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{{short description|French-American gay rights activist}}
Fred Sargeant (b. 1948) is an American ] activist. He is a veteran of the 1969 ] and was a co-organizer of the first ] march and celebration.
{{About|the gay rights activist|the footballer|Fred Sargent}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2020}}
{{Infobox person
|name = Fred Sargeant
|image = Fred Sargeant.jpg
|caption =
|birth_date = {{Birth date and age|mf=y|1948|07|29}}
|birth_name = Frédéric André Sargeant
|birth_place = ], France
|known_for = Participant in the Stonewall riots and co-proposer and organizer of the first annual ] March
|occupation = Police officer (retired)
|nationality = American and French (dual citizenship)
|website = {{URL|https://fredsargeant.com}}
}}


'''Frédéric André Sargeant''' (born July 29, 1948)<ref name="Armati">{{harvnb|Armati|2019}}</ref> is a ] ] activist and a former lieutenant with the ], ] Police Department.<ref name="Sargeant 2009">{{harvnb|Sargeant|2009}}</ref> He participated in each of the nights of the 1969 ] and was one of the four co-founders of the first ] march in ] in 1970. He was vice-chairman of the Homophile Youth Movement at the time.<ref>{{harvnb|Pitts|1969}}</ref>
Sargeant is a retired lieutenant of the ] Police Department.


== Early life == ==Early life==
].|alt=]]
Sargeant grew up in Connecticut (1) and moved to New York City at age nineteen, (Pitman) There, he met and began dating ], who had recently opened New York's only gay bookstore, the ] in ]. The bookstore was a gathering place for young gay activists, and soon Sargeant was helping to run the store and had become an active member of the ] that sought equal rights for homosexuals in the United States. (1)

Sargeant was born in ], France, to an American ] father and a French mother.<ref name=Armati /> He grew up in Connecticut.<ref name="Fitz19">{{harvnb|Fitzsimons|2019}}</ref>

Sargeant moved to New York City at age nineteen.<ref>{{harvnb|Pitman|2019|p=vii}}</ref> There, he met and began dating ], who had recently opened what was then the country's only gay bookstore, the ] in ]. The bookshop was a gathering place for young gay activists, and soon Sargeant was managing the store and had become an active member of the ] (HYMN), which operated out of it.<ref name=Fitz19 />


== Stonewall riots == == Stonewall riots ==
''Main article: ]'' {{Main|Stonewall riots}}
]
After 1&nbsp;a.m.<ref>{{harvnb|Duberman|1994|p=192}}</ref> on Saturday, June 28, 1969, Sargeant and ] were returning from dinner at a friend's home and were passing the ], a gay bar and club owned by a member of the ]. They saw a crowd of about 75 people gathered outside the Inn and a police car in front, and were told the club had been raided. As police emerged from inside the Stonewall leading a customer, someone began throwing coins at the officers and others joined in throwing objects and yelling insults, eventually forcing the police to retreat back into the building and call for reinforcements.<ref name=Fitz19/> A full-scale riot broke out between the responding Tactical Patrol Force and the crowd that lasted for several hours, with Sargeant and Rodwell staying until the sun came up.<ref>{{harvnb|Duberman|1994|p=200}}</ref>

In a radio interview that he gave to WBAI's New Symposium II days after the riot, Sargeant was asked what had set the crowd off and replied:

{{blockquote|The kids felt that some of the other kids were being kept inside and being beaten up by the police. I don't know whether it really happened that way or not, but the rumor spread.<ref>{{harvnb|Carter|2005|p=149}}</ref>}}

At dawn, the couple went back to their apartment, where Rodwell and Sargeant began writing the first of many leaflets calling for the gay community to seize the moment and stand up to the corrupt police and the mafia who controlled their neighborhoods.<ref name="Who"/> After returning to the Stonewall again for a second night of rioting on Saturday evening,<ref>{{harvnb|Duberman|1994|pp=201–206}}</ref> they released the first leaflet on Sunday, June 29, 1969.<ref name=Fitz19/>

