the sense of rebellion against internalized homophobia and the external homophobia, imposed and manipulated by State and Church.

Yes, some choose to use the word "uprising.” But an uprising by definition involves pre-planning.  Please, trust me! It was spontaneous that first night ..anyone who tries to take credit is lying.

As to the NYPL opening reception, it was full of memory for me. Both Diana Davies photos were taken when she was an active member of GLF and Mattacine member Kay Tobin, lover and life partner to the late Barbara Gittings. Kay one of the people (including Gittings and Frank Kameny)  who took under their wings and mentored the 8 GLF men and 1 woman dissatisfied with the GLF meeting process and  left, They were mentored in single-issue politics in sharp contrast to the GLF politics of "no one is truly free until all oppressed people are free.

But the most iconic image that best expresses the true meaning of the STONEWALL/REBELLION  was missing. It is the recruitment poster published by the COME OUT cell of the Gay Liberation Front in the Fall of 1969. A photo was taken by Peter Hujar on the street in what is now called Soho of lesbians and gay men running in the street smiling. Out and inviting others to join them in changing the world. Not afraid! Although they had no protection in the workplace nor on the streets or in their homes.  …(oh, that is me in the striped pants!)

Please, now take a breath. What I have said may be disrupted to the message you might have heard. I have no reason to lie. I have not changed my story in 50 years.

Jim Fouratt

History Lesson KEEPING HOPE ALIVE Or how Hujar helps me keep hope alive + real history of 1st night of Stonewall rebellion

 KEEPING HOPE ALIVE:  In these days of chaos and darkness, I will share a few things over the next few days that make me smile and help keep open my heart. Yes, my life refracts my history, the places, and the events that have shaped me and impact culture and politics in the world I have existed in from my earliest youth until today. But the deepest meaning I have,I hope,is being a queer hippie at heart full of gay spirit. A radical fairy who lives in the real external world which nurtures the spirit of love, compassion and community that builds solidarity in a natural rhythm that fuels my heart .. not easy ..but the appreciation of beauty such as in this Peter Hujar image is one of the ways I try to stay balanced.

Blessed be we say! (Note: not religion based, but spirit manifest)

PETER HUJAR: This is an image from the Peter Hujar show at The Morgan Library & Museum in NYC ( it closes on May 20^th and opens at the Berkeley Museum July 11^th through November 13^th). Peter was my lover for 3 1/2 years at a critical artistic moment in his life. I am very happy that the Morgan's Photography Curator, Joel Smith, has brought forward Peter Hujar. While I, because of my personal relationship with Peter and my involvement in the culture Peter's work is immersed in, have different insights and would have made some different choices,  I highly recommend you see the Hujar show before it moves to the Berkeley Art Museum.

It is one thing to look at photography online and a totally, I think, different experience encountering an image directly. In particular with Hujar's work this I believe to be essential. 
I suggest you take the time to really absorb the multiple layers of a Hujar image. While there may be a certain frisson that happens when encountering a room full of, mostly dead, queer, pop culture icons that dominate the curator's selection, I suggest strongly you spend quality time with each of the images. The reward will be that you will see not just the surface but the multiple layers of humanity, empathy, personal statement, and communication between the subject and the photographer. Elsewhere I will speak of what I know about Peter's practice, but here  I repeat,  you will in doing so experience the work first before distancing oneself from the aesthetic conversation that the encounter can give to you before the academic analysis of intent. 

One of the biggest disappointments for me of the Mogan Hujar show is the stripping of a photo that Peter did for me when the COME OUt cell of GLF decided we wanted to do a recruitment poster for GLF.   I organized the shoot with Peter.

I had asked Joel to include the poster next to the stripped image he had selected of people running in the street and to identify the brave women and men running, smiling and happy in the street. Brave because there was no legal protection for lesbian and gay people in the workplace etc. In fact to have homosexual sex was against the law. 

The photo was taken by Peter in a location he selected in what was then a part of Little Italy where mostly manufacturing building existed.   Later these buildings became artist lofts and the area renamed SOHO. Because of lighting etc, he later superimposed the running image on a location close to a loft we had on 16th street at Union Square. 
The story of who and why these people were in the picture and why they are all white is a story of the reality of racism and dual oppression. They all self-selected to be in the photo. Neither Peter or I excluded anyone who wanted to be in the photo.

