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past---caring · 8 years ago

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In London’s Gordon Square there now stands a statue dedicated to a former resident. This person was a spy ,but also an Indian princess, an author, a musician, a pacifist and Muslim who believed in approaching the world with love and tolerance. Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan was her name. Remember it.

Beginnings

Noor’s father Hazrat was an Indian Sufi mystic and musician while her mother Ora was American. During a stay in Paris he performed with Mati Hari and on an American tour he would meet Noor's mother. Hazrat was not just a musician ,but a Sufi teacher who created ‘The Western Order of Sufism’ in the year of Noor’s birth. It preached messages of divine unity(Tawhid) and focused on ideas like love and beauty. He also believed in spirituality being individualistic. Ideas that would influence his daughter. Noor was born during her parents residence in Moscow in January of 1914.The name she was given ‘Noor-Un-Nisa’ meant ‘Light of womanhood’. Throughout her short life Noor would embody this strongly by acting as light for many she encountered . Her royal ancestry would also influence her. Those like Khan’s 18th century ancestor Tipu Sultan who had stood defiant against the British in his kingdom showed a contrasting ideology to her religious one. The family lived happily in Russia until political events there and the war in France brought them to England. While there Hazrat played for the visiting Ghandi , leaving him in tears , and grew his Sufi order. After the war the growing family went back to Paris.The years growing up here were some of Noor’s happiest. Babulis(Father’s daughter) was the nickname given to her by him and her nanny. In 1926 tragedy struck when her father died on a visit to India. The order's member’s helped them financially but the death made her mother severely depressed. Noor had to learn the concept of duty young as this resulted in her being her sibling’s guardians most of the time. Noor was also extremely academic. She studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris , did French, German and Spanish academically and received a degree in Child Psychology at the Sorbonne.She graduated and became a writer working primarily on books for children such as one called Jakata tales.At the time she also fell in love with a young Jewish man which meet with disapproval from her family due to class and only ended due to the war.

War

The outbreak of war brought out another side to Noor and changed her. Her religion ,pacifism and father’s teachings meant she was deeply troubled by the conflict. Germany’s aggression , however , made her decide she needed to help in the fight against the Nazi’s as this was a war hurting innocents. She and her sister worked as nurses until the conflict forced the family to go to England. Khan decided to join the war effort again through entering the WAAF. Her fluency in multiple languages and qualifications helped her rise through the ranks of it and she began to take lessons in signalling. Near the end of 1942 she was called to the War office for a meeting without the knowledge she was being called by the SOE who saw extreme potential and promise in her as an operative. Noor had her meeting with Captain Jepson. As well as being the recruiter for the French section of the SOE he was also a famous author and screenwriter. During the meeting they bonded over writing. Jepson then mentioned how important wireless operators were in the field to help the resistance. He told Noor honestly that the life span of a wireless operator in France could barely be measured in months and that if she was captured she could expect imprisonment and execution. As a women she wouldn’t be protected like POWs thus making execution and similar highly possible upon capture. Khan was unsure and told him she was willing to do it , but the effect it could have on her mother worried her.A few days later she wrote to Jepson saying she accepted as family ties were petty when the winning of the war was at stake.She had one final discussion with him as per usual of a recruit regarding her loyalty.She told Jepson that she believed in Indian independence and if she was forced to choice between India and Britain she would chose the former. Her brother Vilavat later said she would have likely aided in the fight for this independence if she had lived. Jepson was amazed by her integrity and simply asked her opinion of the Germans. She replied that she loathed them and that despite her personal beliefs she needed to help the Allies stop them. She knew Britain was fighting for good in this situation. Jepson thus immediately accepted her to the SOE. He would later say of her: "I find myself constantly remembering her with a curious and very personal vividness which outshines the rest. The small, still features, the dark, quiet eyes, the soft voice and the fine spirit glowing in her.”

Training

Khan arrived at an SOE base in Surrey in 1943 for training. The course was tough and aimed to weed out the ill-suited. The military side of it was an area in which Khan failed at due to extreme clumsiness. Her signalling however was outstanding and showed her promise so her training had that as the main focus. The next stage was a security course which Khan also didn’t do well in.She had problems noticing people following her and was bad at creating new identities. One lieutenant said she didn’t “like to do anything two faced” something needed for the role. During the mock interrogation she was absolutely terrified. Her peers started to doubt her competence as they believed this gentle dreamy writer would break in the field. Vera Atkins meet with Noor and told her their concerns. Khan was shaken by their words but asserted herself and stated she was capable of stepping up to the challenges ahead. Her final piece of training was a ninety-six hour project in which she had to set up a fake identity in a town, recruit people and set up message drops which she did well.The concluding remarks of Colonel Spooner a man who disagreed with women entering this role was that she wasn’t brainy ,disliked the security aspect,was unstable ,but keen.He believed she wasn’t suited to the role. Buckmaster the head of the operation disagreed. He later stated it was necessary to utilize someone with Khan’s skills at whatever cost simply because France was in desperate need of Wireless operators. As she prepared to travel to Paris her code name Madeline or Nurse and her cover name Jeanne Marie Renier were created alongside her cover story about being a child psychologist. At a farewell dinner before leaving Noor complemented Atkins on a silver bird brooch she had and was touched when Vera gave it to her for luck.

