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Saturday, May 17, 2008 'tis the seasonexcerpt from Stonewall Riots, Drag Queens, and Judy Garland"Friday, June 27th, 1969, a great many men from the Village flocked to Judy Garland's funeral at a upper Eastside funeral parlor at Madison Ave and 81st. What impressed them -- and in the early hours of the next day, mobilized them to resist the police raid on the Stonewall Inn -- wasn't Garland's divahood (after all, it had been her downfall), but rather the number of other gay men they saw at the event. These were Garland's fans. There were crowds of homosexuals recognizing each other on the street in front of the funeral parlor. Garland's funeral turned out to be a sort of proto-gay pride event. And it demonstrated there was power in numbers -- that was something "in the air" in those days as one anti-war mobilization after another demonstrated how many people were "anti-establishment." | Permalink 2009 RuCo, Inc.—All Rights Reserved |
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