Peter and I were lovers when the Stonewall Rebellion took place. 
By happenstance, I was on my way home that night from work at CBS/Columbia Records. At 10:30 P.M. I found myself in front of a sleazy gay bar around the corner from where I still live. I did not frequent the Stonewall Inn,  I was standing in front because as I entered the street from the subway and rounded the corner on to Christopher Street on my way home. I saw a police car parked in front of the Stonewall Inn, .Like any good radical of the '60's, (I had been involved in the Anti-war movement as an openly gay man and had been a co-founder ot the YIPPIES)  I went to see what was happening. I know what actually took place that might because I was in front of the Bar from 10:30 until the streets were re-opened to traffic around 12:15 P.M..

Around that time a group of 7 gay men met at the corner of Waverly and Waverly (yes!). It included Michael Brown, who later became with me one of the people to sit in at the Bakery on 13th street that we finally won from the City for a Lesbian and Gay Center in New York City, (rip-aids), Marty Robinson, my ex-boyfriend and a member of Mattachine's youth group. Marty became a founding member of GLF and later Gay Activist Alliance, (rip-aids), Mark Segal, who would form the Gay Youth cell in GLF and gay hippie and anarchist printer Ralph Hall (rip-aids). We decided to continue this moment the following night. We collectively organized to get the word out. Remember this was prior to cell phones, texting and the Internet etc. We succeded

What happened in the streets is for me the spark of rebellion that changed history forever everywhere for same-sex loving people.  It was not a celebration of another police raid on a gay bar, It was a rebellion against oppression both external and internal. 

STONEWALL  was NOT a riot. Stonewall was a REBELLION.! (WHEW!)
Note: when I use the word “beauty” I am not referring to “pretty” or “decorative.” I intend to be inclusive of empathy, humanity and visual excitement, I include the possibility of horror and shock as a component of beauty...when executed as an intentional aesthetic choice.

jim fouratt May 11, 2018 

I am also including  few images in color that apparently Joel did not have access to or thought were not representative of the Hujar he was curating

Vince Aletti and I on the beach on Fire Island.on a windy day.. that is a dried piece of seaweed I found in my hand, I was reading "Two Serious Ladies" by Jane Bowles and had it with me ...Peter always referred to this photo as "Two Serious Ladies."  

I just like this photo of me and Vince. We were close back then..He was a writer at RAT an alternative newspaper. I thought Vince was a brilliant short story writer.   I introduced him to Peter. They lived across the street from each other for years and Peter introduced him to the art of photography. They were best friends until Peter died.

Another fire Island trip when Peter and I stayed at Sam' Green's house in Ocklyville just past the Sunken Forest.  Sam's other guest was Greta Garbo and companion. (!)

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU PETER HUJAR or your PICTURES

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU PETER HUJAR or your PICTURES

Many years ago Peter Hujar was my lover ... he is just now coming into public honor with a traveling MAJOR MUSEUM show organized by the Morgan Museum more than twenty years after his death from AIDS I remember asking him in the earliest days of after the STONEWALL REBELLION .if he would take a photo for a campaign the COME OUT cell of Gay Liberation Front . The COME OUT cell wanted to do a recruitment poster in a day when all most all lesbian and gay men were closeted and hidden in bars and secret cruising areas across the world. He agreed, For or a month we announced at the GLF weekly general meeting that anyone who wanted to be in this photo to come to a street in what is now known as SOHO. (sad that one person in the photo who disappeared for almost 20 years emerged and because of his lifestyle at the time could not remember where it took place published a confabulation and personal fantasy of where it took place. He was wrong,. As the person who organized the shoot with Peter, you would have thought he would have asked ... he did not!) Now that that has been said >|: NOTE why is it all white people despite the four people of color who showed up and at the last moment were afraid of going public about being gay and lesbian (The James Baldwin dual oppression dilemma). History must be told truthfully and not as a fantasy to be politically correct.
Peter died of AIDs in 1989

let me share a few photos I love of Peters... and as life would have it ..whe we broke up and feelings were raw I took almost every photo he had taken . of me. Now I wish I had
not ,,,,

Peter as he was when I lived with him. Handsome . One of Warhol's 10 most beautiful men fi

A very young John Kelly dancer 

Charles Ludlam making up for Camille

Lola Pat Camille *Theater of Rediculous 1973

I remember Paul Morrisey whispering in Candy's ear . "taks more hormones Candy and you will be more beautiful. Dead fro cancer she was still beautiful. There is a lesson for today herre.

