FAN FAVORITE: Stonewall | Turbulence | 2

22:17But they would find that politics in Manhattan were quite different from the West Coast. Entrenched notions about LGBTQ people would be much more difficult to shake. And those notions were never more entrenched than in one of the most powerful organizations of all, the New York City Police Department.

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23:44By the 1960s, Greenwich Village could boast a long and varied history of sheltering a radical population. The New York neighborhood was home to artists, musicians, and political progressives. It appeared in the works of writers who also lived there, including James Baldwin, Alan Gimsburg, and Audre Lorde. Lorde, a black poet born and raised in the city, fashioned a community for herself and other lesbians and gay people in the village. She wrote, We all cared for and about each other, sometimes with more or less understanding, regardless of who was entangled with whom at any given time. However imperfectly, we tried to build a community of sorts where we could, at the very least, survive in a world we correctly perceived to be hostile to us.

24:25To many people in small towns across America, visions of New York and Greenwich Village's culturally relaxed attitudes proved intoxicating. One by one, those who were excluded from their communities made the pilgrimage to the big city. But as welcoming as New York seemed, it also echoed the same discrimination that was prevalent across the rest of the United States. In the years following World War II, the city had rapidly modernized its stakeout, decoy, and police raid operations, arresting thousands of LGBTQ people, sometimes just for socializing at a private party. More often than not, citizens and performers were targeted in hostile ways by police because of their sexuality and the color of their skin.

25:06A young man named Aaron Payne experienced that hostility firsthand. A performer originally from Trenton, New Jersey, a 23-year-old Payne traveled to the village in the late 40s to make a name for himself in the cabaret scene. A black gay man with thick Coke bottle glasses, Payne performed bawdy stand-up routines and torch songs that combined comedy with coded references to his experiences as a gay man. But after being arrested and convicted under vague charges that police characterized as degeneracy, Payne found himself unable to perform in any club anywhere in the city. Despite this, Payne's routine was good enough that one club, called the Salle de Champagne, allowed him to perform without a cabaret license.

25:45But one night in 1950, a plainclothes policeman happened to catch Payne's performance. Shocked by the subject matter, and shocked when he noticed other customers in the club who appeared to be gay, the policeman had the entire venue shut down. The city revoked the club's license for permitting homosexuals to congregate and permitting a performance by a homosexual. But New York's crackdown on LGBTQ culture didn't stop at cabaret shutdowns. New York Mayor Robert Wagner trumpeted these actions as victories for law and order politics. The mayor's allies at the neighborhood level encouraged discriminatory practices in an open campaign to drive LGBTQ people from the area completely.

26:25Both active duty and plainclothes police infiltrated places where LGBTQ people gathered, arresting people indiscriminately. These arrests could happen anywhere in the city, in Harlem, in Midtown, and certainly in Greenwich Village, where the police trained their focus specifically on cruising culture. Cruising was slang for picking up sexual partners, and it was a way gay men could meet each other while not obviously outing themselves. One man could signal interest in another through glances or by walking past the other person repeatedly. Some people wore specific items of clothing, like brightly colored or folded scarves.

26:59You could cruise anywhere, on the street, in a bar. And for many, it was a harmless and integral part of the gay male experience. But opinions on the safety of cruising varied drastically, as some men merely posed as gay in order to harass and attack gay men. Where still, some of the people cruising were officers of the New York Police Department.

27:23Imagine it's October 1965, a brisk autumn evening in the city of New York. You're finally heading back to your apartment after an exhausting and frustrating day. You're an actor in a play at the Cherry Lane Theater. When rehearsals first began, you were over the moon. But now, with opening night just a week away, you're feeling less than confident about your performance, the direction, pretty much everything. So after tonight's rehearsal, you went to a quiet bar, you know, in the village. All you wanted is have a quiet drink in peace to be left alone with an old-fashioned. But a guy came right up and offered to buy you a drink.

27:55He wouldn't take no for an answer. So you went to another bar down the street. But that same guy showed up there, too. Finally, you decided to call it a night and head home. Suddenly, you hear a voice from behind you. Excuse me. I think you dropped this. Oh, God, it's him. That guy again. You quicken your pace. Oh, come on. Slow up, will you? This is actually a very important document. Needs your attention. He's closed the distance, right behind you now. Finally, you stop and turn around. He's blonde with a sly grin, like he knows what he wants and usually gets it. Look, leave me alone, okay? Go find someone else to pester.