The headline of the first leaflet read '''Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars''',<ref name="Who"/> and began,

{{blockquote|The nights of Friday, June 27, 1969 and Saturday, June 28, 1969 will go down in history as the first time that thousands of Homosexual men and women went out into the streets to protest the intolerable situation which has existed in New York City for many years -- namely, the Mafia (or syndicate) control of this city's Gay bars in collusion with certain elements in the Police Dept. of the City of New York. The demonstrations were triggered by a Police raid on the Stonewall Inn late Friday night, June 27th. The purported reason for the raid was the Stonewall's lack of a liquor license. <u>Who's kidding whom</u>? Can anybody really believe that an operation as big as the Stonewall could continue for almost 3 years just a few blocks from the 6th Precinct house without having a liquor license? <u>No</u>! The Police have known about the Stonewall operation all along. What has happened is the presence of new "brass" in the 6th Precinct which has vowed to "drive the fags out of the Village."<ref name="Pitman 2019 105">{{harvnb|Pitman|2019|p=105}}</ref>
|author= Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars}}

The flyer continues with details about the corruption in the police department, the alliance between some cops and organized crime, the need to legalize Gay bars, and ends with these demands:

{{blockquote|
# That Gay businessmen step forward and open Gay bars that will be run legally with competitive pricing and a healthy social atmosphere.
# That Homosexual men and women boycott places like the Stonewall. The only way, it seems, that we can get criminal elements out of the Gay bars is simply to make it unprofitable for them.
# That the Homosexual citizens of New York City, and concerned Heterosexuals, write to Mayor Lindsay demanding a thorough investigation and effective action to correct this intolerable situation.
|author= Homophile Youth Movement - HYMN<ref name="Pitman 2019 105">{{harvnb|Pitman|2019|p=105}}</ref>}}

Starting that Sunday, Rodwell and Sargeant, aided by a group of volunteers, distributed about 5,000 copies around the city.<ref name=Fitz19/>

==First Gay Pride march==
{{Main|Pride parade}}

As a member of Mattachine, ] had participated in July 4 'Annual Reminders' for gay rights at ] in Philadelphia. In an effort to make gay integration into society and the workforce seem non-threatening, Mattachine's ] insisted on conservative dress and behavior at the protests: women were required to wear skirts and men suits, and no displays of affection were allowed between participants. At the ] that was held just a week after the Stonewall riots began, Rodwell and other young activists balked at these restrictions, having come to the conclusion that more aggressive action was needed to achieve civil rights for gay people.<ref name="Fitz18">{{harvnb|Fitzsimons|2018}}</ref>

Five months after the Stonewall riots, in November 1969, the ] (ERCHO) convened in Philadelphia.<ref>{{harvnb|Duberman|1994|p=226}}</ref> At the conference, ] and Linda Rhodes of the lesbian activist group ] joined Rodwell and Sargeant in proposing the following resolution:

<blockquote>That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged—that of our fundamental human rights—be moved both in time and location. We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.<ref>{{harvnb|Kohler|2019}}</ref></blockquote>

Most of the preparation work was done by Sargeant, GLF members Michael Brown and Marty Nixon and Mattachine Society member ], who acted as treasurer.<ref>{{harvnb|Carter|2005|p=247}}</ref> They utilized the bookshop's mailing list to gather support and participants for the march and negotiated the details with over a dozen different gay advocacy groups including Lavender Menace and the ].<ref name=Fitz19 /> Starting in the winter of 1970, Sargeant headed the ] clearinghouse of materials for participating member organizations of the march, according to ERCHO Secretary Robert Angell's post of the November 1969 conference informational update.<ref>Frank Kameny papers, Library of Congress</ref>

On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, now considered the first ],<ref name=Fitz19 /> began with a few hundred participants in front of the Stonewall Inn. By the time it reached Sheep's Meadow in ] 50 blocks later, the marchers numbered in the thousands.<ref name=Fitz18 />

