Being fired for his federal job in 1957 due to his sexual orientation. Welcome to the deviance to her in arbor addition. Its my honor to be here this evening with the when and only sarah schulman. Before we begin and get into official introductions i would be remiss not to acknowledge the paint that our nations feeling i miss the loss of black lives at the hands of our nations police. The predominantly white fans we must be better. For those who are looking to make a difference for our friends who identify that way. Please join me in a moment of silence to honor the lives of those who have died. Thank you. And now i am excited to introduce joe schock. I think i know it. They can talk a little bit about some of the great work that they do in their programming. I am the director of the ann arbor pride. We are so thrilled to be cosponsoring this. And were looking forward to continuing to serve. For those of you that are familiar. It is in august and will stay in august. We are moving to a virtual platform. The same kind of fun and community and come on bury monterey the kids on back. With the storytime. Some messages of love and care. We couldnt do without our wonderful sponsors. We look forward to connecting with you all on august 1. Please feel free to visit ann arbor pride. Com. As you know all of these events are in support of bookstores. We are through so thrilled to be partnering. Please talk to us. We are really pleased to bring this event to you tonight. The Virtual Events and overly weird time for our community. I dont know if it would be able to happen with the travel schedules and everything else. We are pleased to be able to provide these opportunities you can buy the book and there is a buy button right down there. You can also purchase some other books. Select titles are now available for curbside pickup. I will also be coming back on at the end of the event to moderate q a. There is a q a function that you can write your questions in there. I will be coming up to say hello. Please feel free to purchase books. We also suggest that if you like to sustain the fundraising. You can donate buttons. Without further ado i will do what i normally do. I introduce our guest tonight. It is a historian. He was a gate speller. Her 20th book let the record show political history will be published in may of 2021 please welcome them both to your screen. This is a great time. To talk about how movements get bored and how they progress. I just want to ask you a personal question first. What made you decide to do gay history and gay movement history. I did not start my academic career running to be a historian. And maybe get involved in politics or something. It wasnt until i watched the film milk i think i was 18 or 19 that i realized how did i not know the story earlier and how did i not learn about harvey milk and a very important figure as a high school student. Ive taken several classes on it even in my first years of harvard i have no idea of his name. And then that realization that how did i not know his name. The next step was what other names do i not know. So much of writing history is excavating what sort of knowledge has not yet been introduced to academia or to the public yet. And so, i soon stumbled upon the name of frank can be. Everyone within the queer history part of academia knows his name but the general public does not even though there was an acknowledgment there had not really been an indepth study of his past especially in the 1960s and especially not in the immediate aftermath of stonewall. Yes the story is very important. If you realize very quickly its not just one mans story. This is a National Story of the black Freedom Movement. Also i took a very long time to write the book. But thats how i first got interested in it because so much of it has yet to have been told. We know in the first part of the 20th century. The communist party and the socialist party get 900,000 votes. We have the anti lynching movement. The womens suffrage. And sexology in europe. But then theres world war ii. It has been terrorized at theorized at this time a personal expansion. We see that for women and black people and gay people. There is an independent experience that takes place. Can you set the stage nationally and politically across the board. There is two sides to that story. Postworld war ii america was a scary type. In this new threat within the communist menace. And even though that was a Political Tool and there has been some great works. They were showing how time homosexuality to the red scare. It was very convenient Political Tool. They were faced with the realities of mccarthys numbers of these security risks within the government were not very reliable. But once you start seeing that homosexuals are equally dangerous to National Security then you start to see it is much easier to our fit for public activity. Its much easier to prove that than someones ideology. For d legitimate sizing this power. A much more routinized apparatus. That is what provokes some of the very first generations of gay pride. Were more prominent in my book is a frank him and he. The victim of these purges and because they were faced with this rationale of the government telling them that they were immoral and secretive they were working for the defense department. Im going to prove that its illogical by making my own arbitrary arguments that means to be gay is not inherently immoral but its morally good. Its what we know that celebrate each and every june. The dynamic of repression and resistance. Individuals and systems act on and transform each other. In 1965. There is enormous counterculture going on. So where does frank him and any set in that. In the spirit of influence. I dont think you can tell the story without telling the story of the 60s. In the story of the black Freedom Movement. Im so glad you brought up montgomery because i think so many people look at queer history especially queer activism in a vacuum which is unfortunate because if you are only looking at these individuals and trends within an isolated Minority Group that was overwhelmingly white. You are missing a large part of the