On June 28, 1969, legend has it that Sylvia Rivera threw the first brick at Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, igniting gay liberation across the globe. In truth, it was probably a Molotov cocktail, and she was likely not the first to throw one. But more importantly, the story of gay liberation in New York City did not start in 1969, and it was never just gay. New York City has long been a queer and trans metropolis where migration, labor, segregation, and the forces of capital have shaped queer lives and lifestyles in complex ways. Rivera and her friends inherited a robust legacy of queer collective action, community building, and cultural effervescence in New York City dating back to the nineteenth century. From drag balls to public cruising to lesbian tea rooms, the city’s history is richly woven with the promises and perils of gendered and sexual liberation.
How did New York City become such a legendary queer metropolis? How did policing, immigration, housing policy, and structural violence determine the limits and possibilities of queer world-making in the years before Stonewall? How and why did New York City become a transnational center of queer culture and performance? In this course, we will read the work of contemporary historians like George Chauncey, Margot Canaday, Hugh Ryan, Jen Manion, Jonathan Ned Katz, and Saidiya Hartman alongside primary sources written or created by queer and trans New Yorkers in the century before Stonewall.
