Martin Sherman: "A Hot Night in June," November 1994

"I had stumbled across history"

Playwright Martin Sherman recalls the Stonewall Riots in a piece written, he recalls, for Sir Ian McKellen's one-man show, "A Knight Out," which opened at the Theatre Royal on November 13, 1994. It is published for the first time on OutHistory.org with the permission of Martin Sherman.

A hot night in June. New York, 1969. I was walking up Seventh Avenue with a friend, discussing the imminent end of the decade. I was a hippy, or, at least hippy-like. I didn’t think the sixties would end.

We crossed Christopher Street and saw a crowd in front of the Stonewall, a popular village gay bar. Policemen were tossing drag queens into a van! The queens were feisty and angry and funny. Well – it was hot and Judy Garland had just died and there was a lot of emotion in the air and those days every day had some kind of street theatre. I wasn’t fond of the Stonewall. It seemed to belong to decades past and Janis Joplin had replaced Judy Garland for me.

A friend of mine, an actress named Jonelle Allen, walked by. Jonelle watched the commotion for awhile and then decided to go home. She tried to hail a cab. Empty taxis passed her by. Jonelle was black and they did not want to chance a fare to Harlem. I hid Jonelle behind a car, hailed a taxi and, when it stopped, rushed her inside. Walking home, I pondered how little had been achieved in the civil rights movement if someone like Jonelle still could not get a taxi.

Jonelle and the taxi are my prevailing image of that evening. It was later – much later – that I realized that I had witnessed the birth of another movement, one that would color my life and that of every lesbian and gay man from that moment on. There had been a raid and queens had fought back. Fought back! I was there – but I wasn’t. I had seen it – but I hadn’t. I had stumbled across history. And I did not know it.

Copyright (c) by Martin Sherman 2009. All rights reserved.