28:33I get it. No sweat. But here. He holds something up so you can see. It's a bar napkin with his phone number on it. Suddenly your frustration breaks and you can't help but laugh. Man, you come on strong. I'm a glutton for punishment. Come on, let's get one last drink, all right? I think I deserve a last chance, you know? A consolation prize for perseverance. He is attractive, but that was never the problem. It was his confidence. But now that he's a little out of breath, a little back on his foot, he's suddenly gotten even more good looking. Maybe that drink wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

29:08Okay, look, if you're going to follow me around all night like a puppy, then yes, you can buy me a drink. But I have to warn you, I'm not going to be good company. I'm grumpy. He grins at you, then reaches into his jacket and pulls out a badge. I need you to stand against the fence for me and put your hands up behind your back. You're under arrest. What? For what? For solicitation. Against the fence, now. You don't have any choice but to follow his orders. Mind is reeling. He pursued you. He wouldn't take no for an answer. And you haven't done anything wrong. Only now, as the cuffs slap against your wrists, do you realize that this was all a setup.

29:47In cities and towns across America, LGBTQ people were targeted, arrested, then threatened with public embarrassment and large fines. This process was known as entrapment, even though police officials publicly denied any such practice. In New York City, police were well aware of cruising culture and used it as a way to arrest and shake down gay men. And by 1966, city police were using entrapment methods to arrest more than 100 men a week. Many of these arrested men called into the New York branch of the Mattachine Society to report their stories of entrapment. And the new president of Mattachine, New York, wanted to do something.

30:22Dick Leish had grown up in Kentucky, where he'd been one of those gay men drawn to the bright lights of New York. Dick Leish had grown up in Kentucky, where he'd been one of those gay men drawn to the bright lights of New York. But after arriving in the village, Leish realized that the cosmopolitan city he'd relocated to was in some ways more dangerous than his hometown. Now, as a Mattachine leader, the 31-year-old decided his first order of business would be to try to eliminate the practice of entrapment. He and other Mattachine volunteers began to chronicle the stories of men who'd been entrapped, and a pattern emerged.

30:55A man would be approached at a gay bar or a park by a plainclothes police officer, dressed and acting as if he were looking for sex. In some cases, the officer would even engage in sexual contact, and only afterward announced that he was making an arrest. Once the victim was cuffed and booked at a police station, the officer would recommend an attorney, someone who specialized in the relevant charges, usually solicitation or loitering. But of course, the attorneys didn't come cheap, and they were in on the scheme. The arrested men, fearful for their jobs and their reputations, and often their wives back home, succumbed to the pressure.

31:29For the police, it was a double win. They hit their quota of arrests, while also getting kickbacks from the exorbitant lawyer fees.

31:40In the fall of 1966, Leisch and the Mattachine Society were heartened by the election of John Lindsay as the new mayor of New York. The good-looking Republican inspired comparisons to John Kennedy, and his win was tentatively seen as a good thing by LGBTQ voters, who felt things couldn't have been any worse under the previous mayor, and that perhaps this new one would begin to listen. It took over a year, but finally Mattachine and other political groups in the village managed to secure a town hall meeting with some of Mayor Lindsay's top brass. So on a raucous night in 1966, Mayor Lindsay's chief of police found himself publicly ambushed at a neighborhood meeting in the village.

32:18Person after person in the audience rose to question him directly about entrapment. What about these plain clothesmen, a young man in the crowd asked, who come into places dressed in tight pants to lure people into explicit acts? The police chief blankly quoted the department's usual line, that entrapment was a violation of police procedure. But another person in the audience quickly pointed out that his response was plainly naive at best. Yet another person stood up. It's alarming, a woman said, that the chief inspector doesn't know a large number of police spend their duty hours dressed in tight pants, sneakers, and polo sweaters trying to bring about solicitations.