In the field

Noor arrived as a member of the large Prosper network which fell apart almost immediately after she arrived. They had been betrayed by a double agent and many members were disappearing. Soon Noor found herself on the run and signalled Britain the news. She was asked to return and refused saying she’d brave the danger because her belief in justice and liberty was so strong and her work so needed. Noor was always one step ahead of the pursuing Gestapo ,but the SOE warned her only to receive messages as sending them would make her traceable which she ignored. She also disguised herself , took to cycling everywhere and always kept on the move to evade capture. One near arrest occurred on the metro when some German soldiers sat near her. They became curious about the contents of her suitcase and asked her what was inside. Khan breezily lied to the men saying that it contained a projector and opened her case to show them which they believed. Noor continued producing info on Prosper while the distance between herself and the enemy shortened. The Nazis , despite their success in destroying Prosper, had become enraged over the summer by Khan. She was impossible to pin down and was making fools of them. One of her pursuers called Goertz noted after the war that whenever they found what they believed was her location it would suddenly change and they'd be clueless again. She had saved many operatives and airmen as well as helping transfer over a million francs to the resistance. Khan had to deal with terrible loneliness and extreme anxiety at this time ,but again and again she proved herself a fantastic operative. In autumn she was saved by the Allied double agent Viennot who had the gestapo’s trust. Khan went to meet two Canadian agents not knowing they were imposters. Viennot’s men found this out before a second meeting, saving her ,but now the enemy knew her appearance and voice. The agent set about helping her to avoid detection again by giving her a more Parisian look through dying her hair auburn and giving her a blue suit as well as arranging a new flat near the Gestapo’s headquarters which was likely to never be suspected. Noor continued to aid the Allies but the weight of duty had begun to show. Those in September who saw here described her as exhausted. After her refusal to rest in the country it was decided she should be officially retired and a date in October was chosen. They thanked her for her service but stated it was time she left the field as those she had been in contact with recently were now disappearing. The Germans stepped up their search after hearing of her departure however fate was sealed instead when a Frenchwoman sold Noor to them for one hundred thousand francs not knowing she was worth a million. On October the 13th an ambush was set in her flat. She returned to find a turned resistance agent waiting. Backup arrived to find him cowering away from Noor with his gun pointed at her. She was took down whilst struggling defiantly and sent on to the Gestapo’s headquarters. Noor had been literally within a hairs breadth of home and family, but repugnant treachery had stopped it.

Capture and Imprisonment

Noor was took to the Avenue Foch headquarters of the Gestapo and her detailed notes were took into custody. Within less than an hour Noor attempted an escape by demanding a private bath then jumping out onto the ledge but was stopped when the integrator Vogt spotted her from his window. She was interviewed daily for weeks but refused to speak. In the end her notes enabled them to work her wireless and multiple agents were sent to France to immediate capture. One captor commended her courage and refusal to break. Khan planned another escape with two men in the cells. The trio ended up on the roofs and used blankets to make ropes. At this moment an RAF air raid occurred. During these the prisoners would all be checked on so their absence would quickly become clear. They made their way to the street below the building to find soldiers who shot in their direction and were soon captured. She earned both the respect and fury of the Gestapo for this act. After refusing to behave she was sent onto Pforzheim prison and was labelled a dangerous inmate thus she fell under the ‘Night and Fog’ legislation. This meant the prisoner’s existence was hidden and that they were kept in solitary with small rations. Noor spent ten months like this. A kind old German man made this time bearable and befriended her. Her religion also brought solace at the time. Some French female operatives arrived during her stay. One of them sang her recent news to the tune of a French song however the guards discovered this and Noor was punished severely through a beating and getting forced to wear a sackcloth when walking in the prison’s garden. Eventually she left the women a message on their metal dinner bowls saying she was leaving in September 1944.

Liberte

Noor was put on a train with three other SOE agents to what they had been told was a camp where they’d do agricultural work. In reality they were going to Dachau and all of their executions had already been ordered. In the meantime this train ride gave them a tiny bit of freedom and joy on this tragic last journey. They smoked English cigarettes then some of the guard’s when they had run out, watched the scenery and talked to one another happily. They arrived at Dachau at midnight. What happened after this point is unclear with different accounts explaining things differently. In Noor’s personal file it said the others and her were took out to the grounds the next day and shot before being dispatched to the crematorium. However this was the Nazi account. Others have put forward an even worse version of events. They state she was beaten brutally close to death and possibly raped before being shot. The sources differ over weither it took place in her cell or outside. Either way, as the gun was lifted Noor gathered strength and shouted her last words for her killers to hear. Liberte. Noor was only thirty years old.It took til 1947 for her family and the SOE to confirm her death however soon after in England her mother and brother dreamt of Noor surrounded by blue light. She told them she was free. Posthumously she was honoured for her immense bravery by being given the Georges Cross, the French Croix de guerre with gold star and more. Like many women combatants her importance has been ignored. Her biographer, Shrabani Basu, has stated she importantly shows us how to live by qualities like pacifism and compassion. She is also an example of the two and a half million Indian volunteers who helped in the War. POC from the empire who aided in the fight against Nazism are seldom remembered or respected enough much like women. Noor was a ‘gentle writer and musician’ ,but also a ‘tigress in the field’. She was a pacifist who died with liberty on her lips. A woman who touched those around her irretrievably. A mixed race woman who fought for a country she saw as oppressive because the Nazis had to be stopped. She was a woman of contrasts. Someone completely human like us all. Someone who embodied true valour and spirit. Through her we can see courage is ‘not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it’.

References Interview with Shrabani Basu:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20240693 Spy Princess by Shrabani Basu:https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BRw7AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=noor+inayat+khan+shows+us+how+to+live+by+qualities+like+pacifism+and+compassion&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxp9nwzrrUAhWMIsAKHZzNCUYQ6AEIMzAC#v=onepage&q&f=false" The Women Who Spied for Britain by Robyn Walker:https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jQvXAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Women of the Resistance by Marc E. Vargo:https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jf0T9JzYTeoC&pg=PA4&dq=women+of+the+resistance&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s4EAVKvxMsTaaNP7gsAK&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false Noor Inayat Khan Entry in Making Britain Project by Open University:http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/noor-un-nisa-inayat-khan Information on the Noor Memorial Statue:http://www.noormemorial.org

#ww2 #history #modern history #1940s #muslim #british history #muslim history #spies

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past---caring · 8 years ago

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The Dancing Plague of 1518

It was the 14th of July 1518 when Frau Troffea in Strasburg, Alsace left her home and started dancing. She kept doing so for the first day only collapsing from exhaustion briefly. By the third day her feet were drenched in blood and she was carted off to a shrine for St.Vitus in Saverne as the Imlin family’s chronicle notes. Paracelsus recorded how her illness was attributed to this saint due to his representing conditions like the falling sickness or plague.The Dancing Plague is one of the most singular and puzzling medical events of history and even now the reasons for it occurring are wildly debated. The world that Frau Troffea lived in was one in which women could birth monsters, saints and demons could intercede with humanity and magic and religion were central ways of understanding the world.A killer dance must be understood in light of this.

Soon other people were joining Troffea in the deadly dance. Within four days thirty-four people were infected in total ,the 17th century chronicle of Oseas Schad discusses that this soon jumped to two hundred and within four weeks of Troffea’s dance this number doubled to four hundred as the Imlin family’s chronicle said.

