S3 E9"Mattachine Millennia,"
or,
"The Whole World Is Watching"
“One gets weary of trying to confront the people with the necessity of assessing their own history.”
Gay activists gather in Chicago for the homophile convention, held during the 1968 DNC. Gore Vidal faces off with Bill Buckley on TV while demonstrators fight in a "police riot." Martha Shelley & Sylvia Rivera join the movement. Craig Rodwell opens the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop and publishes a brazen newsletter criticizing dirty mafia bars such as the Stone Wall. Boys in the Band opens off-Broadway. Hoover denies affiliation with Mattachine—among other rumors.
or your favorite podcast platform.
Original release: June 14, 2021
Episode 9-A “Gay Party At Police Station”
Mattachine Society of New York Newsletter, June 1969“The cops herded more than fifty very elegantly dressed, and very high, male homosexuals, four women, one sex-change-in-progress, and one dog (belonging to a customer) into the paddy wagons.” Evan Koepnick as MSNY President Dick Leitsch.
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Season 3 Bonus episodes
1968 & 2020
w/ Chicago Gay Liberation's
Gary Chichester
Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to listen to this bonus episode from spin-off podcast Forgotten Fairy Tales—and many more from Mattachine Meeting, Randy Wicker Radio, Infamous Crimes: White Night Riot Interviews, and more!
The very first pride march in the United States. Chicago, on Saturday, June 27, 1970.
Check out these free bonus pieces from season 3 & beyond:
Devlyn interviews Transparent creator Joey Soloway
March 4, 2022
SAY GAY 🍊
Anita Bryant & Ron DeSantis
March 14, 2022
Interview with Indiana LGBTQ+ historian Kelley Coures
January 18, 2023
Randy Wicker
& Marsha P. Johnson Papers
currently processing
Instagram @queerserial
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
JUNE 18, 2021
“It’s like living under a Soviet regime here, the guards, the soldiers, the agents provocateur on the parts of the police—you’ve seen the roughing up. There’s very little that we can say after those pictures…”
—Gore Vidal covering the “police riot” on ABC, August 28, 1968. 📺
🎧 S3 E9 “Mattachine Millenia”
📸 Grant Park, Chicago. August 28, 1968.
📸 Tear gas outside the Conrad Hilton Hotel during the Democratic National Convention, 1968. @chicagosuntimes
📸 CPD doing what they do best, terrorizing Chicago. Grant Park, August 28, 1968.
📸 Entrance to the International Amphitheatre, host of the ’68 DNC. Corbis.
📸 @chicagotribune
#1968DNC #historypodcast #defundthepolice
JUNE 14, 2021
“Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” 📺
🎧 If you love TV history as much as you love queer history (like me) then check out today’s new episode. Gay author Gore Vidal debates conservative magazine editor William Buckley through the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
📸 Gore Vidal (adorable) reading what is apparently a letter from Robert Kennedy to Buckley in which Kennedy says, “Let’s give Gore Vidal to the Viet Cong.” Vidal jokes directly to camera, “Whether you forged it or not, I don’t know… I put nothing beyond you.”
🎥 Again, this documentary is a beautiful blend of TV history and queer history.
💖 Vidal’s face the moment Buckley calls him a queer.
JUNE 20, 2021
“In the face of student rebellion, this is the only kind of education at the moment that seems to work.” 🔥
🎧 As heard in S3 E9: the Columbia University protests, one of many protests against racism and the Vietnam War in 1968, and yet another peaceful demonstration turned to chaos by police.
📸 Columbia student Juan González speaks out during the protests, Columbia University Archives.
📸 A scene from the student uprising, April 1968. Photo by Larry Fink.
📸 Police bust the protesters, April 30, 1968. Photo by Charles Ruppmann.
📸 Former SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael and chairman H. Rap Brown. AP.
📸 Protest at Mathematics Hall, one of five Columbia University buildings that students took over in 1968. Photo by William E. Sauro.
📸 Protesters outside the barricaded Hamilton Hall, dubbed “Malcolm X University,” on April 27, 1968. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
📸 Sign in the arms of Goddess Athena, their Alma Mater sculpture on the steps leading to Low Memorial Library. Photo by Larry Fink.
📸 Student protesters, including former Columbia student and Student Afro-American Society leader Raymond Brown, second from left. Photo by Richard Howard.
📸 Police outside Hamilton Hall, ending the month-long student strike, May 22, 1968. Photo by Larry C. Morris.
📸 “Liberated Area. JOIN US.” Photo by Catherine Ursillo.
JUNE 17, 2021
“It’s not always like it happens in plays. Not all faggots bump themselves off at the end of the story.” 💋
🎧 S3 E9 Mart Crowley’s “Boys in the Band” opens Off-Broadway!
🎭 1968 Off-Broadway poster, image by Friedman-Abeles @nypl
🎥 1970 film poster, and a few frames. Directed by William Friedkin. I fucking love this movie.