32:55This brought a round of cheers and applause from the assembly hall in a single voice. The police chief could not have known that these seemingly unconnected people in the audience had all been organized by Dick Leash and Mattachine. He also could not have known that the New York Post was about to publish a series of articles highlighting entrapment by the city's vice squad. Soon, the New York Times was running its own stories, too, based on tips by Mattachine members. The campaign by Mattachine and other activists of pressuring police leadership and engaging the media was starting to pay off. Finally, Mayor Lindsay agreed to sit down with Mattachine, along with other village groups and politicians, for an evening meeting at the Village Gate, a local jazz club.

33:35Sitting on a stage normally reserved for musicians like Nina Simone and Albert Eiler, the mayor sipped a Bloody Mary and promised that he would end the entrapment policies of the police department, effective immediately. Lindsay also promised he would curb discriminatory practices that took operating licenses away from gay bars and cabarets, another reform that activists had pushed for. The New York Times covered the event with the headline, Lindsay Placate's Coffeehouse Set. For the moment, Mattachine had gotten the promise of reform it wanted. Open entrapment by the police in New York would decrease dramatically.

34:07And although entrapment practices are still used by police today, the conduct is broadly discouraged and in many cases can be used by a defendant as legal grounds for dismissal of their case. But while Leisch and others were trying to advance their cause through local politics, transgender communities were developing their own tactics and forming their own strategies to respond to police harassment and violence. Though informal and less specifically organized, these tactics and strategies would form the first steps toward active physical resistance.

34:41The Roomba became a billion-dollar product, not by being the smartest robot, but by being the dumbest. And then the company that made it ended up nearly losing everything. Hey, I'm David Brown, the host of the podcast Business Wars. Every season, we bring you the true stories behind the companies that shape our world, their rivalries, their reinventions, and their spectacular rises and falls. In our new season, we tell the story of iRobot and Roomba, the little vacuum that swept into 50 million homes and brought in billions in revenue. But the Roomba couldn't hold its lead forever. When Chinese competitors figured out how to give customers more for less, the company that created the category, faced an existential threat for survival.

35:27Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. One company changed the artificial sweetener industry forever by deleting four words from a tagline. Sales skyrocketed, rivals sued, and a multi-billion dollar war was on. Hey there, I'm David Brown, the host of the podcast Business Wars. Every season, we bring you the true stories behind the companies that shape our world, their rivalries, their reinventions, and their spectacular rises and falls.

36:04In our new season, we're diving into the bitter battle to own sweetness. When scientists discovered that chemicals could deliver the taste of sugar with none of its calories, Sweet and Low, Equal and Splenda fought for space on tabletops, in diet sodas, and on grocery store shelves across America. But as health scares hit and regulators came knocking, the fierce competition between the top three artificial sweeteners turned ugly. Make sure to follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Business Wars early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

36:45Even more so than today, transgender people in the 1960s faced discrimination based on their gender identity. Those who were also gay faced discrimination related to their sexual orientation. They had to navigate incredibly difficult, sometimes life-or-death decisions daily about how much of their authentic selves they could share with the world. Transgender people struggled with issues that persist today. Many trans people faced employment discrimination, making it difficult to find or hold a job. For trans people of color, these challenges were often compounded by racial discrimination and violence.

37:19And even today, transgender people of color, especially black transgender women, suffer disproportionately high rates of violence and murder. And in the 60s, like now, many transgender youth found themselves rejected or thrown out by their religiously or socially conservative families. With nowhere else to turn, some young transgender people were forced to become homeless. Others gravitated to major cities like New York or San Francisco to try and carve out new lives for themselves where at least they had the chance to find a more accepting community. One of these was Sylvia Rivera, born in the Bronx in 1951 to a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother.

37:56She was orphaned at an early age after her father abandoned the family and her mother killed herself. Rivera's grandmother took her in, but by the time Rivera was 10 years old, the two barely got along. She and her grandmother would get into explosive fights about Rivera wearing mascara and eyeliner and about the boys she was bringing around to the apartment. After her grandmother tried to have her put into foster care, Rivera moved out at age 11. She made her way to Times Square, where she began doing sex work to survive. There, Rivera struck up a fast friendship with a black transgender woman named Marsha P.