To the citizens it was evident that either the sufferers blood was overheated or spiritual figures like God,the Devil or Saints were involved. The city’s Council of Twenty One argued for the former cause to start with ,prohibiting masses for it at first as in their view it was the Galenistic overheating of blood which was the Cause.And such natural sickness,one chronicler noted,required natural curative means.Galen treatments for it should have involved cooling through cold foods or bleeding yet the actions took by the city’s government did not involve this. Instead more dancing was prescribed…

The Council of Twenty-One ordered two town guidhalls to be set aside for dancers and employed guards to watch over the sufferers as they danced. Daniel Specklin noted that people danced with the victims by the sound of fife and drum with chronicler Hieronymus Gebwiler noting “they dance day and night with those poor people”. It didn’t work.

And thus people turned to spiritual means. Gebwiler ,a Alsation Humanist argued that the Strasbourgeois had been punished by God for forgetting Christ’s suffering for them and stated that the glee of people watching one woman who danced for six day led to her passing it on through being watched. Even dancing in and of itself was a cause for the curse as the citizens had danced shamefully ,in blasphemous fashion and with the wrong people or in the wrong places. This act of rhythmic movement that seems so neutral to us today was symbolically powerful enough to cause those like Calvin to ban it gradually everywhere in Geneva between 1539-49.

To combat it, documents by Sebastian Brant in the Munincipal Archive of Strasbourg preserve accounts of how on august 3rd dancing was banned with a fine on it of 30 shillings til St Micheals in September 29th.Only stringed insturments could be used in Masses or at Weddings as it was believed that drums and tambourines could make the condition worse and on top of these things Loose persons like prostitutes and gamblers(Leichtfertigen) were banished and a hundred pound candle was bought for a high mass and three low masses. They then turned to St.Vitus.A child maytr ,saint and holy helper representing a disease he was prayed to for conditions like epilepsy and as the crisis deepened the new dancing disease or plague. Consequently were put in carts and took away to the Saverne St Vitus shrine where they were prayed over by the priests and given pfennigs to offer to the church. Specklin notes how they fell down at images of St. Vitus , were given little crosses and red shoes with the sign of the cross on them and were blessed with holy water. Many seemed to recover. By August and September the plague started by one lone woman’s dance drew to a close , but not without many horrific deaths occurring as people moved continuously until their bodies could not take it anymore.

The medieval period was filled with cases of similar dancing themed mass delusions or illnesses. In 1247 the children of the Germanic town Erfurt danced with some dying, 200 people in Maastricht during 1278 did likewise while the summer of 1374 Rhineland provinces to Aachen, Ghent, Metz and Strasbourg danced and had delusions of a devil called Friskes making them do it ,1375 saw it in France and Holand, 1381 an outbreak of dancing occurred in Augsburg, 1428 saw it occur in Zurich and the cloisters of St. Agnes in Schaffhausen where monks danced until they died.

The mass of dancing plagues like this before and after the 1518 outbreak was therefore substantial…It’s just the 1518 version captured the public imagination and crystalized people’s reactions to it in an ever larger Renaissance world of disseminated news and knowledge. The surprisingly fact that many of the outbreaks between the 14th century and 1518 outbreak happened along the Rhine and Mosel rivers begs thinking about. Why was this area so damaged by the dancing phenomena? What causes do we now attribute to it?

Modern explanations for the event are as varied as contemporary ones. It has been argued that the condition is evidently psycho-physical as touch or contact isn’t needed to pass it on. It could not have been a wholly somatic condition but something else. The explanation used for such dancing symptoms in Italy was Tarantism. This was a dancing condition caused supposedly by the bite of a local spider in the Apulian region of Italy as deforestation during the 1400s-1600s had caused them to spread. However, their venom even when combined with the heat of the area is unlikely to have produced proper dancing. Ergot poisoning is another suggestion. Eugene Backman claims that the mold of ergot formed on damp rye stalks which would have been cultivated in the area of Strasbourg. The problem with this reasoning is that everyone should have been affected if it was throughout all the rye being eaten. Also it causes delusions, yes, but also gangrene which none of the sufferers are described as having in the records and dancing over fits is not a symptom of ergot.

John C. Waller suggests a combination of factors,both physical and psychic. It could not be a heretical cult as some historians claim as the sufferers begged for help and the church never saw them as heretics.Instead the degredation and chaos of Renassiance life in Strasbourg likely had a mental and physical impact on people. Serious famines had occurred in 1492,1502,1511 while drought occurred in summer 1516.1517 was deemed the bad year by one resident.With agricultural and thus monetary and food uncertainties many families took out high interest loans,slaughtered their livestock and begged for charity in Strasbourg. A bad pox had arrived in 1495 and syphilis was introduced by mercenary pike men returning from the Italian wars in 1517. August of that year saw many attending a holy procession ‘contra pestilentiam’ and begging the virgin,st Sebastian and s troche for mercy. The English sweating sickness arrived in Strasbourg by 1517 killing people in a mix of copious sweating,delirium and unquenchable thirst.All of this,as Waller shows, represents the fact that during the year 1518 a number of phenomena came together to make this astounding event possible..The people of Strasbourg had been beaten down for decades by circumstances out of their control which affected their health and impacted the way they approached the world mentally.

As works on the subjective experience of psychosis across different cultures has shown, like Luhrmann et al’s paper, just location and the resulting specific culture of a place can greatly impact one’s experience of auditory hallucinations and other symptoms. In places like Ghana voices have been found to be more positive and accepted by the person with them than places like the USA where they are more negative. The world of 1518 Strasbourg was one of gods and demons, plagues and monsters, heaven and hell…Whether the condition that prompted the dancing in this case or others was physical, mental or both is still unclear, but nevertheless it was something that could happen and did. Four hundred people of the city of Strasbourg took to their feet and moved until dead or bloody. Anything was possible in the Renaissance world they lived in and sometimes you just have to dance.

