On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first pride march to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia. Unfortunately Fred Sargeant has become VERY transphobic since. In fact, becoming allied with a member of the police force that used to beat up gay people. If you look through though, it seems that Sargeant just HAPPENED to be dating someone who was part of that first four. All the others, did OTHER things.
Craig L. Rodwell was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967, the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors, and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City pride demonstration. Back in New York, Rodwell hosted meetings in his apartment and at his bookstore. Sargeant just happened to be dating the guy at the time.
Ellen Briody was one the first Lesbian’s to start the name of radfems. Although that’s clearly a negative term now. When I went and looked her up. She actually seems excited that people are becoming more intersectional.
“”If people can keep this going, the revolution that failed to materialize in 1970 — in spite of the Black power movement, the anti-war movement, the LGBT movement, the women’s movement — might just come into being now,” she added. “I feel more optimistic than I have in a long time.”
Even when talking about those early years, she only mentions Fred once. It seems to be that Craig Rodwell, was actually the force behind the two men.
Sadly, I couldn’t find much about Linda Rhodes, she was dating Ellen Briody. There just doesn’t seem much on her.
The first Pride event was organised by Brenda Howard “The Mother of Pride” a bisexual activist, in New York City on the 28th of June 1970. The first march was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March (which is the name of the road the Stonewall Inn is on) and the event had both an element of celebration and protest.
Additionally, Howard along with the bisexual activist Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and gay activist L. Craig Schoonmaker are credited with popularizing the word “Pride” to describe these festivities. Bisexual activist Tom Limoncelli later stated, “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.'”
Someone said it better than myself. Who threw the first brick at Stonewall? Legend says that Sylvia Rivera or Marsha P. Johnson did. But what people don’t realize is that Sylvia and Marsha did something much more important then toss a brick. They created a sustainable organization where there had been none before, the worlds first trans organization, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which was a committee of Gay Liberation Front, formed during the GLF occupation of NYU’s Weinstein Hall. It was Gay Liberation Front’s LGBT Community Center that became STAR’S first home for homeless trans people. And Marsha and Sylvia did it without public funds, training, or programs.
In May 1970, Gary Alinder and fellow members of the activist group the Berkeley Gay Liberation Front attended — or, as Alinder later recounted, “invaded” — the National Convention of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco. Too demand that homosexuality no longer be seen as an “mental illness”.
While most of the Founders of Stonewall in the US and the UK, are not transphobic. There always has to be ONE, doesn’t there? lol. Of course it’s the white man.
Lolsys Library 