Sargeant marched at the front of the parade and as the only person there with a bullhorn,<ref>{{harvnb|Pitman|2019|p=148}}</ref> led the official chant: "Say it loud, gay is proud." He wrote in an article for '']'' in 2010:

<blockquote>At one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us. There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers.<ref>{{harvnb|Sargeant|2010}}</ref></blockquote>

==Current activism==
Sargeant supports the ],<ref name="tweet">{{harvnb|Sargeant|2020}}</ref> a group that describes its objective as "asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted", and states that such a right is threatened by "attempts to introduce confusion between biological ] and the notion of ]."<ref name="thetimes">{{Cite news |last=Hurst |first=Greg |date=24 October 2019 |title=Transgender dispute splits Stonewall |work=The Times |location=London |url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-dispute-splits-stonewall-535v3qnb0 |access-date=13 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Swerling|2019}}</ref>

Sargeant has protested at the Burlington VT Pride march in 2021 and 2022, carrying signs which read, "Gay Not Queer" "No Blackface/No Womanface." He was assaulted by transgender marchers during the Burlington VT 2022 Pride March. <ref name="Telegraph UK">{{Cite news |last=Manning |first=Sanchez |date=17 June 2024 |title= How trans fanatics tore Pride apart |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/17/pride-trans-activists-lgbt-debate-divided/ |access-date=18 November 2024}}</ref>

==Other work==
In 1971, Sargeant left New York and returned to Connecticut, where several years later, he decided to become a police officer: "I wanted to see if I could make a difference, and having seen the situation at Stonewall and how the NYPD handled that, I thought I could do it differently. Stonewall wasn't the only riot I saw. I'd been caught up in riots in the Village before and watched what the police did."<ref name="Who">{{harvnb|PBS |2010}}</ref> He went on to attain the rank of lieutenant with the Stamford Police Department before retiring.<ref name="Sargeant 2009"/>

==In media==
Sargeant appeared in the 2011 Peabody Award winning documentary film, ''].''<ref>{{harvnb|Sanders|2011}}</ref>

He wrote the foreword to the 2019 book ''The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets'', by Gayle E. Pitman.<ref>{{harvnb|Library of Congress}}</ref>


He appeared as a historic character in the 2022 graphic history ''The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights'', by Archie Bongiovanni.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bongiovanni |first1=Archie |title=History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights |date=24 May 2022 |publisher=First Second |isbn=978-1-250-88042-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rm9pEAAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref>
After midnight on June 28, 1969, Sargeant and Rodwell were returning from dinner at a friend's home and stopped to check on the bookshop, which was near the ], a gay bar and club owned by a member of the ]. They saw a crowd of about 75 people gathered outside the Inn and a police car in front, and were told the club had been raided. As police emerged from inside the Stonewall leading a customer, someone began throwing coins at the officers and others joined in, forcing the police to retreat back into the building as the raid turned into a riot. (1)


==Personal life==
At dawn, Sargeant and Rodwell went back to their apartment and began putting together the first of many leaflets, using the bookshop's photocopier to make copies they would distribute around Greenwich Village returning to the Stonewall the next evening for another night of protest.(1) The headline on that first leaflet read "Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars" and it began<blockquote>''The nights of Friday, June 27, 1969 and Saturday, June 28, 1969, will go down in history as the first time that thousands of homosexual men and women went out into the streets to protest the intolerable situation which has existed in New York City for many years - namely, the Mafia (or syndicate) control of this city's gay bars in collusion with certain elements in the Police Dept. of the City of New York. The demonstrations were triggered by a Police raid on the Stonewall Inn late Friday night, June 27th. The purported reason for the raid was the Stonewall's lack of a liquor license. <u>Who's kidding whom</u>?'' (Pitman)</blockquote>
He lives in Vermont with his husband, whom he married in 2010.<ref name="Who" /><ref name="Lindholm" />