From his first book 1964

Ethyl Eichelberger in costume 

Ethyl Eichelberger out of costume

 Ethyl in a pose

John and Gary

Iggy Pop 1969 

Iggy Pop 1977

John Ashbury

Diana Vreeland 1975

Tomata du Plenty who once saved my life in Seattle 

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A young Fran 

Jackie Curtis 1970

Greer had sexual reassignment surgery at 15. Greer was not intersex,  His mother's request. Greer never fully recovered from it ..his art in many ways tells that story.

a young John Kelly

my favorite couple  Jo;hn and Gary 

George Harris /Hibiscus and Angel Jack

Another death in the family makes me think how AIDS still kills and reflecton where we are today in fighting it a critique of PrEP

I am mouring the death of my friend Robert, as are many of my friends.  I trust you know AIDS is still a TERMINAL , incurable disease. People who are long term persons with AIDS die today usually of complications from the medical treatments that have taken to stay alive. There is no cure . Despite the fantasy of some AIDS/HIV activists and the advertising campaigns of Big Pharma. Big Pharma greed is on ample public display in the outrageous prices they charge for life sustaining drugs.These drugs come with positive and negative consequences..The good news is that for many the drugs prolong life , the bad news is theses drugs come with their own baggage. ;

 We now know that premature aging, HIV drug related dementia and a plethora of other organ failure like the heart and the liver are side effects,. Safe sex (condom use) is the best protection if one is concerned about HIV. or other STDs or pregnancy The Obama administration in order to fulfill the Congressional GOP led call that pissed for a financial sequester on all federal sponsored programs ( choosing cuts over raising taxes on the rich and corporations) lead to safe sex education cuts in the Health Department and the CDC. .. Instead the Obama administration partnered up with Big Pharma to push forward a program called PrEP. PrEP is a program that wants to have anyone at risk for HIV infection (the controversy over what that means I will leave aside for the moment ) to take a little blue pill , a serious AIDS drug with know serious side effects on sick bodies and at this stage because of the newest of an experimental program unknown in healthy bodies. The drug is called truvada. At present it costs about $18,000 a year. Even if it was free (and despite whatever propaganda funded by Big Pharma and its partners in government local, state or federal it is NOT free ,, we the taxpayers will pay for it if someone gets it for "free. Big Pharma still will make its profit). 

 "At risk " is defined as anyone (regardless of sexual orientation) sharing semen or sex related body fluids. A special emphasis is placed on passive participation in anal sex (which is a sex act not exclusive to the gay male population) . 

PrEP was launched at the international AIDS conference in DC where I witnessed the cheerleading recruitment launch campaign. I was shocked to realize that forty years of AIDS activists (in NYC ACT UP led by women) demands for safe sex condom use and more that 60 years of women demanding men wear condoms, 

Than I saw the Big Pharma, local, state and federal government were now joined by some AIDS activists and by community AIDS educators who had lost their jobs when Federal funding of safe sex education was cut and when Big Pharma replaced the funding and they got their jobs back with the proviso that their safe sex education was focused on PrEP. (GMHC etc) .Yes after a loud protest across the country condom use was added as a cautionary step .

 But the universal message the public understood despite what ever warning was that if you take a blue pill, you could forget about safe sex, You will not get AIDS. What most users did not understand is a: the drug appears in early studies to prevent transmission of HIV in about 90% of the cases documented .. (Note this number may change in studies ) . the reality is that is not a foolproof HIV prevention method.

Most importantly it does not prevent the transmission of any other STD's What we have seen in the gay controlled section of the porn industry is a avalanche of unsafe sex gay porn. (no condoms). So besides the use of a viagra or it's imitators in young male porn actors who are without physically based erectile dysfunction issues the little pule pill has been added. 

AIDS activist seen incapable of criticizing the gay porn industry ..eg Michael Lucas. 

So now where I live the cases of syphilis among young gay men who go to public health centers is over the top. Unknown is the number of std among gay men who seek private doctor care . Let me say loud and clear as someone who first became active in AIDS/HIV activism in 1982 I think it crazy to ingest a serious AIDS drug with know and unknown side effects in a healthy body. as a prophylaxis. . I would not do it. 

As to others ,because i believe each of us has the right to control our own bodiesI can only suggest that individuals make an INFORMED choice to use truvada or not if they are healthy and not HIV + or have AIDS . , My goal is to make sure that any person confronted with the massive PrEP propaganda recruitment campaign has ALL ht information to make an INFORMED choice. I know that Robert fought for the right to control his own body and respect for his treatment choices. . All of us who loved him I believe are charged to continue that each of us has ALL the information in order OT make an informed choice.. Ione of the saddest aspects of the pro-PrEP campaign by some AIDS activists is to realize that some of the leaders are long ten survivors of AIDS /HIV infection. I appreciate their wanting to end AIDS but reject their willingness become pawns in Big Pharma ever extending web of exploitation of legitimate health concerns for profit.

