It was clear that the events at Stonewall had already changed things. Rodwell chartered a bus of younger people from New York, who joined the Philadelphia demonstration but did not adhere to the strict conservative dress code, nor did they follow the “orderly” rules of conduct of previous years. The last Reminder Day took place on July 4, 1969, only one day after the end of the Stonewall uprising. Among the earliest significant LGBT protests in the United States, these were held to highlight the community’s lack of basic civil rights. Rodwell had been an organizer of the annual Fourth of July Reminder Day demonstrations in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, from 1965 to 1969. I went to marches every year after that in New York, until I left NY the day after Pride Day, 1983.At the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on Sunday, June 28, 1970, a group headed by Craig Rodwell, owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, led what became the first annual NYC Pride March (then known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day March). It was all very dramatic, and between the march, the rally, and the emotions, I was exhausted by the time I got home. At some point, Bette Midler arrived on the stage and started belting out a song, which seemed to shift the tone. I didn’t quite know what to make of it all – at the time, they both seemed right, but then they seemed to be yelling at each other. And I remember Sylvia Rivera getting up and in an intensely emotional way, defending herself and other drag queens and explaining what their lives were like. I’m not sure about the order in which this happened, but I remember Jean O’Leary, a lesbian feminist activist, speaking very strongly and angrily about drag queens and transvestites and how they were mocking women. The rally was mind-boggling and I was completely unprepared for the uproar that exploded on the stage in Washington Square Park.
I remember the thrill of marching in the street down Broadway, through the theater district, and there being crowds, and then the crowds of onlookers shrinking as we got further downtown. I remember linking arms for part of the way. The faces I remember from that day, though I know there were more, were Richard Gustafson, Seymour Kleinberg, David Roggensack, and Jonathan Ned Katz, all of whom were active in the GAU. Of the march, mostly I remember a feeling of excitement – getting to Columbus Circle and looking for my group of friends/comrades. Instead it started at Columbus Circle on the edge of Central Park and marched down Broadway to the Village, where we eventually assembled for a rally in Washington Square Park. That year, for the first and perhaps only time, the march didn’t start in Greenwich Village and head north to Central Park. As a group, we decided that we’d participate as a contingent in that year’s March. Three years later, in 1973, I was still with the same boyfriend, but I was also involved in a relatively new group, the Gay Academic Union, that had started meeting early in the year, and was very dynamic and exciting.
So, I dropped the idea, and didn’t go to what turned out to be the first NYC Pride March. The idea of, in the words of one of them, “fags marching in the streets” made them laugh wildly they just couldn’t imagine it. I mentioned this to my new boyfriend and two of his friends, who were all about 10 or so years older than me and had been gay in New York since the late 1950s. I knew about the Stonewall riots the year before, and I had heard that a march and demonstration were going to be held at the end of June, going from Christopher Street to Central Park. I had just graduated from college in June 1970 and was living in Manhattan.