American Experience

CROWD

Gay power! Gay power!

HOWARD SMITH

It really should have been called "Stonewall Uprising." They really were objecting to how they were being treated. That's more an uprising than a riot.

TOMMY LANIGAN-SCHMIDT

As much as I don't like to say it, there's a place for violence. Because if you don't have extremes, you don't get any moderation. And as awful as people might think that sounds, it's the way history has always worked. I don't know if you remember the Joan Baez song, "It isn't nice to block the doorway, "it isn't nice to go to jail. There are nicer ways to do it but the nice ways always fail." For the first time, we weren't letting ourselves be carted off to jails. Gay people were actually fighting back just the way people in the peace movement fought back.