1969: The Year of Gay Liberation on view at the New York Public Library between June 1, 2009 – June 30, 2009, Jason Baumann, Curator.
And how could it not? Those of us who identify with or care about the struggle for basic civil rights in this culture cannot absorb or discuss this material dispassionately, even if it is now forty years old. The individual and organizational stories chronicled here are dramatic and compelling – drag queens who refused to be passively herded into police vans, scraggly members of the emerging and bold Gay Liberation Front, feminist lesbians proudly naming themselves The Lavender Menace, upending Betty Friedan’s famous disdain.
The objects preserved and presented here, all from the LGBT archives of the NYPL are gritty, scrappy, and fragile. They are mimeographed announcements, grainy photos, staple-pricked fliers, articles torn from magazines and newspapers. But this is potent ephemera, never coolly displayed or distantly interpreted. This is emotional territory, so emotional that many still don’t view it as legitimate history. Why have there been so few projects of LGBT history here in Philly?
Jason Baumann, exhibition curator and Coordinator of LGBT Collections at The New York Public Library claims “The year 1969 marks the first time homosexuals united, demanded, and were willing to fight for full inclusion within American society. As a result of the actions taken during this time gays and lesbians marked a paradigmatic shift not only in the ways that they saw themselves but also in how the world would see them.”
Maybe so. But I would argue that this exhibition is so celebratory that it forgets its context. Stonewall was in many ways a culmination of decades of civil rights work by homosexuals, rather than a catalyst. A rite of passage rather than a birth. On July 4, 1965, a group of gays and lesbians marched in front of Independence Hall at the first national march for homosexual rights (there’s a state historical marker in front of the Hall marking this event – really – go see it). And after World War II, many gay people chose to stay on the West Coast rather than return to their small towns. It was there, in California in the 1950s, that the first large-scale gay rights organizations in the U.S. formed, with hundreds of members (the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis).
This isn’t to deny the importance of documenting the story of Stonewall, or this exhibition and its presentation of these ordinary, extraordinary objects. The celebration is in many ways understandable. Jason Baumann’s appointment as a curator of LGBT collections is in itself a bold act worth celebrating. Pursing a truly inclusive practice of history remains an ongoing, complicated project. Those of us in the public history field know that the presentation of history is contentious, imperfect, fluid, and crucial. That’s why we go to work every day.
Bill Adair is the Director of Heritage Philadelphia Program.
Posts