== Gay pride == ==Honors and tributes==
In 2014, at the 44th annual ], Sargeant was honored as one of the founders of ]. Once again he led the march with a bullhorn.<ref name="Lindholm">{{harvnb|Lindholm|2014}}</ref>
As a member of the ], Rodwell had participated in annual


On June 18, 2019, Sargeant received an honorary award at the Association des Journalists LGBTQI Cote D'or in Paris, France.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.purepeople.com/article/out-d-or-2019-le-triomphe-de-bilal-hassani-heros-lgbti-de-l-annee_a340631/1 | title=Out d'or 2019 : Le triomphe de Bilal Hassani, héros LGBTI de l'année }}</ref>
The Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) convened in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1969, five months after Stonewall.(3) At the conference, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes of the lesbian activist group ] joined Rodwell and Sargeant in proposing a resolution for an annual NYC march to commemorate the anniversary of Stonewall, and a call for other cities around the country to hold parallel events on the same day.


== Citations ==
Once the resolution was approved, feminist and LGB activist ] of the ] became involved in coordinating the event and suggested that it be expanded to a week-long celebration.(3) Most of the preparation work was done by Sargeant, GLF members Michael Brown and Marty Nixon and Mattachine Society member Foster Gunnison, who acted as treasurer.(Carter) They utilized the bookshop's mailing list to gather support and participants for the march, applied for permits, and negotiated the details with over a dozen different gay advocacy groups including Lavender Menace and the ]. (1)
{{Reflist}}


== General sources ==
On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, now considered the first ] (1) set off
*{{Cite magazine |last=Armati |first=Lucas |date=June 2019 |title=Les gays se rebellent a Stonewall |url=https://www.causette.fr/interface/Causette-101-bd-doubles.pdf |magazine=Causette |location=Paris |publisher=Causette Media |access-date=June 24, 2020}}
*{{Cite news |last=Bollinger |first=Alex |date=May 18, 2020 |title="Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling continues support for extreme anti-transgender rhetoric |work=LGBTQ Nation |url=https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/05/harry-potter-author-j-k-rowling-continues-support-extreme-anti-transgender-tweets/ |access-date=June 28, 2020 }}
*{{Cite book |last=Bongiovanni |first=Archie. |title=The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights |publisher=First Second, Roaring Book Press |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-250-16835-1 |location=New York }}
*{{Cite book |last=Carter |first=David. |title=Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution |publisher=St. Martin's Griffin |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-3123-4269-2 |location=New York }}
*{{Cite book |last=Duberman |first=Martin. |title=Stonewall |publisher=Plume |year=1994 |isbn=978-0-4522-7206-4 |location=New York }}
*{{Cite news |last=Fitzsimons |first=Tim |date=October 5, 2018 |title=LGBTQ History Month: The road to America's first gay pride march |work=NBC News |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-history-month-road-america-s-first-gay-pride-march-n917096 |access-date=May 2, 2020 }}
*{{Cite news |last=Fitzsimons |first=Tim |date=June 3, 2019 |title=#Pride 50: Fred Sargeant - Co-organizer of first NYC Pride March |work=NBC News |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/pride50-fred-sargeant-organizer-first-nyc-pride-march-n1008111 |access-date=April 29, 2020 }}
*{{Cite web |last=Kohler |first=Will |date=May 5, 2019 |title=Forgotten Gay Heroes - Craig Rodwell: The Father of PRIDE |url=http://www.back2stonewall.com/2019/05/forgotten-gay-heroes-craig-rodwell-the-father-of-pride.html |access-date=May 4, 2020 |website=Back2Stonewall}}
*{{Cite web |last=Library of Congress |title=Library of Congress Catalog Record for The Stonewall Riots: coming out in the streets |url=https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=pitman+stonewall&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&searchType=0&recCount=25&sk=en_US |access-date=May 13, 2020 |website=LC Catalog}}
*{{Cite web |last=Lindholm |first=Jane |date=June 26, 2014 |title=Vermonter to be Honored at New York's Gay Pride Parade |url=https://www.vpr.org/post/vermonter-be-honored-new-yorks-gay-pride-parade |access-date=May 5, 2020 |website=Vermont Public Radio}}
*{{Cite web |last=PBS |date=2010 |title=Who was at Stonewall? |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-participants/ |access-date=May 5, 2020 |website=American Experience}}
*{{Cite news |last=Petter |first=Olivia |date=October 24, 2019 |title=LGB Alliance group faces criticism for being transphobic |work=The Independent |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lgb-alliance-group-transphobic-alison-bailey-lesbian-gay-bisexual-a9169091.html |access-date=July 1, 2020 }}
*{{Cite web | last=Pitts | first=Charles | date=1969 | title=Interview with Fred Sargeant on WBAI Radio | access-date=October 4, 2022 | website=Fred Sargeant | url=https://fredsargeant.com/audio}}
*{{Cite book |last=Pitman |first=Gayle E.. |title=The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets |publisher=Abrams Books for Young Readers |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-4197-3720-6 |location=New York }}
*{{Cite AV media |url=http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C9A3B5DB7A6848F7B5F9858C106C6854 |title=Stonewall Uprising Interviews: Interview with Fred Sargeant |date=2011 |last=Sanders |first=Kate (producer) |language=English |series=American Experience |access-date=May 12, 2020 |medium=videotape}}
*{{Cite news |last=Sargeant |first=Fred |date=June 22, 2010 |title=1970: A First-Person Account of the First Gay Pride March |work=The Village Voice |url=https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/22/1970-a-first-person-account-of-the-first-gay-pride-march/ |access-date=April 25, 2020 }}
*{{Cite news |last=Sargeant |first=Fred |date=June 25, 2009 |title=Anger Management |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/opinion/26sargeant.html?ref=opinion |access-date=April 24, 2020 }}
*{{Cite web |last=Sargeant |first=Fred |date=April 8, 2020 |title=8 April 2020 |url=https://mobile.twitter.com/FredSargeant/status/1248039927222276101 |access-date=June 28, 2020 }}
*{{Cite news |last=Swerling |first=Gabriella |date=October 23, 2019 |title=Trans dispute prompts new gay faction to break with Stonewall |work=The Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/23/stonewall-splits-accused-promoting-trans-agenda-expense-gay/ |access-date=June 28, 2020 }}