38:32Johnson. Johnson was five years older, and she gave Rivera advice on how to stay safe on the streets and maximize her profit. Johnson and Rivera would become inseparable. In their off hours, the two would hang in coffee shops and swap stories. But despite these moments of happiness, Rivera still lived a precarious existence, where the threat of violence was never far. So by 1965, she was carrying a gun in her purse to protect herself. One night, in a pay-by-the-hour hotel room, a client who had discovered Rivera was transgender began to beat her, punching her so hard she flew across the room. She reached for her purse, hoping the sight of the gun would make the man think twice before he hit her again.

39:11But when he charged at her in rage, she fired. Rivera fled without knowing whether the man was dead or alive. But beyond the dangers of sex work itself, the risk of police violence and arrest posed an even bigger threat. Down by the waterfront along the Hudson River, where sex work was common, police roundups occurred like clockwork. Along with other trans women of color, Rivera would be arrested and spend the night in the Tombs prison near the downtown courthouse, only to be released the next day. Rivera later recalled, Back then, we were beat up by the police, by everybody. We always felt that the police were the real enemy.

39:45We expected nothing better than to be treated like we were animals. And we were. We were stuck in a bullpen like a bunch of freaks. We were disrespected. A lot of us were beaten up and raped. When I ended up going to jail to do 90 days, they tried to rape me. I very nicely beat the shit out of a man. The world that Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson experienced in New York mirrored other people's experiences in different cities across the country. With mainstream gay organizations ignoring the need of trans communities, people of color, and the working class, these groups understood a brutal truth.

40:17If they didn't take measures to protect themselves, no one else was going to do it for them. A 1965 protest in Philadelphia employed tactics directly from the pages of the Black Civil Rights Movement. When gay and transgender customers, many of whom were also people of color, were denied service at a lunch counter called Dewey's, they staged a series of nonviolent sit-ins at the restaurant. These protests resulted in arrests, but ultimately Dewey's management backed down, promising to end their policy of discrimination. Afterwards, a local gay and lesbian organization called the Janus Society issued this statement.

40:52All too often, there is a tendency to be concerned with the rights of homosexuals as long as they somehow appear to be heterosexual, whatever that is. The masculine woman and the feminine man are often looked down upon. But what is offensive today we have seen become the style of tomorrow. And even if what is offensive today remains offensive tomorrow to some persons, there is no reason to penalize non-conformist behavior unless there is a direct antisocial behavior connected with it. The success of the Dewey's lunch counter protests would echo far beyond LGBTQ communities on the East Coast. One year later, similar tactics of resistance would take place in San Francisco.

41:32Imagine it's the summer of 1966. Not that you know it in San Francisco. It's nighttime and the air is cold and wet as you make your way through a bustle of streetcars and shoppers on Market Street. You pull your coat tight around your shoulders as you walk inside Compton's to meet your friend. Lucia's already sitting at your favorite booth near the window, so you slide in across from her. Gosh, it's a ghost town in here tonight. You glance around. You hadn't noticed it, but there aren't many people at the diner at all. Well, that's fine by me. More space for us to stretch out. Compton's is your spot.

42:05Yours and Lucia's. It's hard to find a diner that will let you stick around for hours just getting coffee refills. And you're not the only ones that come here. This diner is on the map. Anyone on the street knows that they can come here and get a little bit of shelter, even if it's just a little while. Across from you, Lucia sips the last of her coffee. I don't know. It's been weird in here lately. Something's off. But how are you? You making it? I'm trying. Bought some strings for my guitar, and I've been playing some on Market Street. It's good money. Some days as much as five dollars. Well, I believe it.

42:35You sound just like Odetta. People love that folk music stuff. Oh, stop. You're going to make me blush. I won't stop. You've got talent. but I wish I could sing or dance or just about anything. I guess I should just stick to what I'm good at. Listen, I've been staying over at a shelter on Ellis. It's just a couple blocks from here. Well, I know where it is. Well, you should come by. I know some of the people there. I can get you a bed. Lucia's eyes dart away. You've been trying to convince her for weeks to come into the shelter, but she won't do it. Like she always does, she changes the subject.

