Robert Kesten, Executive Director of Stonewall National Museum, Archives, & Library, talks about the legacy of the Stonewall Uprising and its impact on the South Florida LGBTQ+ community and beyond.
Transcript
(00:00)
Robert Kesten
I got my start when I was a child and Martin Luther King was assassinated. And I organized my school and the students in my school to not only pay tribute to Dr. King, but also to find ways of organizing ourselves in communities other than our own, that were facing troubles that we didn’t even know about until that assassination. It was the first time that I became truly aware, not only of societal differences, but also the importance of each one of us as individuals being actively involved if we wanted the kind of society that we all said we wanted.
(00:42)
I’m Robert Kesten, executive director of the Stonewall National Museum Archives and Library. I have been at Stonewall June 1st, started my third year, and that’s how long I’ve been professionally involved in the museum world. But I have done work with libraries, archival materials, and certainly on these issues for a long time.
The Stonewall Uprising, which took place on June 28th, 1969, was not the first time that people fought back, but it was the time that clicked in people’s minds. And it was an uprising. It was a riot. The primary thing was that the police raided the one place or one of the very few places where young LGBTQ people, many of whom were BIPOC, felt that they could go be themselves and dance. People needed a place where they could release from the tensions of the day trying to conform to a society that was unwelcoming. And this was one of the few places where you could just dance with abandon.
(01:55)
And when the police came in and threatened that sense of security, that one place where they could call themselves, it was enough to offset what became ultimately a revolution for liberation. When you add to that, the fact that Judy Garland, who was an icon in the community had been buried that night, the night of the 27th, leading into the morning raid on the 28th, tensions were high. Emotions were high. Alcohol flowed, it was hot, and people were young. And emotions with young people often generate responses that they didn’t even know that they had in them.
It took place over a number of nights on the streets of New York City when mostly very young people said no more to the police. And they were a wide range of people, people of color, people of undefined genders. It was really a cacophony of all the people that make up the LGBTQ community saying no more. And they fought back against the police night after night.
(03:16)
And ultimately things changed from that point on. National and statewide and local organizations began to form, the community began to organize as one, and that really just changed everything. And with that, things changed within other communities, in marginalized communities as well because all of those communities were represented in the LGBTQ community.
(03:45)
South Florida’s home to the Stonewall National Museum Archive and Library, which was started in 1973, only a few years after the rebellion in New York. So it seeped in and has stayed here. And I would say that anyone who cares about liberty and justice and equality has a little bit of Stonewall in them even today, even if they’re not fully aware of what the Stonewall uprising in New York was.
In this community today, in this state today, in many states across the United States today, we are faced with attacks. Attacks that lead to violence, attacks that lead to repression and oppression. And so Stonewall lives, and as we learned in the time of AIDS, silence equals death. And we want to remind people that silence isn’t an option.
We are here to put context into our history and our culture so that when people see things that are going on, they know there’s a beginning and a middle, and that will drive us to a better future. So our role is to collect, preserve, and protect the history and culture of the LGBTQ+ people and make sure that when it is discussed, when it is presented, that there is a contextual format so that people understand that our history is American history.
(05:19)
American history is part of world history. Our people are Americans just like any other American, and we want the same rights and opportunities of all people from all walks of life. And that is all housed here, whether it’s in our library collection or our archival collection, or on the walls in our exhibits.
No matter where you come from, no matter who you are, no matter what you believe, there are LGBTQ people in that world. Whatever your color, whatever your profession, we are there. Wherever your family is from, wherever your family went to, we are there. So we are you and you are us, and we all fit very comfortably under that rainbow flag.