==External links==
Sargeant marched at the front of the parade and as the only person there with a bullhorn, (Pitman) led the official chant: "Say it loud, gay is proud".(3) He wrote in an article for the Village Voice in 2010:<blockquote>''"At one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us. There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers." (2)''</blockquote>
* {{Official website}}
* {{Twitter}}
* {{IMDb name|5281083}}
* on the Stonewall uprising, pre-Stonewall activism, the first Pride March, Vermont incident, and current issues in the community. Oct 11, 2022


{{DEFAULTSORT:Sargeant, Fred}}
== Personal life ==
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Latest revision as of 04:10, 15 January 2025

French-American gay rights activist This article is about the gay rights activist. For the footballer, see Fred Sargent.

Fred Sargeant
BornFrédéric André Sargeant
(1948-07-29) July 29, 1948 (age 76)
Fontainebleau, France
NationalityAmerican and French (dual citizenship)
OccupationPolice officer (retired)
Known forParticipant in the Stonewall riots and co-proposer and organizer of the first annual Gay Pride March
Websitefredsargeant.com

Frédéric André Sargeant (born July 29, 1948) is a French-American gay rights activist and a former lieutenant with the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department. He participated in each of the nights of the 1969 Stonewall riots and was one of the four co-founders of the first NYC Pride March march in Manhattan in 1970. He was vice-chairman of the Homophile Youth Movement at the time.

Early life

A 1968 magazine advertisement for the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. Pictured are Fred Sargeant (left) and Craig Rodwell.

