In 1969, the very existence of queer people was illegal in America.
They couldnt gather publicly.
They couldnt show affection without facing a nightstick.
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Mark Segal, 68, recalls.
It was the only place you could dance.
And when the cops tried to take that away?
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A movement was born.
What most people wanted to do was escape that.
I escaped to New York.
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I had no money, no prospects for work, had no idea what I was going to do.
Christopher Street was filled with stories like that.
Up until Stonewall, there really wasnt a gay community, Segal explains.
But there came a moment when enough was enough.
All the attacks on us we just went mad.
The evening of the riots was a hot New York summer night.
The cops arrived, as they often did, to shut the Stonewall down.
But this was different.
It was late, after midnight, when police typically left the establishment alone.
Segal was in the bar; Boyce was outside it.
Her heel hit his shoulder he went back a little.
You heard flesh and bone.
We were like, Wow, shekickedhim.
At that second, as Boyce puts it, something happened.
The cop retreated toward the bar.
The Stonewalls defenders grew.
The riot was on.
Can you just save me from the gay people?
Neither Boyce nor Segal felt fear amid the intensity.
It was the most joyous riot youve ever seen.
We were fighting back against 2,000 years of repression.
We were finally able to say out loud, Im gay!
To Boyce, now a retired NYC chef, it felt less joyous than important.
It looked like a lithograph of John Brown, the abolitionist.
The fire in that queens eyes.
I didnt know she had such fire in her.
Segal became an activist on the first night of Stonewall.
Everybody thinks of Stonewall as one night, he says.
It was one year.
We united that was so difficult, says Segal, a journalist now living in Philadelphia.
We were taking back our own identity.
That had never been done before.
Celebrate 50 years of gay pride withEntertainment Weeklysspecial LGBTQ double issue, on stands Friday.