References:

H.C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-century Germany, (California: Stanford University Press, 1999), p.32-37

Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, trans. E Classen, (London, 1951), p. 190-234; 22

Die Strasburger Chronik des Elsassischen Humanisten Hieronymus Gebwiler, ed. Karl Stenzel, (Berlin, 1926),p.74-75

Fragments des Anciennes Chroniques d'Alsace, ed. L Dacheux, Vol 4, (Strasbourg, 1901),p.252,

L. Dacheux, Les Chroniques trasbourgeoises de Jacques Trausch et de Jean Wencker. Les annales de Sebastien Brant. Fragments recueillis par l'abbe L. Dacheux(Strasbourg 1892),p.148

Archive Municipal, Strasbourg, R3, fol. 72 recto

John Witte and Robert M Kingdon, Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin’s Geneva: Courtship, Engagement and Marriage ,vol 1,(Michigan and Cambridge: William b.Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005),p.454,

Les Sources du droit du canton de Geneve, ed. Emile Rivoire and Victor van Berchem,4 vols(Aarau,1927-1935)

John Waller,A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518, (UK:Icon,2008),p.1-4,6,8-10,83,109, 111-113

LJ Donaldson , J Cavanagh and J Rankin, “The Dancing Plague: a Public Health Conundrum”, The Society of Public Health ,111,(1997),pp.201-204,p.201-203

John Waller, “In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518”, Endeavour, 34,3(2008), pp.117-121

J. F. C Hecker and B. G Babington, The Dancing Mania Of The Middle Ages (Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific, 2004),p.87,104,110

Cancellieri, Francesco, Letters of Francesco Cancellieri to the ch. Signore Dottore Koreff, Professor of Medicine of the University of Berlin, about Tarantism, the airs of Roma, and of its countryside, and the Papal palaces inside, and outside, Rome: with the description of the Pontifical Castel Gandolfo, and surrounding countryside, (Rome: Presso Francesco Bourlie,1817)

JF Russell “Tarantism”, Med Hist, 23,4, (October 1979), pp. 404–25.

#history #medieval history #middle ages #medicine #medical history #renaissance

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past---caring · 8 years ago

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Helen Keller:The Revolutionary and Social Activist

As a disabled person I dream of embodying the same passion for achieving social justice that Helen Keller had.Keller is a very misunderstood disabled historical figure who has not gotten full recognition for their life’s work.

She was born in 1880 in the state of Alabama and her loss of sight and hearing occurred when she was eighteen months old ; likely due to a condition like meningitis. Helen’s family struggled to communicate with her fully until they heard of the ‘Perkins Institute for the blind’. It is through this institute that Anna Sullivan ,who was also blind, was chosen as Keller’s instructor and teacher. Their relationship began in 1887 with Sullivan attempting to reach Helen through spelling on her hand. As shown in ‘ the miracle worker’ and Keller’s memoir understanding was reached through Sullivan pouring water from a pump over Keller’s hand until she connected that the word being spelt into her palm was the sensation and object she felt pouring on her hand. Anne’s teaching allowed Helen to attend Perkins. In the 1890s she moved with Anne to New York to attend schools such as the Wright-Humason school for the deaf. Her mastery of Braille and more enabled her to florish. In 1900 she was admitted to Radcliffe college and by the age of twenty four she graduated as the first deaf and blind person to achieve a bachelor degree in art. This point in Helen’s life is pretty much the end of what most people know about her. A supposedly feral disabled girl breaks free from the isolation of her condition thanks to a patient teacher ,but the problem with this picture is that it strips Keller of her incredible achievements and life instead infantilising her even beyond childhood.

Helen Keller’s role as a writer was central to her identity from a young age and was the career she had listed in documentation. Her first work at the age of eleven called ‘The Frost King’ was suspected of possible plagiarism, but might have been due to forgetting the story ‘The Frost Fairies’ being read to her. Her memoir called ‘The Story of My Life’ was released in 1903 and opened up about her early life and relationship with Anne. It would go on to inspire the 1962 film “The Miracle Worker”. The book was a best-seller, is an enduring classic of American Literature and is now available in fifty languages. Keller wrote fourteen more books and hundreds of speeches which were on topics as diverse as faith, the experience of blindness, socialism/communism, birth control, the rise of fascism, nuclear weapons and feminism. Her autobiography appealed to the public then and now for its focus on her disability and overcoming of the aforesaid condition. The text is apolitical and was thus easier for the public to enjoy and admire. Books to follow would fail on this front. ‘The World I Live In’(1908) challenged the ableism of those who believed she was still essentially ignorant of life. ‘Out of the dark’(1913) consisted of essays focused on social issues such as feminism and socialism. As others have stated the success of her childhood memoirs over her works regarding politics and more show how Helen Keller was expected to fit a sanitised and one dimensional inspiring mould for the public and when it became clear she was multifaceted, complicated and opinionated she suffered. Reading these works even now is an incredible experience as Keller explores what it means to be a disabled women insightfully while also discussing her leftist politics, feminism, pacifism and more at a time when this was extremely brave for anyone never mind a disabled woman. Using her braille and regular typewriters Keller didn’t find just a way to communicate with the world ,but engage, probe and explore its depth in an incredibly beautiful ,vital and intellectual way. Literature surely was her utopia.

Keller’s activism and political/social beliefs were tied to and equally important as her writing. Helen should be remember for these as much as her personal story. Helen became a socialist after reading texts such as Well’s ‘New World For Old’ and taking part in a study on the causes of blindness in which she discovered class played a huge part. She wrote about her journey to socialism in ‘How I became a socialist’ and in ‘why I became a IWW’. The public and press saw her politics as repugnant and a warping of the safe disabled heroine that had existed before. One paper editor said that mistakes sprung “out of the manifest limitation of her development.” Keller in ‘How I became a socialist’ replied to these comments saying that the paper was controlled by industrial tyranny which clouded its senses. She also asked for it to fight fairly and use arguments against her own instead of simply reminding people that she can’t see or hear. Keller had to deal with it being claimed she was gullible and so ignorant that her companions the Macy’s had brainwashed her into believing in such politics. She was no longer a role model, but someone with difficult views. Alongside being a socialist(then communist) Keller did much more activism. She supported the newly formed NAACP in 1916 by donating a substantial amount to their cause despite this being criticized by her family and friends. She also helped create the ACLU in 1920 which fought for civil liberities. Her pacifism was tied to her politics and led to her opposing WW1 severely. She was also a feminist who supported birth control and was against capital punishment. In a piece for the Manchester Advertiser in 1911 she said that instead giving women the vote first the system needed to be changed. In Britain for instance 10/11 of land belonged to 200,000 people while the other 40 million only had 1/11.She also stated how unimportant males having the vote was in a system so corrupt and unrepresentative. In her 1916 speech called ‘Strike Against War’ Keller begins by stating she is not being controlled by anyone, doesn’t want their pity and knows what she speaks of. With passion she shows this is true. She discusses how the American government at the time were more interested in imperial capitalist concerns in places like Hawaii than their security. She says that the workers are controlled and made to fight in a terrible cycle. Lastly she implores that the working class “be not dumb obedient slaves in an army of destruction”. Keller advocated for female contraception and birth controlling with the belief it would enfranchise women in their lives, help them plan their family and help end suffering caused by poverty. After the deployment of nuclear weapons in WW2 Keller visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1948 to speak out against nuclear weapons. Throughout her life Keller also fought for disabled rights and support. She helped in 1946 to form a special service for the blind and deaf, worked for forty years for AFB ,helped create rehabilitation centres/studies into blindness and more. She helped aid blind soldiers after WW1 through the permanent blind war relief fund and til the end of her life travelled the world as a representative for disabled peoples. She never forgot that her own success was due to her class privilege and used her position to help millions without this benefit.