43:05Garcon? She raises her empty cup of coffee, and the manager approaches. He's an older man with a kind, doughy face. Refill, Lucia. I thank you kindly. I gotta let you know, starting tomorrow there's gonna be a service charge of 50 cents applied to every order. What? Why? The owners don't like people sitting around all night just ordering coffee. They think it's bad for business and that it's driving customers away. You mean people like us? The manager gives Lucia a sad smile. It's not my rule. I just wanted to let you know. As the manager heads back to the front counter, Lucia leans across the table, hissing at you.

43:43I don't believe it. They're trying to run us out of here. You nod. Lucia, maybe it's time for us to find a new spot. Why? I'm not going anywhere. I pay for the coffee. I have a right to be here. You're right. You're right. But just think about my offer. Maybe come by the shelter. Lucia shrugs, looks down into her coffee cup. You're not going to change her mind tonight. But that doesn't mean you're not going to keep trying. For now, you've still got Compton's. It might not be much, but it's home.

44:14Compton's was a local chain restaurant in San Francisco that had long been a hangout for homeless youth in the Tenderloin neighborhood. For many, Compton's was a place of refuge, a safe place from the daily battle of street living, or simply a place to sit for a moment for people who had nowhere else to go. In the words of one Compton's regular, it was just a place that we would come and hang out. If you didn't manage up a trick that night, it's where you would hang out with your friends. We'd stay there and then eat breakfast and go home and sleep until it's time to get up and go out on the prowl again.

44:44The evening manager, who everyone understood to be gay, allowed kids to stay there all hours, sipping refills of coffee and rarely buying anything else. But when the evening manager died, new management wanted nothing to do with this particular kind of clientele. The diner hired private detectives to harass the customers and drive them out of the shop, but they kept coming back. Compton's was the only safe space they had. But there was a new organization that was trying to give homeless youth a sense of self-worth and support. A group of gay and transgender youth, with the support of Reverend Cecil Williams and the Glide Methodist Church, formed Vanguard.

45:19In addition to supporting and uplifting homeless youth, its goal was also to bring their issues to the attention of older, more privileged city dwellers. An early flyer read,

45:33Vanguard urged its members to think beyond racial divisions and focus on the community they all shared, namely the Tenderloin neighborhood. They organized community cleanups of trash and used needles that littered the streets. They also helped organize the first picket of Compton's Cafeteria to protest harassment and discrimination there. But matters came to a head in August 1966, when Compton's management called the police to remove a customer who wouldn't leave. An altercation erupted in the restaurant when a police officer grabbed the arm of a transgender woman and tried to drag her away. To his surprise, she threw a cup of coffee in his face.

46:09In the melee that followed, plates, cups, silverware, and saucers flew through the air at the policemen, who had to dash outside for backup. Approximately 50 customers spilled out into the street. And as police attempted to make arrests, transgender women protected themselves by fighting back with their purses or kicking officers in the groin. Violence erupted all around the intersection of Turk and Taylor Streets. But it wasn't a victory for Compton's. The next night saw a cross-section of the LGBTQ community arrive to picket the restaurant. With the backing of the local clergy and a grassroots organization of their own, LGBTQ people in San Francisco were emboldened to take a stand.

46:47For the first time, there was hope that institutional oppression could be resisted on a large scale. But the movement's biggest moment was yet to come. It would happen at a private bar in Greenwich Village run by Italian mobsters, the Stonewall Inn. On the next episode of American History Tellers, Mattachine turns its focus from entrapment to the New York State liquor laws, just as the mafia takes over the gay bar industry. And when the police conduct a raid on the Stonewall Inn, its patrons decide to protect themselves and fight back. American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you.

47:27So thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to HistoryIsHuman.com. That's HistoryIsHuman.com. From Audible Originals, this is Episode 2 of Stonewall for American History Tellers. I also have two other podcasts you might like, American Scandal and American Election's Wicked Game.

48:08If you'd like to learn more about early LGBTQ activism, we recommend Martin Duberman's Stonewall, Lillian Faderman's The Gay Revolution, and Susan Stryker's Transgender History. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Audio editing by Molly Bach. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by George Ducker. Edited by Dorian Marina. Special thanks to Sylvion Consulting for serving as an advisor on this series. and to Kyle Norris, who provided feedback on an early version of this episode. Executive Producer for Audible, Jenny Lauer-Beckman.

48:43Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Naven. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC. Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC.

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