Christopher Park: In 1969, a Refuge for LGBTQ Street Youth

The entrance to Christopher Park. Today, the park is part of Stonewall National Monument, a unit of the National Park Service.

NPS Photo/ Minerva Anderson

An oasis from the Stonewall Rebellion

During the first night of the Stonewall Rebellion, a small city park across the street from the Stonewall Inn provided refuge for street youths. Christopher Park was their refuge during the day as well from a tough life on the streets.

By 1969, this park was one of the areas where you might find a group of young men who were considered effeminate. Most were runaways. Others slept at home but lived on the streets. Often their home lives had involved violence or abuse.¹

Most of the youths had left home, or been kicked out, because they were gay and could not hide it. The damage was deep, but it was also on the surface. More than one had been disfigured by their own parents. One boy was thrown out of the house through a glass door. Another was burned on the face by his mother so that men would not be “tempted” by her son.² Out of desparation, they stole for a living, slept outside, used drugs and kept a sharpened nail file nearby for more than grooming.

Gay rights pioneer Bob Kohler, who lived on Charles Street and walked his pet schnauzer Magoo in the park, got to know them because the street youths liked his dog. ”The street kids had bag-woman drag," Kohler said. "They wore sandals and tied their blouses or shirts in a big knot midriff, and that was basically it. It was just ragged, hausfrau drag, whatever they could get together.”³

They also tended to die young. Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, who was one of them, said, “Most of the people I knew from back then were already dead within four years after I met them.”⁴

These youths found themselves in the middle of history on the night of June 28, 1969, when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn. What had started as an ordinary raid on an illegal bar turned into an uprising against police treatment of gay and lesbian people. The street youths turned out to be some of the shock troops for a new gay identity, eluding and then taunting the NYC Tactical Police Force.

For some reason, police during the first night of the uprising did not pursue people into Christopher Park.⁵ Perhaps they were too busy chasing gay people around the crazyquilt of Greenwich Village streets, which the youth knew much better than the police. The small city park turned into a refuge, a place to witness kick lines being formed to make fun of the police, where the gay youths sang a taunt to the tune of "It's Howdy Doody Time" (or "Ta-Ra-Ra Boom De Ay"):

We are the Stonewall Girls,
We wear our hair in curls...⁶

Danny Garvin observed from 98 Grove Street, where a friend lived. “I saw a bunch of guys on one side and the cops … with their feet spread apart and holding their billy clubs straight out. And these queens all of a sudden rolled up their pants legs into knickers, and they stood in front of the cops. There must have been about ten cops one way and about twenty queens on the other side. They all put their arms around one another and started forming a kick line, and the cops just charged with the [nightsticks] and started smacking them in the heads, hitting people, putting them into the cars. I just can’t ever get that one sight out of my mind… that kick line, which I guess was a spoof on their machismo, making fun of their authority. Yeah, I think that’s when I felt rage. Because… people were getting smashed with bats. And for what? A kick line.”⁷

The bats did not work. There would be more kick lines before the crowd dissipated that first night. Like many observers of the rebellion, Dick Leitsch of the Mattachine Society said that ”those usually put down as ‘sissies’ or ‘swishes’ showed the most courage and sense during the action… their bravery and daring saved many people from being hurt and their sense of humor and ‘camp’ helped keep the crowds from getting nasty or too violent.”⁸ This included the youths of Christopher Park.⁹

What happened to these youths after the Stonewall Uprising? We only know about a few of them. Lanigan-Schmidt became an artist. For many if not most, the events of June and July 1969 passed into memory without making any material change in how they lived and, perhaps, died.

Over the next five decades, the neighborhood changed. Street youth no longer linger at Christopher Park, but it is still a place where you can walk your dog (on a leash) and find refuge from busy city life. It may be National Park Service property rather than a city park like it was in 1969, but it remains a neighborhood site with benches to sit and read a book or enjoy a lovely day. Members of the Christopher Park Alliance plant flowers and foliage during the spring and summer. For information about the park today, visit http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/christopher-park.


Footnotes:

1 Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, St. Martin's, 2004, pp. 56-61.

2 pp. 56-61.

3 pp. 62-63.

4 p. 58.

5 p. 179.

6 pp. 62, 176.

7 p. 178.

8 pp. 191-192.

9 p. 181.