Keller spoke out about how she was treated for some of her beliefs in a 1924 letter. As long as she stuck to activities associated with the disabled etc she was viewed saintly, a ‘wonder woman’ and a ‘modern miracle’. However when she stood up against poverty, sexism, racism and more things were different. Giving pennies to the disabled was laudable and good for many ,but to state the world should be better was a naïve dream only the deaf and blind like her could believe. The incredible array of causes Keller stood up for somewhat ahead of her time should be something we all know about her. These beliefs led to her being watched by the FBI most of her life and experiencing times when she was shunned severely ,but Keller lived her life campaigning for these things till her last day.Keller like many woman historical figures has been sanitized and erased. A disabled women who is so multifaceted is a peculiar thing even now in media. Her entire life work matters as much as her overcoming of the difficulties caused by her condition. This is one of the many reasons Keller matters so much and why you should admire her even now.

References:

Her extensive works such as The Story of My Life (1902), Optimism: An Essay (1903),Our Duties to the Blind (1904), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark: Essays, Letters, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision (1913).

Selection of her many quotes: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Strike Against War By Helen Keller, Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, January 5, 1916, under the auspices of the Women’s Peace Party and the Labour Forum:http://gos.sbc.edu/k/keller.html

The Radical Lives of Helen Keller by Kim E. Nielsen:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radical-Lives-Keller-History-Disability/dp/0814758142

Article on her radicalism: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-radical-dissent-of-helen-keller

A Disabled Feminist’s opinion of her: http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/01/14/feminist-icons/#fn-2553-6

Bios on her: http://www.nndb.com/people/074/000046933/ ; http://www.afb.org/info/about-us/helen-keller/biography-and-chronology/biography/1235

#history #modern history #socialism #disability #feminism #helen keller

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past---caring · 8 years ago

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The Glass Heard Around The World:Stonewall,Revolution, Truth & Legend

Past Caring takes a look through a personal and historical lens at the legacy of Stonewall,the figures who played a part in it and the following mobilization and activism and what the truth of the event and the shaping of its historical and legendary status conveys about the good and bad aspects of the lgbt community and rights movement. Historically accurate terms are used where they have been mentioned in sources and recollections. (A piece I did for Pride earlier this summer)

Sylvia Rivera with her partner Julia Murray and Christina Hayworth at the New York City Pride parade, 2000;Sylvia Rivera in her 40s;Bob Kohler,Sylvia Rivera and friend,1960s-70s; Storme Delaverie in her later years; Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera at the Christopher Street Liberation Pride March,June 1973;Marsha P Johnson at a march;Zazu Nova, Gay Liberation Front meeting,June ,1970; taken by Diana Davies, ;Sylvia Rivera in front of a fountain,1960s or 1970s;Sylvia Rivera and a friend 1970s;Gay Liberation Front on Times Square, 1969. Diana Davies, NYPL;Close up portrait photography of Storme Delaverie;Jackie Hormona with Gay Liberation Front banner, New York(1970); Miss Major at San Francisco Pride,2014 ;Sylvia Ray Rivera (front) and Arthur Bell at gay liberation demonstration, New York University, 1970 by Diana Davies;Raymond Castro ,young and old; Marsha P Johnson at a protest in the 1970s with a plaque saying “STAR people are beautiful people”.

The Stonewall Inn,Taken by Diana Davies in September 1969,New York Public Library.

The World before Stonewall.

As two-hundred and five odd people readied themselves for a Saturday night out at the Mafia-run Stonewall they lived in a world that hated them. Clyde Hoey had argued in 1950 that gay people were “security risks” and thus thousands of public sector applications were denied and contracts discharged. Loitering in toilets was a blacklisting offense with arrestees often listed in newspapers and homosexuals were barred from having professional licenses. The Post office would keep lists of addresses pertaining to those who engaged in a homosexual life and the FBI kept track of names too. Confinement to abusive mental institutions was common with California’s Astascadero Hospital described as “Dachua for queens” , and even castration was a possibility as during the period psychiatric views were influenced by the prejudice that saw the 1952 DSM declare homosexuality a mental illnesses. Prison was another avenue that could await. Come the 1960s only Illinois did not overtly ban homosexuality and New York’s Penal code caused terror and anxiety for those dressing outwith the gendered clothing expectations of the heterosexual establishment at the time with those like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson , Delaverie and others expected to wear three pieces or more of clothing ‘appropriate’ to their gender. If not arrest was forthcoming.The Stonewall bar was breaking the law that day ,but it had to do so to exist. The early sixties saw New York impacted by Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr’s order to revoke the liquor licenses of homosexual bars and entrap as many people as possible in the lead up to the 1964 world’s fair there. Stonewall was one instance of bars being run by the mob in this climate enabling the gay bars to exist ,but with all the problems gang connections caused. Its owners were the Genovese crime family who had turned it into a gay bar in 1966 and handed over lump sums as payoffs to cops to keep things going as it had no liquor license. The bar was badly run with no running water, glasses were cleaned in a dirty bathtub of still water which gave some people hepatitis, there was no fire exits and the toilets overran constantly. Nowhere else was same-sex dancing allowed however so for the lgbt people who descended on it , for all its terrible flaws, it had elements of freedom they could not find in other bars or in their daily lives.