Season 3 Bonus episode
SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
1968 & 2020
w/ Chicago Gay Liberation's
Gary Chichester
NEW bonus episode!! How did we go from this ➡️ to this? During 2020’s marches, I called up a Chicago Gay Liberation activist who was at the first gay march in 1970 — because he was radicalized by the “police riot” at the 1968 DNC. 🐽
tons of bonus episodes on patreon, link in bio!! 💖
Hear the full story of that first Stonewall anniversary march in the upcoming Queer Serial SERIES FINALE 😳
Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to listen to this bonus episode from spin-off podcast Forgotten Fairy Tales—and many more from Mattachine Meeting, Randy Wicker Radio, Infamous Crimes: White Night Riot Interviews, and more!
BLACK POWER
JUNE 19, 2021
“Black is Beautiful, baby.” 💖
As heard on the pod recently, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell explains Black Power, 1968.
JUNE 19, 2021
🎥 Black Power chants, 1968.
Chicago! Join the June 23 protest in support of ECPS—legislation for police accountability—at the Thompson Center at 9AM. @caarprnow for more info! 💥
AUGUST 30, 2021
“I think we’re living through the end of a doctrine—the doctrine of white supremacy. We are living through the last days of the white Christian European dominance.”
James Baldwin on CBC’s “The Way It Is,” 1968.
AUGUST 3, 2021
Former editor of “The Ladder” and co-organizer of the Annual Reminder pickets Barbara Gittings on the influence of the Civil Rights movement during the homophile era of gay activism.
📺 Episode 1 of “Our Time,” a gay news and documentary series on WNYC-TV produced by Marcia Pally and Vito Russo, 1983.
JUNE 14, 2021
💥 “Let’s question everything. The whole perception of reality I was raised with is fucked up, totally crazy, certifiably insane.” 💥
🎧 S3 E9 “Mattachine Millennia” ✌🏼Martha Shelley joins the Movement.
📸 Martha Shelley at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, Greenwich Village (also appearing in this episode!), 1969. Diana Davies. @nypl
JUNE 17, 2021
☀️ “Being gay blows the barriers on sexuality. The civil rights movement blows the barriers on who we get to be friends with and make our lives with. The women’s movement is challenging our roles in this society.”
🎧 S3 E9 Helen Sandoz’s final issue of “The Ladder,” and I think the last issue subtitled “A Lesbian Review.” Now on to the magazine’s final era…
JUNE 16, 2021
🌟 “It’s fun being Sylvia, it’s fun playing the game.”
🎧 Sylvia Rivera returns in this week’s new episode!
📸 Sylvia Rivera, 1970. Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen. @nypl
The annual reminder
JUNE 20, 2021
Happy Pride month! 🏳️🌈
As recently heard on the podcast, here is the 4th Annual Reminder picket (the original annual event before marches and parades) at Independence Hall in 1968, shot by Mattachine Society of Washington newsletter editor & founder of the Washington Blade Lilli Vincenz. (See recent posts about her in early May.)
🎥 “The Second Largest Minority” @librarycongress
JUNE 20, 2021
“American homosexuals call for the completion of the American Revolution!” 💥
🎧 S3 E9 Homophiles march in the 4th Annual Reminder picket!
📸 Craig Rodwell on the left, photo by Randy Wicker. @nypl
JUNE 18, 2021
The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opened in this week’s new episode! 📚 In its radical newsletter, hear the owner, Craig Rodwell, openly criticize the new mafia gay bar in his neighborhood, The Stone Wall Inn. 💥
📸 Bookshop staff (Rodwell third from left), June 1983. Unknown photographer. @nypl
📸 Craig Rodwell in the bookshop, c. 1970s. Photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen. @nypl
📸 Staff in 1977. Photo by Diana Davies. @nypl
📸 Jonathan Katz signing copies of “Gay American History,” a resource for the pod! 1976. Photo by Diana Davies. @nypl; Harvey Fierstein signing copies of “Torch Song Trilogy,” 1982. Photo by Diana Davies. @nypl
📸 Grafitti in the bookshop bathroom, 1969. Photo by Diana Davies. @nypl
📸 Rodwell and his mother, c. 1970s; Rodwell leaning in his bookshop c. 1971 Photos by Kay Tobin Lahusen. @nypl; Rodwell outside the bookshop, 1969. Photographer unknown. @nypl
📸 The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, c. 1980s. Photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon. Photo at nyclgbtsites.org.
📸 Tennessee Williams, Craig Rodwell, and the staff, 1976. Photo by Barbara Gluck. @nypl
JULY 22, 2021
𝚅𝙸𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁𝚈 𝙵𝙾𝚁 𝙷𝙾𝙼𝙾𝚂𝙴𝚇𝚄𝙰𝙻𝚂 💥
🗞 MSNY Newsletter from the month of the Stonewall uprising. The essay on page 10 became the season 3 mini episode. 🎉
Don’t change that dial! 📻 We finally made it “from the beginning to Stonewall.” Coming soon, a series finale special detailing gay liberation’s wild year following the uprising. Catch up now! 😘