story. How and when they were dry they dont know about montgomery for example. She was consciously chosen by the organizers because of her status they actually rejected another potential victim because i believe she had been pregnant. We need to give them the credit of same the black Freedom Movement recognizes the power of respectability and reclaimed morality for themselves and as something that frank him and he did just a few years later after the sit ins went on a very visual level you see them stressed very properly. While it is the white racist who are very unequivocally morally correct. They were pouring this on the students. There is no way to argue with that especially in a way it is performance art. You are provoking an image that can then be transmitted across the world and i think thats something that they saw when they were deciding how to react to these claims by the government that they were immoral. Im going to prove that that doesnt make any sense. Its completely arbitrary. Do you think it was influence somewhat by the black movements. There had been great studies done on black activism especially in the south where organizers would tell those who were marching. Dress as if you were going to church. Thats what they were told. It was a very conscious strategy of we dont want to look like the antiwar folks. We have the same conversations there. We dont want to be affiliated anyway with the dirty rousers were marching and causing trouble and smoking pot outside the white house. We want to be in franks words we want to be employed so we better look employable. And what i try to get at in the book as is some of the unintended consequences of that where he was essentially sacrificing individuality but also inclusion and i think that is something that he ended up having to cope with and fix. It was a little too late. But that was that the big intervention of stonewall. See mac what mike what was the difference between sexology and the home of full movement. It was contained more within academia. A new study of human sexuality. In one study that influenced not just frank but a large number of activist gave it was somewhat shaky methodology. There was a Minority Group that existed within america. They use their own translation to claim that it was about 10 it gave them the numbers to say if we organize and convince those who were engaging in the activity. If we convince them just like the marcus that they were part of a oppressed minority. Then maybe we could wield political power. You certainly see Frank Kimberly representing it. It was very much a movement of activism. Rather than just studying Sexual Activity it was about promoting the rights of the deviants. There was a relationship between them. You see a lot of activist allying with lakes sexology magazine. It was really an academic journal. They said here is our numbers. As we are dealing with the regime that were telling it that we are it does not exist. Then you can point to the numbers and actually it does. So what were the concrete demands of the home of file movement. Prior to frank you see this glimmer of radicalism. I know there has been pushed back to that recently. In the context you see the very burst at least on a National Level of sexual deviance. And try being to achieve law reforms such as the end of the purges. Where the lavender scare. Because so many of them came from the communist party. Where there were fellow travelers. Their own purges who had threatened their own political progress. After 53 you see that retreat of respectability its just lets simulate. Lets prove to the world that we are good moral upstanding citizens and that really is the case all the way up until until frank him and he in 1961. He and a few other allies they say wait a second. The goal should not be just fitting it in convincing other people that we are good people. We need to be demanding change. It becomes much more militant and as someone who is a victim never allowed to work in the field of astronomy again because all of them required security clearance. His goal was to end the gay purges. That was really just a arent as related as it meant getting caught in Public Restrooms and fighting for the end of laws. There needs to be a conversation not just those who actually managed to get a job but those who are homeless or didnt have the theme dash mike federal jobs to begin with. They have a struggle against the police. I think you have a struggle us. I will read for from my stonewall section. Especially given the current history that were living through. Forgive me to anybody who was looking for a future on frank. And show some of the conflict that conflicts that we been talking about. Where in her mothers dress. And surrounded by 200 other patrons. Black walls, a black ceiling. Blackout windows. It felt safe. Two female officers sat inside the bar posing as lesbians watching. A year after they have criticized they sold liquor without laces. Officers in the City Government could boost to the arrest numbers. They never fought back. Everybody behaved it was like were going down to grab the banks. The music turned off. In the bright white lights turn on. Youre not going nowhere said the officers. He pushed her up against the wall along with other patient patrons. They began performing their second duty of the evening they took them to the bathroom where the police women examined their genitalia. If they did not wear that three proper items of clothing they were arrested. Usually the threat was an examination. Usually they led them to the bathroom and they admitted it. In the second rate. They resisted the authorities. They showed that identification. They were identified by one witness as a lesbian woman. They waited outside. They called their friends. A Police Officer struck one of them. They led them to the police. When they return to retrieve another one ritters flipped out. Its my birthday in 18 she begged. The officers surrounded by hundreds of increasingly angry patients. They described the apparel as fancy go to. She put up a struggle. They lost their mind on the streets of the west village. Twice they escape from the police. A