"Street Kids" including Jackie Hormona fighting with the NYPD,New York Daily News,(28th of June,1969)

At the time there was conflict between the more radical side of gay society, often those with the least to lose and the most oppression bearing down on them such as the not exclusive street kids, transgender people called drag queens or transvestites and sex workers and those who joined groups like the Mattachine society which was one of many groups to use the term “homophile” over gay thinking the former less sexual and thus more acceptable for heteronormative society. The decade leading up to the event was also influential due to things like the Civil Rights movement and Feminism which influenced terms like gay power(after black power) as slogans and the creation of the first gay university organization in the Student Homophile league at New York Columbia University from 1967. It was not even the first gay revolt against oppression by groups like the police. In 1959 the drag queens and sex workers who meet at Cooper’s Donuts despite the LAPD’s harassment fought back resulting in three arrests of those like John Rechy and the police’s baptism with donuts and coffee cups. In 1966 two other events occurred The Black Cat Tavern Riot in Los Angeles and the Compton’s Cafteria Riot in San francisco’s Tenderloin district. Susan Stryker has called the Compton raid the first known incident of collective militant queer resistance to the police in the USA. Following it the people who took part still faced multiple struggles but the community of San Francisco remembered it and would slowly learn from it.Friday Night at the Stonewall Inn….You are getting ready for your night out and find your way down to the Inn in your nightlife splendor. A bouncer looks through the peephole at you…If you are known by the doorman or look gay you get in easy otherwise it will be difficult to impossible as they needed to keep out undercover lily laws,alice blue gowns and betty badges.You give over three dollars and get two tickets to be swapped for two drinks to start your night off well. Signing your name in a book to prove it was a legitimate ‘bottle club’ you will often use a fake one with the aforementioned Judy garland a common choice.There is a jukebox and interior is black and pulsing and black lights are above,if the white ones come on then it’s a raid you will find out. The bar is mostly frequented by gay or bi cis men with some lesbians coming too. The trans women who were known as tranvestites usually and those who were known as queens or drag queens coverse and meet in the space in the smaller room and converse with friends. It was one of two bars where effeminate men ,wearing make up, who dressed in male clothing could go ,but despite the importance of transgender women in the events to come those in ‘full drag’ were seldom let inside as Sylvia Rivera noted later to Eric Marcus. Younger homeless adolescents try to get in so customers can buy them drinks and thus its as active outside as inside. The bar includes those of all races, ages, sexualities and genders unlike many of the other establishments…It is as Vito Russo said a place where the rich ,often blackmailed by the mob, white gay bankers and brokers of wall street mingled with those “too young,too poor or just too much to get in anywhere else”.As you mingle and dance Miss Major Griffin-Gracy meets a girlfriend and chats behind you, Maria Ritter,putting Steve behind her, arrives in a car at 10pm with her makeup artist friend Kiki in her mother’s empire waisted cocktail dress excited to celebrate her 18th birthday with her real id being shown to the bouncer instead of the laughable fake ones she had used before. The 17 year old Sylvia Rivera is there with her first lover at the bar for the first time in a bell bottoms suit with beautiful makeup and hair.Marsha ‘Pay it no mind’ Johnson is there with Zazu Nova..Is she carrying the large chain she often did for defence in her purse tonight? You see the dashing male impersonator Storme Delavernie and the faces of visitors like Raymond Castro and Martin Boyce who is in drag tonight as Miss Martin. Danny Garvin,once in the navy now lives like a hippy in an all-gay commune on Bleecker street in Greenwich and arrives.Two policewomen and two policemen have got by the bouncer and mingle undercover near you as they await a raid being planned by Seymour on behalf of the NYPD Public Moral Division in Greenwich Village. Stonewall had been raided recently before that day as well with minimum fuss. The recorded reason for the raid was the lack of a drinking license and bootlegging ,but as historian David Carter has noted, the mafia owner’s and manager’s blackmailing of their wealthier costumers made extortion more profitable than the liquor sales and due to lapsed bribery payments from this and thefts of negotiable bonds the police had other reasons to undertake the raid. Often when the fees were paid to the cops any raids that did have to happen were acts of theatre played out by the bar and policemen. That night no tip off had occurred like usual and as Duberman has recorded, a rumour some heard seemed false as it was said to be for much later than raids usually happened...

The Main Event.

