In the early 2000s, Michelle Folmar, a lesbian Denver police officer, traveled to New York with a friend, and while staying at the Chelsea Hotel an older woman invited them into her apartment-style room, where she regaled them with stories about her life as an entertainer and drag artist.
Folmar noticed a picture of a young black woman punching a police officer.
“Were you around for Stonewall?” Folmar asked.
The woman answered, “Thatap me.”
Folmar was face to face with Storme DeLarverie, the butch lesbian widely credited with throwing the first punch at the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City when gay people, who were tired of being arrested, fought against the police.
The riots would become a flash point in the contemporary gay rights movement, leading others across the country to push for equal rights in their communities. In Denver, it would inspire a 1973 gay revolt at City Council, where activists forced the city repeal its anti-gay laws.
On that day in New York, Folmar told DeLarverie that she was a police officer and joked, “Do you want to give me one in the kisser?
DeLarverie did not. “I’m glad you made it,” she said.
The exchange illustrates the strides gay people have made in society, including the ability to be open and still serve in an institution that once arrested gay people rather than employ them. DeLarverie, who punched a cop, paved the way for Folmar to become one.
“She and her generation blew open the doors,” Folmar said.
This weekend, the progress will be celebrated at Denver PrideFest, which will commemorate the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn. The occasion is leading LGBTQ people, especially those who are older, to reflect on the moment and how much has changed during their lifetimes.
The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and, like many gay establishments at the time, it was a target of police vice squads.
The uprising happened June 28, 1969, when the police arrived and the bar patrons, who were fed up with the discrimination, fought back as police hauled people out of the bar. Violent clashes and protests erupted.
It was a watershed moment for the gay rights movement, said David Duffield, history director for The Center on Colfax, an LGBTQ advocacy organization in Denver.
“Generations are still being affected by the period of gay liberation,” Duffield said.
For older generations of LGBTQ people, Stonewall was a pivotal moment in their lives, even if they did not immediately realize it at the time.
Kris McDaniel-Miccio, a University of Denver Sturm College of Law professor, was a teenager when Stonewall happened, but she remembers it “like it was yesterday.”
She lived in the Bronx at the time, and she read through every newspaper in the city to learn about the event.
“I just ate it up, because I knew what they were doing was going to help me,” she said. “I felt incredibly proud.”
Stonewall influenced McDaniel-Miccio to dedicate her life to activism. She was one of the plaintiffs who successfully sued in 2014 to end Colorado’s same-sex marriage ban.
Judith Blair, 77, who lives in Boulder, didn’t know about Stonewall until years after it happened. She came out at age 13 in 1955, a profoundly difficult time to be gay. The consensus at the time was that gay people were mentally ill and sexually predatory, and she believed that she would never be able to live a normal life.
She moved to Los Angeles from Dayton, Ohio, in her 20s and lived a more open life, getting involved with gay activism. But news about Stonewall didn’t reach her on the West Coast, and she didn’t learn about it until she marched in her first pride parade in 1975.
“None of us knew anything about anybody else,” Blair said.
Witnessing the rise of the LGBTQ rights movement has been thrilling, she said.
“I wasn’t sure I’d see it in my life,” she said.
But Blair cautioned the work is far from done. “We need to come together and keep going,” she said.
When Don McMaster read about Stonewall in the The Denver Post, he was in the closet.
“I remember reading about it and in an odd way wishing I had been there, and at the same time trying to think, that’s not about me,” said McMaster, 71.
McMaster was struggling with the idea of being a gay man because of the negative connotations associated with it at the time. He tried everything from psychoanalysis to religion to change himself, with no success. Things got so bad that he began contemplating suicide.
Not knowing what to do, he one day looked up “gay” in the phone book and found the Gay Coalition of Denver. The phone line rotated between the houses of different members, and the man who picked up, Craig Henderson, listened to McMaster’s desperation.
They met for coffee the next week, and Henderson became a father figure to McMaster, teaching him about gay life and introducing him to other gay people.
“Everything in my life as a gay man I owe to Craig,” McMaster said.
The Gay Coalition of Denver was instrumental in the 1973 gay revolt, which became known as Denver’s own Stonewall moment.
At the time in Denver, hundreds of gay men were being arrested for indecent behavior for holding hands, dancing together or cross-dressing. The coalition filed a lawsuit against the city, and hundreds of supporters came to speak at a City Council meeting that October.
At first, the council president wouldn’t allow the group to present its findings. But council member Irving Hook demanded they be allowed to speak and to show data on the number of people being arrested. The group’s members spoke for hours about the discrimination they faced.
The following month, City Council repealed Denver’s anti-gay ordinances.
“It was our Stonewall,” Gerald Gerash said.
Gerash was one of the founding members of the coalition, and filed the lawsuit against the city. He later helped found the city’s LGBT center, which is now The Center on Colfax.
When Donaciano Martinez heard about Denver’s gay revolt, he was electrified.
Martinez was a member of the Colorado Springs chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, which local gay people founded after Stonewall. For Martinez, the Denver revolt was “even more uplifting and encouraging.”
Martinez later moved to Denver and continued a lifetime of involvement in LGBTQ, Chicano and anti-war activism. Every year he marches in the PrideFest parade with a sign proclaiming “I have marched for justice since 1965.”
Gerash was involved in national gay activism through his work in the National Lawyers Guild, and said that what Denver was doing at the time for gay rights was much more advanced than other cities. Though many people are no longer aware of it, he said Denver was a leader in the gay rights movement.
“I call it the best-kept secret of gay liberation,” Gerash said.
