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Revision as of 05:13, 4 May 2020 by Lilipo25 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Fred Sargeant (b. 1948) is an American gay rights activist. He is a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall riots and was a co-organizer of the first Gay Pride march and celebration.
Sargeant is a retired lieutenant of the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department.
Early activism
Sargeant grew up in Connecticut (1) and moved to New York City at age nineteen, (Pitman) There, he met and began dating Craig Rodwell, who had recently opened New York's only gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village. 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 Homophile Youth Movement that sought equal rights for homosexuals in the United States. (1)
Stonewall riots
Main article: Stonewall riots
After midnight on June 28, 1969, Sargeant and Rodwell were returning from dinner at a friend's home and passed 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, forcing the police to retreat back into the building as the raid turned into a riot. (1)
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 after 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: "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." The flyer went on to call for gay businessmen to open gay bars that would be run legally and provide a "healthy social atmosphere", and urged the gay community to boycott mafia-run bars and clubs.(Pitman)
Gay pride
As a member of the Mattachine Society, Rodwell had participated in annual
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 Lavender Menace 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.
Once the resolution was approved, feminist and LGB activist Brenda Howard of the Gay Liberation Front 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 Gay Activists Alliance. (1)
On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, now considered the first NYC Pride March, (1) set off
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:
"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)
Personal life
References
Sources
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