voice they were forgotten. Your cans and bottles were heaved at the bottles. The insurrection began. The up in parking meter and the door swung open. The officer was hit by a flying object. They were trapped inside the bar. The sound filtering and doesnt remind us of that. The windows shadowed. They were certain that they would storm at the bar. We will shoot the first person who comes through the door. Outside. And then threw a through match. A whoosh of flames. The fire trucks arrived. The officers escaped and the reinforcement turned their host on the crowds. Trans women dry creams or hustlers who worked in the peers fought and taunted the right police. The street scene we are the girls changing the course outline line and kicking their heels. The writers ran but the officers ran faster. Craig rod while the young veteran of the first new york picket. Yelled gay power. The next evening saturday the crowds grew larger. Flames rose from the trash can. One black trans woman miraculously climbed a lip post. She dropped a bag full of bricks scattering the windshield. By 3 30 a. M. The crowds dispersed. On sunday afternoon assigned appeared on the window. We plead with her people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the village. The crowds the small and less violent still returned that night. They scatter them in scattered them in a single sweep at the stonewall state open plain rocket role. They enter the stonewall. The guys were so beautiful they set upon leaving. That night Yvonne Ritter stayed in brooklyn. Stupid avoiding the village. A feeling remained imprinted in her mind after she escaped the police the van. Both drag queens make up streaking down her face she to pick something off the ground may be a brick or a piece of glass she does not know and threw it anger and defiance and pride. Lets open it up for questions i do had one thing. Ive always questioned the concept of bricks at stonewall. Where with wherewith those bricks come from. If Current Events are ever an indication. And somehow are found with questionable origin in the image of her climbing the lamp post that was something that craig rod while salt with his own eyes happened. And who knows if it was actually bricks inside the pillowcase or whatever it was. I think the larger question as who cares. Who cares what was thrown. And then what actually was occurring. In the contributions of those like marsha t johnson. Not just on those four nights but before and after stonewall. A big part of the book that im honestly most proud of is some of the findings i was able to find about sophie rivera. And the indispensable contributions and so when i think that you see it in the popular media. Who really threw the first shot glass. I think thats a red herring. We need to be asking larger questions. A peoples contributions around and especially after stonewall. I want to encourage anybody who has an ask a question to push the ask the question button. Im back i think. We had three questions so far. Im peeking over here on my second laptop computer. The first question is the question about the international dimensions. Is there an International Contact. Or other sexual minorities in effect of a newly strong and powerful state. Is severally an International Contact especially after stonewall. He did not just stop after it happened. A oneman organization. He part did with the aclu. Very much in contact. Before stonewall there is a really good study. One i would recommend. And durham university. And in the uk who actually talks about the Trans National event and how some of these conversations were taking place they were a great resource to see how u. S. Activists were in conversation with the law reformers in the uk and then of course even before franks time the german activists have a number of obligations with some of the very first Gay Publications that were ever disseminated in the u. S. A lot of great work done if you just google the houma file movement. I think especially in the research. I would be curious about what you found in the transatlantic front later in franks life. That would take me a month to tell you. This is a question we could open can open up to both of you. They could comfortably integrate with the peers to value those who fought for the freedom they have. You had been doing this for much longer than me and i think galvanizing the kids is still one thing. I think at least with this book what ive tried to do my theory going into at least marketing it whether it is with in hollywood. The, and the drama and the conflict. I think they actually have an obligation to include that. So much of history is the result of these more dramatic elements that are really appealing why was he so obsessed with the society. In houma file activists. On some policymaking level he was just really interested in this problem. He hated in was obsessed with them because they were making the claims about his own sexuality. And he wanted to nip that in the bud so to speak. You have to tell these parts of history. Thats what i would encourage other historians had done the hard work and all the research. Maybe make a version of what is published. Whether it is in the New York Times or not. They should be knowing all of the history when we started the history project. I wanted to invite people to come to our website. We interviewed hundred 88 surviving members. When we started that project. It does doesnt make any sense. Until u. S. History. So we went to the americans i am a professor. And the only people that were showed up. There was a real resistance. In 2012. People were afraid to teach it because they were embarrassed by the embarrassed. It was an incredible book that came out this year. Its now Available Online for free they dont know how to talk about that. They can just follow the teaching guide. So weve done everything we can to make it possible for people. They have prejudices in curriculum construction to keep this information out. Whats next on the list. I ended up going to law school. You make a lot of parallels between the civil rights in the lgbt community. Do you think that movement borrowed anything from the <