A Reminder About A Reminder

In April I wrote a few words about a gay activist who was present at the 1969 Stonewall Riots and who suggested a commemorative march to mark its first anniversary. His name was Craig Rodwell (1940-1993), and he is often overlooked by modern lgbt activists who claim the gay rights movement began with Stonewall.

It is fair to say that the Pride movement, rather than the gay rights movement, began with Stonewall. Specifically, it began with the Chicago Gay Pride march on 27th June 1970, but most people tend to think of the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march (retrospectively regarded as the first New York City Pride) on 28th June as the beginning of Pride. In all, four US cities held a march specifically to commemorate the first anniversary of Stonewall on 27th/28th June 1970 – chronologically, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Today it is easy for the younger generation not to realise that the act of protest against homophobia existed before 1970. Craig Rodwell not only came up with the idea of the first Pride march but also of an annual event that the first Pride marches replaced.

In April 1965 Frank Kameny, the activist mentioned in an “80 More Gays” article last month, organised a picket outside the White House in Washington DC. This was part of his ongoing campaign to persuade American society that gay men and lesbian women were ordinary people who deserved equal treatment under the law.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Craig Rodwell took this picket as inspiration for a new one to be held on 4th July, the Independence Day holiday. Frank Kameny and the organisers of the Washington picket were enthusiastic about the idea and set about organising the event.

A brief word about the organisation of the Washington picket. Frank Kameny was a member of the Mattachine Society, a gay rights organisation founded in the 1950s. This group, however, did not act alone when holding pickets and demonstrations. The Daughters of Bilitis and the Janus Society of Philadelphia were also involved. Together they formed the East Coast Homophile Organisation (ECHO). If I ever get the time I’ll do some in-depth research into the pre-Stonewall lgbt groups and activists and create something like the rock family trees that were popular in the 1990s. However, I digress.

Craig Rodwell’s choice of holding a picket on Independence Day was deliberate. In the words of Craig himself the picket was to “remind the American people that a substantial number of American citizens were denied their rights of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’.”, as enshrined in the American constitution. Because it expressed the need to “remind” the picket became known as the Annual Reminder.

It took just a few weeks for the first Reminder to be organised. Thankfully, ECHO’s Washington picket was a perfect template. It included a dress code. Picketers were expected to wear ordinary, everyday suits or dresses, depending on their gender, in order to portray themselves as what they were – ordinary citizens. Modern Pride marches usually have no dress code.

The first Annual Reminder took place on 4th July 1965 outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Four more followed in the next successive years on the same date. They can’t be called marches because they were held in one location. These pickets were never very large. There were 39 picketers at the first one, and 150 at the last. They attracted very little media coverage, or even any nationwide response from the lgbt community. All this changed in the week before the final Annual Reminder took place on 4th July 1969. Below is a Youtube video of the 1968 Annual Reminder.

You may have realised that the date of that last Reminder is just a week after the Stonewall Riots in New York. That riot came at the end of a decade which saw many similar civil and human rights protests which characterised the 1960s. The organisers of the Annual Reminder realised that a new generation of lgbt campaigners would not likely participate in a subdued picket-style demonstration and they decided that the next Annual Reminder in the week following Stonewall would be the last and gave their support to the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march.

Craig Rodwell was not a customer at the Stonewall when the police raid began. He and his partner Fred Sargeant went past the bar on their way home from another venue. They saw the raid taking place and the growing protest. They later contacted several new agencies to cover the event but only the New York Times responded. Throughout the following days and nights of the unrest Craig and Fred distributed leaflets denouncing the police and mafia connections to the Stonewall inn.

Craig attended the final Annual Reminder a week later, and circumstances were now in place that would eventually lead to the first Pride marches in 1970.

ECHO had been reformed in 1966 as the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organisations (ERCHO). At the meeting of ERCHO in November 1969 in Philadelphia the idea of the first Pride march was put forward by Craig. That meeting had some very heated debates. Ellen Broidy (featured in same “80 More Gays” as Craig Rodwell and Frank Kameny) became embroiled in a disagreement with L. Craig Schoonmaker over abortion rights; radical left-wing politics were resisted by the “older” activists; and there was opposition to Frank Kameny’s insistence on a dress code. Thankfully, there were things they agreed on, three things in particular. These were accepting Craig Rodwell’s suggestion of a march, the choosing of the date of the march to coincide with the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and the suggestion by Schoonmaker that Gay Pride be chosen as the overall name.

Once the date and name were chosen the organisation of the first Pride march began. It was decided to call it the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march and most of the early committee meetings took place in Craig Rodwell’s apartment in New York.

Several other cities had similar events to mark the anniversary of Stonewall, as mentioned above, though there was no cross-nation organisation.

And so the Pride movement was born. It was more radical, direct, vocal and political than the previous pickets and organised demonstrations. The Annual Reminders were the first regular yearly lgbt protest demonstrations which influenced the modern Pride march. Craig Rodwell was instrumental in the transition. In any history of Pride he cannot be left out.

In what should have been a year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pride march we are finding other ways to spread the message of diversity and acceptance.