TopIC II | the shattering Consensus 463As the Mafia owners were dragged out one by one and shoved into the wagon,
the crowd would let out Bronx cheers and jeers and clapping. Someone shouted
“Gay Power,” others took up the cry—and then it dissolved into giggles. A few
more gay prisoners—bartenders, hatcheck boys—a few more cheers, someone
starts singing “We Shall Overcome”—and then they started camping on it. A drag
queen is shoved into the wagon; she hits the cop over the head with her purse.
The cop clubs her. Angry stirring in the crowd. The cops, used to the cringing
and disorganization of the gay crowds, snort off. But the crowd doesn’t disperse.
Everyone is restless, angry and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even
has an attitude, but something’s brewing.
Some adorable butch hustler boy pulls up a parking meter, mind you, out of
the pavement, and uses it as a battering ram (a few cops are still inside the Wall,
locked in). The boys begin to pound at the heavy wooden double doors and win-
dows; glass shatters all over the street. Cries of “Liberate the Bar.” Bottles (from
hostile straights?) rain down from the apartment windows. Cries of “We’re the
Pink Panthers.” A mad Negro queen whirls like a dervish with a twisted piece of
metal in her hand and breaks the remaining windows. The door begins to give.
The cop turns a hose on the crowd (they’re still within the Wall). But they can’t
aim it properly, and the crowd sticks. Finally the door is broken down and the
kids, as though working to a prior plan, systematically dump refuse from the
waste cans into the Wall, squirting it with lighter fluid, and ignite it. Huge flashes
of flame and billows of smoke.
Now the cops in the paddy wagon return, and two fire engines pull up. Clubs
fly. The crowd retreats....Edmund White, Letter to Ann and Alfred Corn, “We’re Part of a Vast Rebellion of All the
Repressed,” Out History, http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/stonewall-riot-police-reports
/related-items/edmund-white-letter.pr ACTICINg historical Thinking
Identify: What similarities do you see between this letter and earlier documents
in this chapter?
Analyze: Compare the tone of White’s letter to that of H. Rap Brown’s speech
(Doc. 20.8). Explain the similarities and differences in purpose and tone.
Evaluate: How does this letter broaden the perspective of an increasingly diverse,
complex, and disjointed national identity?21_STA_2012_ch20_447-472.indd 463 16/04/15 6:13 PM