Before Stonewall & After Stonewall: The History

Two documentaries, available on a double-feature DVD and both streaming at Amazon, tell the sweeping history of the LGBTQ community across the entire 20th century. Both are worth seeing during this Pride Season to remind us how far we’ve come.

When Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community was first released in 1985, the Stonewall Riots were less than 20 years in the past and still fresh in many people’s minds. This gave the film a very special resonance.

Narrated by acclaimed lesbian author Rita Mae Brown, Before Stonewall is, as the title suggests, a documentary about what LGBTQ life was like during the decades which preceded the riots. It’s a powerful testimony to how difficult and dangerous life was for queer people from the 1920s through the 1960s. It was a time when people were forced to live in secret, when being out or “discovered” could mean arrest, loss of jobs, or even jail time.

Co-directors Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg do an impressive job of finding people who recall those bygone years with great clarity. Participants who were around during the 1920s and 30s were quite old by the time the film was made—these interviews were the last chance the filmmakers had to speak to people who were alive during that time. The film is therefore an important historical document.

Interviewees speak of the secretive lives they were forced to live and of the coded language they would use to find each other. There was enormous societal pressure to marry. What little community there was existed underground. Yet there were a few who dared to live quasi-open lives such as Gladys Bentley, a black lesbian who performed in clubs in New York’s Harlem. Bentley dressed like a man, and, at one point ran off to Atlantic City to marry her girlfriend. Harlem and the Barbary Coast of San Francisco were among the few places where LGBTQ people could gather and create a semblance of a community.

The film takes viewers through the World War II era when many LGBTQ people heeded the call to fight for their country. But, they also had to fight for their right to remain in the military. One woman, who during the war worked for future president Dwight D. Eisenhower, remembers being ordered to weed out all the lesbians who were serving in his unit.

“My name will be first on the list,” she tells the general.

As the film continues, the chilling witch hunts of the McCarthy era are recounted, as is the first emergence of a visible gay movement. During the 1950s, The Mattachine Society, a gay men’s organization, and the Daughters of Bilitis, a San Francisco-based lesbian activist group, were formed.

At a time when gay materials were viewed as obscene, both organizations had the courage to defy convention and publish magazines, possibly the first regular, LGBTQ publications in U.S. history. Interviews with Mattachine co-founders Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland are included, as is an interview with a woman who recalls going to her first Daughters of Bilitis meeting around 1955—she speaks excitedly about how it felt to be in a room filled with lesbians for the first time.

“Oh, what a thrill that was,” she says.

In the 60s, many LGBTQ people involved themselves with the civil rights movement, and this inspired some to publicly take a stand for queer rights for the first time. In 1965, a small but hearty group of gay men and lesbians marched in front of the State Department in Washington, D.C. and demanded employment rights. They still had a long way to go. Inside the building, people were laughing at them.

Related article: History of Bisexuality Since Stonewall 

It was no walk in the park to be queer in the decades that preceded Stonewall, and Before Stonewall does an amazing job of recreating that history. Besides interviews with dozens of “old-timers,” the film includes a goldmine of archival footage. We’re not told, for example, that those brave activists who picketed the State Department were laughed at. Instead, we see actual footage of Dean Rusk, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, assuring his colleagues that the department does not knowingly employ “homosexuals,” and that when “homosexuals” are discovered in the department, they are dismissed.

The scope and depth of the research that went into creating Before Stonewall is breathtaking. This nearly 50-year history of the LGBTQ community makes it easy to understand why patrons at the Stonewall Inn exploded that night in June 1969—their resentment at how they’d been treated went far beyond the police raids they’d been enduring at the Stonewall. People were tired of being treated like citizens, tired of hiding who they were, tired of the harassment and bigotry they’d been forced to live with for so long.

Before Stonewall takes on a whole new meaning today with the Trump Administration’s numerous attempts at rolling back LGBTQ rights. The community’s hold on the rights that have been gained is tenuous at best. This movie reminds us of what was fought for and that the battle is far from over.

After Stonewall (1999) tells the story of the LGBTQ community during the three decades which followed the Stonewall Riots. After the riots, the very first Pride parades were organized, and the first out community emerged. The film recalls what was probably the community’s very first victory: in 1973, the American Psychiatric Assocation declared that homosexuality would no longer be considered a “psychiatric disorder.”

With narration by lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge, After Stonewall follows the movement through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, as the community battled the religious right (a battle which continues today), the AIDS crisis (the film beautifully documents the rise of the AIDS activist organization ACT UP), and the many setbacks and victories that the community lived through during those years.

Included are interviews with important figures who are no longer with us, such as early lesbian organizer Barbara Gittings, the recently departed AIDS activist Larry Kramer, and Craig Rodwell, who founded the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop—the first gay bookstore—in New York City.

The film also reminds us that President Bill Clinton was not the ally he claimed to be. After courting the LGBTQ vote, Clinton betrayed the community by signing the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell bill.

Like Before Stonewall, After Stonewall offers a breathtaking scope and preserves important histories which should not be forgotten.

Both films are must-see viewing during this Pride season. We are a resilient people. As both films illustrate, we have much to be proud of.

Happy Pride!