At 1.20 am it finally comes. Four plainclothes policemen, two patrol officers and detectives Charles symthe and deputy inspector Seymour pine arrive at the doors announcing “POLICE!WE’RE TAKING THE PLACE!” Back up is called and the blinding white lights come up above you. People stop dancing and let go of each other quickly. Some veterans of this ritual run off ,but police bar the doors and thus it begins here. It starts. The cops gathered up 28 cases of beer and 19 liquor bottles while starting to check the documentation of the 205 odd patrons there. Morty Manfold discusses in Marcus’s work that to be arrested were “the transvestites”, “the underage” and “the undocumented without identification”. Pine would later note that he had not expected to need to arrest so many transvestites so duly he called for more police vans. Maria Ritter stood in her mother’s dress terrified about her possible arrest ,but also that she would be pictured in the clothing she felt more comfortable in a newspaper or television report which her mother would see. She knew what “happened to queers in jail” and it scared her. While some were freed after 15 minutes the other wagons began to arrive. Around this time Marty Robin and Morty Manford say that Marsha P Johnson threw a shot glass at a mirror and said “I got my human rights”. Although Carter’s work notes how often these accounts of her taking action first came almost always from secondary or third hand sources he ends by arguing whether she was first to take action or not she was almost certainly ONE of the first. Jackie Hormona ,the bleach blond kid in the most famous stonewall image, is equally a possible person to have first acted. Jerry Hoose arriving at the scene later due to his friend John Goodman’s phone call was told that “Hormona had kicked a cop, maybe,or punched a cop” and thus everything got going. As Carter argues no single person can be deemed the only agent to act and thus cause events all by themselves…A large group in unison came to the conclusion that fighting back was necessary.Marie Ritter notes how those who were to be taken in were kept together within Stonewall’s coat closet ,something that she notes was extremely ironic. During the searches of people Micheal Fader notes that some lesbians were touched up during their frisk rousing more tension and anger. Those released did not fade into the night and privacy like usual to escape..Most stayed and the crowd outside grew. Joel S ,one of the first related how the crowds outside gathered and milled around. Nearby as the crowd grew the Village Voice employee Howard Smith saw it in the offices with his bincholars and went down meeting the writer for the paper Lucian Truscott.The couple, Danny Garvin and Keith Murdoch were discussing the black panthers leading the revolution to come soon when they saw the crowd as well and joined it.The journalists mentioned would portray it homophobically discussing limp wrists ,but as those not to be arrested were freed and joined friends outside they are described as playing to the crowd some bowing and one person saying hello fella to the detective at the door. Some people were handled roughly Smith noticed as they left. The first police wagon was loaded with the mafia members to cheers by the crowd then regular employees to cries of “gay power” and the singing of we shall overcome. A second arrived with the doorman and bartender and three transvestites and drag queens from inside were put in and took away to boos.Then a lesbian in masculine clothing was took out roughly in handcuffs. Some people state that other butch women were arrested at this point as well. This “typical New York butch” was hit on the head with a baton for, as one witness said, complaining of her handcuff’s tightness. Storme’ Delarverie, a male impersonator, has been identified by different people as the woman, including by herself. In a 2008 interview for Curve magazine Storme’ told Patrick Hinds that it was her and that she was told to “move along, faggot” to which she refused thus being clubbed in the face. A butch woman, perhaps this same woman, Storme or otherwise, was then put into a car with the door unlocked and numerous times got out the other unlocked door to cheers. After around ten minutes they were apprehended and took off. Whither it was the same woman or different women the action of a lesbian arrestee being hurt at this point and a cry by the same woman saying “why don’t you guys do something?’ prompted the crowd to surge forward and start throwing things. Rumours spread of the supposed unpaid bribe so people started throwing coins shouting faggot cops, pigs and lets pay them off. A nearby building site provided bricks for throwing too. Roy McCarthy arrived as the fireworks kicked off and noted high heels flying. Different drag queens and transvestites were noted to have hit policemen with their heels and handbags.This led to prejudiced figures like the New York Daily News Jerry Lisker joking about how the transgender women and crossdressers involved were “exhibiting Queen Power” and throwing “femme fatale missiles”. While others like Raymond Castro were put into wagons to cries of “let him go” they thought back with Raymond resisting and knocking cops to the ground.He would later get a laywer to represent himself in relation to the crimes he was charged with ,but in addition paid for a lesbian woman’s fees who had been in the same wagon.Someone else threw a drink at a cop leaving him bleeding and thus he got partners to aid him in beating the supposed culprit until he was dazed. Marsha ,Heide suggests, became a force to be reckoned with, throwing rocks and screaming, like “Molly Pitcher in the revolution” he said.

As people’s fury was unleashed in so many ways Pine ordered the police there to flee into the inn away from the hundreds of people there. As Morty Manford notes once they were inside the second floor window was smashed by someone leading to people saying ooh ,a cop with a gun threatened people with it through the door and a fire was started. Edmund White and Fader also discussed how “some adorable butch hustler boys” pulled up a parking meter using it as a battering ram. Roy McCarthy jumped on a cop in the chaos and was beating him before it turned around and he was left seeing starts until four transgender women saved him and patched him up in a basement. After around 45 minutes the TPF(Tactical Police Force) arrived in riot gear. Vito Russo and others mention how the TPF were tainted from behind by transvestite women and crossdressers in a rocket style kick line singing “we are the stonewall girls,we wear our hair in curls,we wear no underwear,we show our pubic hair!”.Bob Kohler saw the clash with the TPF while walking his dog and said it was a sign “the fun was over” as the “cops were totally humiliated” because “fairies were not supposed to riot” and this resistance made them want to kill. The fear they expressed is noticeable in Pine’s statement that it was the most terrifying night of his life despite the fact he was a veteran who had fought at the Battle of the Bulge.The kickline of people was attacked with nightsticks leaving one of the crowd to say “I felt rage” as people were being hurt “for what?a kick line.”

By 4am the TPF cleared the street ,but Saturday 28th of June was a new day. People had woke from a sleeping spell to a new reality. Thirteen people were arrested, some hospitalized and four officers injured ,but as one person noted “there was a certain beauty in the aftermath of the riot” as people recognized “this was our street”. That is the thing about Stonewall…It was not the first case of revolt against oppressive authorities by lgbt people…It was not the first of many things. However it was the birth of a consciousness and reflectiveness in regards to lgbt history and events. Before and After Stonewall. BS and AS.

Close-up of handwritten chalk text on a boarded-up window of the Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher Street) after riots over the weekend of June 27, 1969.

The Continued Revolt and Aftermath

While papers like the New York Times, New York Post and Daily News focused on events with the latter placing coverage on the front page , rumours spread through Greenwich that different revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers had caused it. People started expressing their affection in public with one witness describing “we were just out”. A fog stifling the reality of people’s lives and loves felt lifted. If you had went you would have seen graffiti brightening the walls declaring “drag power”, “they invaded our rights”, “support gay power” , “legalize gay bars” and the defiant statement after the raid: “we are open”. That morning Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant printed and distrubted 5000 leaflets one saying: "Get the Mafia and the Cops out of Gay Bars." And others saying gay people needed their own establishments, that stonewall should be boycotted and that the Mayor had to investigate the "intolerable situation". Saturday night saw things continue with hustlers, street youths and queens being joined by police provocateurs , bystanders and even tourists. While fires were set off again a hundred policemen watched and arrested who they could. The road was blocked and only those sympathetic to the cause or gay themselves could pass, Sylvia Rivera watched as a friend pounced on a car trying to get through and Marsha broke a police windshield with a heavy object leading to a poor bystander to be targeted and beat by the police who didn’t see her do it. Those like Vito Russo joined as a crowd again until the TPF arrived at 2am on the 29th . It ended again at 4am. Monday the 30th and Tuesday the 31st saw not much action due to bad rain. On Wednesday Black Panthers and Yippies joined to create a thousand strong crowd standing in solidarity. The Village voice article by Howard Smith and Lucian Truscott was published that day with homophobic language and slurs a plenty stoaking anger and leading to more clashes. The police ever angrier left young people, many who were queens, lying bleeding on the street ,but people still stated “the word is out. Christopher Street shall be liberated”. The bar itself went up for rent soon after ,but the street,all streets would be liberated. The inn had birthed a new movement and could fade away:its job done.