I share my  grief with all my friends e. Robert was loved by many 

photo: Robert Levithan by Peter Hujar (cc)  

How the iconic PETER HUJAR COME OUT image is stripped of its political meaning and used without context .. by a museum with good intentions

It is sad to see the misuse of a photo by the Leslie Lohman museum.

Background: 

the photo was taken in October of 1969. It is taken from a shoot that was arranged to provide an image for a recruitment poster the Come Out cell of the Gay Liberation Front wanted to make. My lover at the time was Peter Hujar. I asked him if he would do the shoot . He agreed. It was announced at the weekly general meeting of GLF for three weeks that we were taking a picture for GLF's recruitment poster. The location that Peter chose was Wooster Street in little Italy aka now SoHo. I announced at the meeting that it was to be shot on the second Sat of October.Anyone who would show up at 10 AM would be in the photo. It was Peter's idea to have a photo taken of people running in the street. On the day of the photo shoot the people that you see in the photo showed up as well as some others including a gay man of color Ron Ballard. Ron later told me when he rounded the corner to enter Wooster Street, he saw a group of us gathered together He told me that he saw his grandmother's face in front of him. He was not out to her. He said he also realize that he was working in the New York City public schools system; That he could very well lose his job if anyone saw this photo so he turned around and went home. It was my first lesson in understanding dual oppression. A series of shots were turned them over to the come out collective. A very typical deep GLF discussion took place within the cell about what the language on the poster would be.It was decided :

  It would say on the top, COME OUT and at the bottom JOIN THE SISTERS AND BROTHERS OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT. I don't think that most young people today realize for people to be out running down the street proclaiming their same sex love and affection fused with erotic pleasure was both dangerous and very courageous,. This group represented the end of the closet and assimilation politics that the homophile movement represented ,,GLF was not single issue and had gender parity in its organizing. We wanted to build a revolution for all people with Out lesbians and gays participating equally. . It was to be our version of the Black Panther party recruitment poster. That Leslie Lohman would appropriate a political photo, strip it of its essential meaning is very sad to me. I am sure it was well intended. Sad is how queer academia fails so often to correctly identify the critical symbols of our liberation struggle. The man in the striped shirt is not John D’emilio, one of my favorite historians, It is Stephen E Dansky. Dansky joined GLF in August of 1969 and joined the Trotskyist Red Butterfly cell. Also in RB were historian and author John Lauritzen, John Knoebel (who later worked for years in the Advocate business office) and John O'Brien. Dansky was active in GLF for about four months and left to join the Effeminists a group founded by the poet Kenneth Pitchford, a gay man married to leading feminist Robin Morgan. The Effeminists denounced the men in GLF as sexist and misogynist . Dansky soon after left active political life and became a psychologist . After his retired Dansky decide to record GLF's radical history. Unfortunately one of the things he did was claim that the GLF photo shoot took place in what is now called Chelsea and publish a series of articles based on his flawed research. When I brought to his attention that Peter had been my lover and I had set up the shoot and knew where it took place, he insisted although he could not remember the location that his research convinced him it was in Chelsea.It was frustrating having him be so dismissive of the actual historical fact., He told me I had made it up . Other than that nightmare experience, Dansky has made a valuable contribution to recording lost history . He did video record interviews with a group he selected to tell of their personal experiences of GLF and/or the first year of Gay and Lesbian liberation. I am grateful he did those interviews. Nicos Diaman , an original member of GLF who lives in SF also has done filmed interviews. He attempted to make a documentary.But could not raise sufficient money to complete it . But these archival materials have been preserved for a future historian, When Yale acquired my archives it contained the original mechanicals of the Come Out Poster. Among the brave and courageous people in this emblematic photo are : Bob Bland (rip), Earl Galvin (rip) John Erdman,jim fouratt,  Lyn Farley , Judy ? Fran Winant (one of the original subjects in Martin Duberman “STONEWALL” who he dropped when she refused to sign off unless he took out his psychological judgements of her out. He refused, she didn't sign and the book in my view lost the voice of a lesbian there at the very beginning. Duberman quickly recruited Carla Jay who had joined about the same time as Steven Dansky} Carl Miller, Dan Smith and Michael Yarr. I believe Lois Hart was standing next to her lover Suzanne but cut out for composition reasons from the photo There remain five women whose names at the moment I can't pull up but I am sure others will add.

Leslie Lohman should have never detached this image from its history and purpose.

Jim fouratt March 29, 2016

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