Sargeant was born in Fontainebleau, France, to an American G.I. father and a French mother. He grew up in Connecticut.

Sargeant moved to New York City at age nineteen. There, he met and began dating Craig Rodwell, who had recently opened what was then the country's only gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village. The bookshop was a gathering place for young gay activists, and soon Sargeant was managing the store and had become an active member of the Homophile Youth Movement (HYMN), which operated out of it.

Stonewall riots

Main article: Stonewall riots
The flyer that Sargent and Rodwell distributed around NYC after the second night of the Stonewall riots

After 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969, Sargeant and Rodwell were returning from dinner at a friend's home and were passing the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar and club owned by a member of the Genovese crime family. They saw a crowd of about 75 people gathered outside the Inn and a police car in front, and were told the club had been raided. As police emerged from inside the Stonewall leading a customer, someone began throwing coins at the officers and others joined in throwing objects and yelling insults, eventually forcing the police to retreat back into the building and call for reinforcements. A full-scale riot broke out between the responding Tactical Patrol Force and the crowd that lasted for several hours, with Sargeant and Rodwell staying until the sun came up.

In a radio interview that he gave to WBAI's New Symposium II days after the riot, Sargeant was asked what had set the crowd off and replied:

The kids felt that some of the other kids were being kept inside and being beaten up by the police. I don't know whether it really happened that way or not, but the rumor spread.

At dawn, the couple went back to their apartment, where Rodwell and Sargeant began writing the first of many leaflets calling for the gay community to seize the moment and stand up to the corrupt police and the mafia who controlled their neighborhoods. After returning to the Stonewall again for a second night of rioting on Saturday evening, they released the first leaflet on Sunday, June 29, 1969.

The headline of the first leaflet read Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars, and began,

The nights of Friday, June 27, 1969 and Saturday, June 28, 1969 will go down in history as the first time that thousands of Homosexual men and women went out into the streets to protest the intolerable situation which has existed in New York City for many years -- namely, the Mafia (or syndicate) control of this city's Gay bars in collusion with certain elements in the Police Dept. of the City of New York. The demonstrations were triggered by a Police raid on the Stonewall Inn late Friday night, June 27th. The purported reason for the raid was the Stonewall's lack of a liquor license. Who's kidding whom? Can anybody really believe that an operation as big as the Stonewall could continue for almost 3 years just a few blocks from the 6th Precinct house without having a liquor license? No! The Police have known about the Stonewall operation all along. What has happened is the presence of new "brass" in the 6th Precinct which has vowed to "drive the fags out of the Village."

— Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars

The flyer continues with details about the corruption in the police department, the alliance between some cops and organized crime, the need to legalize Gay bars, and ends with these demands:

  1. That Gay businessmen step forward and open Gay bars that will be run legally with competitive pricing and a healthy social atmosphere.
  2. That Homosexual men and women boycott places like the Stonewall. The only way, it seems, that we can get criminal elements out of the Gay bars is simply to make it unprofitable for them.
  3. That the Homosexual citizens of New York City, and concerned Heterosexuals, write to Mayor Lindsay demanding a thorough investigation and effective action to correct this intolerable situation.
— Homophile Youth Movement - HYMN

Starting that Sunday, Rodwell and Sargeant, aided by a group of volunteers, distributed about 5,000 copies around the city.

First Gay Pride march

Main article: Pride parade

As a member of Mattachine, Craig Rodwell had participated in July 4 'Annual Reminders' for gay rights at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In an effort to make gay integration into society and the workforce seem non-threatening, Mattachine's Frank Kameny insisted on conservative dress and behavior at the protests: women were required to wear skirts and men suits, and no displays of affection were allowed between participants. At the Annual Reminder that was held just a week after the Stonewall riots began, Rodwell and other young activists balked at these restrictions, having come to the conclusion that more aggressive action was needed to achieve civil rights for gay people.

