Mark Segal: Stonewall Lasted 365 Days
"We were going to be out, loud, proud, and don't even try to stop us."
Mark Segal moved to New York City in May of 1969 and a month later found himself at The Stonewall Inn as the now-infamous police raid began. He was 18 years old.
Those around him initially responded casually. It was a usual occurrence, a wholly unremarkable event right until the moment it wasn't.
"The police came in, pretended that they were doing their duty, got their pay off," Mark Segal says. "The difference here was they barged in. They threw people up against the wall. They extorted money from some of the older people. They harassed the drag queens. It was pretty violent."
He immediately started organizing with the Gay Liberation Front, an organization he co-founded with Martha Shelley who I also interviewed recently. (Martha fills in a lot of the story of the gay activism that took place in New York City immediately following Stonewall. Click here to listen to that.)
"Everything we did in that first year was basically illegal. And we wouldn't be stopped. We were going to be out, loud, proud, and don't even try to stop us."
Stonewall sparked Mark Segal's lifelong commitment to activism which famously included interrupting Walter Cronkite in the middle of the CBS Evening News by waving a banner that read, "Gays Protest CBS Prejudice". This was 1973. Mark was one of the only openly gay activists in the country, a sort of visibility that made him ripe for the talk show circuit. He began to fly around the country — talking to Phil Donahue and many others — educating the country on the gay experience without a hint of shame or apology, a radical act for the time.
Mark looks back on the last 50 years of the fight for LGBTQ+ people and highlights the special ingredient that's been at the foundation of all of his activism: a sense of humor.
"At one point, I had handcuffed myself to the city's Christmas tree and when the reporters came and asked, 'Mark Segal, you're a homosexual. Why are you handcuffed to this Christmas tree?' My line to them was, 'Because I'm Philadelphia's Christmas fairy.' And then I would say, 'Now, to get serious. The issues are...'"
This is an interview I've thought about a lot over the years.
Thank you for listening.
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I hope you’re having a great Pride.
Much love,
Jeffrey @jeffmasters1
🏳️🌈
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