Photo taken on the second night of the riots of some of the Street Kids by Fred McDarrah.Lanigan-Schmidt is in the stripped shirt. He knew the other young people by their street names included Twiggy,Black Twiggy,Missy,Besame and Drag Queen Chris.

Elsewhere The Mattachine’s annual picketing at Independence Hall,Philadelphia on the 4th of July the air was electric. Organiser Craig Rodwell who felt things had to change convinced people to exhibit affection publicly at it. The press attention was more than any other march by them. Rodwell returned to New York with plans for Christopher Street Liberation Day in mind. At the same time an ad hoc meeting of Mattachine New York to organize a march turned into an organization the Gay Liberation Front. The group told a underground work The Rat “we are a revolutionary homosexual group” and that they believed sexual liberation was tied to abolishing existing social institutions. Solidarity was emphasized with them saying “We identify ourselves with all the oppressed: the Vietnamese struggle, the third world, the blacks, the workers…all those oppressed by this rotten, dirty, vile, fucked-up capitalist conspiracy”. A paper called the Gay was started within six months due to the Village Voice’s refusal to print the word Gay in GLF ads within it. The GLF became increasingly tied to big theories and discussion regarding all oppression over community action for gay people in the eyes of those like Bob Kohler. A friend and ally of Sylvia Rivera ,who had been at Stonewall, he was attempting to get clothes and money through it to help the homeless youths so instrumental to the revolt. He was met by a discussion on capitalism’s downfall instead. December 1969 saw the creation of the GAA(Gay Activists Alliance) in response who were concerned with liberating homosexuals and focused only on this fight for rights and resources.Both groups however would come together for protests against other raids and for the Stonewall march that began the following year. Some of their victories during this time was having homosexuality removed from psychiatric handbooks as a mental illness in 1973 with the American Psychiatric Association gaining a caucus of lesbian and gay psychiatrists in 1978.

Pride and Today

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The 28th of June 1970 saw Pride as we know it born with the first annual Christopher Street Liberation march in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. From these earliest days however when the victories of the revolt were so close to hand the massaging of history to fit different perspectives was already beginning. One reader wrote to the Advocate in 1970 saying the parade had done more harm than good as “silly freaks” “those queens” were lowering the movement’s image in his eyes prompting him to sniff “where were the normal looking” gay men from colleges and so forth? Dick Griff in a letter replying stated “It was the drag queens who fought back last year!Not we closet queens!”. Just over a year after Stonewall the outsiders of the lgbt community who had been so instrumental were already having their agency and momentous actions ignored. Their presence was unwanted.Those like the Gay Activist Alliance and Lesbian Feminist Liberation ,like the Mattachine before them , following the revolt began to champion assimilation so that laws like the proposed Anti-Discrimination Bill Intro 475 would view them as worth protecting.Those who stuck out and were different be it due to their class, race, gender identity, homeless status and more brought down the rest of the community. In response the GLF asserted their commitment to LGBT people of all backgrounds including transgender people attracting many trans activists ,but the climate was against them. Stonewall’s homeless Street Kids ,and transgender women ,grouped under terms like drag queens or transvestites at the time, became liabilities while on the day of Stonewall they had been indispensable. Marsha told Bob Kohler in an interview how upon attending GAA meetings they would notice everyone looking at her and Sylvia because “they’re not used to seeing transvestites in female attire”. Transgender people were therefore kicked off the anti-discrimination bill in hopes it would pass. Another example of this alienation that groups, especially transgender people faced as the gay rights movement grew, is that of a 1973 New York Liberation rally where Sylvia Rivera jump on stage with Lee Brewster following a speech by the early TERF Jean O’Leary in which Sylvia cried “You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you,and these bitches tell us to quit ourselves” before she asked them “how dare you???”. Whither because of transphobic prejudiced views concerning trans people,Second Wave Feminism being famous for this, or the need to exclude them and all other people who did not fit a white,cis, often middle class standard, to latch onto any aspect of acceptance by straight society that they could due to privileged, groups like trans women were coldly excluded from the fight. In answer those who were not accepted fought their own fights when others would not return their support. For instance Marsha and Sylvia formed Street Transvestite(eventually transgender from 2000) Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970 which provided safety and help for transgender people in a myriad of terrible situations such as living on the street or in prison. Marsha who was HIV Postive would later support and march for many AIDS causes. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy also started providing for her community with an early service run by her from 1978 in San Diego providing help for trans women in prison,addicted to drugs or homeless.She has now worked tirelessly into her 70s for many groups.

Aids would rock the LGBT community to its very core and would take the lives of people who had been at Stonewall. It both brought people together as they had to care for each other when no one else would. This is something my own mother as a charity worker saw in 1993 while helping a man care for his partner who was dying and trying to convince doctors to treat him. At the same time however the dangers of the crisis made some feel all the more that gay identity had to be portrayed in a rigid way to ensure people were accepted.It has been 48 years now since the revolt. Its victories stand alongside its failings…Mobilizing requiring a homogeneous group in some people’s views....The events of the night being shaped to fit the ideology of the gay rights movement in the 1970s onwards. While works like Pay it no Mind ,about Marsha, give us stories of figures on the night that need heard , other things like the film Stonewall have took to the views that exclusionary groups have presented.

Today the fights for all lgbt people,not just a specific group, to have the rights,safety and support in their lives they need still goes on. We need to read the true tales from stonewall in order to get past the conflict we have dealt with in past decades….We need to remember the lives behind it …Mourning those veterans of it like Marsha and Sylvia who died young as well as caring for our elders like Miss Major and Storme Lavernie(who sadly passed away in inadequate care practically forgotten). Yes pride is for celebrating ,but we need to all come together in unison against the institutions around the world which impact LGBT people negatively instead of mistreating each other or assuming the fight is over. The truth of Stonewall is beauty and the beauty of the people involved acting as one on that night is truth. We need to speak Stonewall’s truths every moment so it lives on forever…Not give way to the type of hate it was sparked by.

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#lgbt #pride #stonewall #history #history meme #queer #stonewall riot #marsha johnson #sylvia rivera #marsha p johnson

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