Five months after the Stonewall riots, in November 1969, the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) convened in Philadelphia. At the conference, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes of the lesbian activist group Lavender Menace joined Rodwell and Sargeant in proposing the following resolution:

That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged—that of our fundamental human rights—be moved both in time and location. We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.

Most of the preparation work was done by Sargeant, GLF members Michael Brown and Marty Nixon and Mattachine Society member Foster Gunnison Jr., who acted as treasurer. They utilized the bookshop's mailing list to gather support and participants for the march and negotiated the details with over a dozen different gay advocacy groups including Lavender Menace and the Gay Activists Alliance. Starting in the winter of 1970, Sargeant headed the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations clearinghouse of materials for participating member organizations of the march, according to ERCHO Secretary Robert Angell's post of the November 1969 conference informational update.

On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, now considered the first NYC Pride March, began with a few hundred participants in front of the Stonewall Inn. By the time it reached Sheep's Meadow in Central Park 50 blocks later, the marchers numbered in the thousands.

Sargeant marched at the front of the parade and as the only person there with a bullhorn, led the official chant: "Say it loud, gay is proud." He wrote in an article for The Village Voice in 2010:

At one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us. There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers.

Current activism

Sargeant supports the LGB Alliance, a group that describes its objective as "asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted", and states that such a right is threatened by "attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender."

Sargeant has protested at the Burlington VT Pride march in 2021 and 2022, carrying signs which read, "Gay Not Queer" "No Blackface/No Womanface." He was assaulted by transgender marchers during the Burlington VT 2022 Pride March.

Other work

In 1971, Sargeant left New York and returned to Connecticut, where several years later, he decided to become a police officer: "I wanted to see if I could make a difference, and having seen the situation at Stonewall and how the NYPD handled that, I thought I could do it differently. Stonewall wasn't the only riot I saw. I'd been caught up in riots in the Village before and watched what the police did." He went on to attain the rank of lieutenant with the Stamford Police Department before retiring.

In media

Sargeant appeared in the 2011 Peabody Award winning documentary film, Stonewall Uprising.

He wrote the foreword to the 2019 book The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets, by Gayle E. Pitman.

He appeared as a historic character in the 2022 graphic history The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights, by Archie Bongiovanni.

Personal life

He lives in Vermont with his husband, whom he married in 2010.

Honors and tributes

In 2014, at the 44th annual NYC Pride March, Sargeant was honored as one of the founders of Gay Pride. Once again he led the march with a bullhorn.

On June 18, 2019, Sargeant received an honorary award at the Association des Journalists LGBTQI Cote D'or in Paris, France.

Citations

  1. ^ Armati 2019
  2. ^ Sargeant 2009
  3. Pitts 1969
  4. ^ Fitzsimons 2019
  5. Pitman 2019, p. vii
  6. Duberman 1994, p. 192
  7. Duberman 1994, p. 200
  8. Carter 2005, p. 149
  9. ^ PBS 2010
  10. Duberman 1994, pp. 201–206
  11. ^ Pitman 2019, p. 105
  12. ^ Fitzsimons 2018
  13. Duberman 1994, p. 226
  14. Kohler 2019
  15. Carter 2005, p. 247
  16. Frank Kameny papers, Library of Congress
  17. Pitman 2019, p. 148
  18. Sargeant 2010
  19. Sargeant 2020
  20. Hurst, Greg (October 24, 2019). "Transgender dispute splits Stonewall". The Times. London. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
  21. Swerling 2019
  22. Manning, Sanchez (June 17, 2024). "How trans fanatics tore Pride apart". Retrieved November 18, 2024.
  23. Sanders 2011
  24. Library of Congress
  25. Bongiovanni, Archie (May 24, 2022). History Comics: The Stonewall Riots: Making a Stand for LGBTQ Rights. First Second. ISBN 978-1-250-88042-0.
  26. ^ Lindholm 2014
  27. "Out d'or 2019 : Le triomphe de Bilal Hassani, héros LGBTI de l'année".

General sources

External links

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