Arrested at Stonewall, gay man sees progress

Sandra Lilley News producer • E-mail

Sunday, June 28, marks the 40^th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, considered by many the beginning of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S. NBC News Editor Sandra Lilley spoke to two men, one who was at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the riots and the other a historian who wrote a book about the events. They discuss how the movement for gay rights has, and hasn’t, changed over the last 40 years.         

Raymond Castro lives a happy suburban life at his house on the water near Tampa, Fla. 

Now 67, the semi-retired baker who lives with his partner of 30 years, Frankie Sturniolo, enjoys helping out his neighbors and spending time with family and friends. “All my neighbors treat me so well; they love me and they depend on me. I check on their pets, I mow their lawns…I have keys to three or four houses surrounding me.”

Castro’s tranquil life seems a long way away from events on June 28, 1969, a night that ushered what many consider to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement: The police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village, a then-bohemian neighborhood in New York City.        

“When the police raided the place, I was outside,” Castro remembered. “Then I remembered a friend inside who did not have a false ID and he was going to get in trouble, so I went inside to give him one.”  (Many of the police raids, he said, resulted in arrests for underage drinking). “Once I got inside, the police wouldn’t let us out. It got really hot. I remember throwing punches and resisting arrest. The police handcuffed me and threw me in the paddy wagon. But I sprung back up, like a leap frog, and when I did that I knocked the police down.” 

Castro was arrested and spent a night in jail. The riots continued for several days, but Castro did not go back.

“I disappeared into thin air after the arrest,” he said, and returned to his work at a bakery in Brooklyn. 

Courtesy Raymond Castro Raymond Castro in the 1960s.

A different era
In fact, it was not until David Carter, a historian and author of “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution,” called Castro that he started publicly reflecting on the events of 40 years ago.    

“We went to the Stonewall because it was one of the few places where you could be yourself.  You could dance, you could hold hands with someone you liked.  In most other places, you could not show any signs of emotional expression. If you were walking along the street and you put your arm around somebody else the police would harass you. They would pull you over, see if you had drugs. And if a gay guy was beaten by a straight guy nothing happened, you couldn’t even press charges,” Castro recalled.   

“Gay men were so afraid of the police,” said Carter, the historian. “It was considered so outrageous for gay men to gather on the street. At the time, many local residents in Greenwich Village did not like this concentration of gay people so they put pressure on the politicians to clean up the neighborhood. It was common for a police officer to take a billy club out and hit a gay man on the legs and say ‘Move on, faggot.’”

Carter added that in some cases, “Undercover cops chatted up the men, even followed them from bar to bar. When a gay man accepted a ‘drink’ or an invitation, they were arrested. In the mid-1960s, more than 100 men were arrested every week in New York City for gross indecency and public lewdness.” He added that after some of these arrests, “employers would get calls. So many lost jobs, or were disbarred or had licenses taken away.”

“In my case, I didn’t ‘look feminine,’ and I was never picked on,” said Castro. “But you had to be in the closet. If they found out you were gay you could get fired from your job. I didn’t have any of those problems – I was one of the lucky ones.”

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