1/ This Sunday's thread on the Golden anniversary of Pride must be, of course, about the same-sex rights activist, trailblazer & Pride creator, Craig Rodwell. Craig's activism began years before the Stonewall riots and continued throughout his lifetime of remarkable achievements

2/ Craig's activism began in his mid teens. His confrontations with law enforcement at a time when gay men feared interaction with the law is the stuff of legends. On one occasion, during a brief hold by police, they shaved his head to intimidate him. That didn't work.

3/ In his late teens, Craig moved to NYC from the Chicago area and quickly joined MattachineNY. He brought the eventual longtime president of the organization, Dick Leitsch, into Mattachine.

Craig was a participant in NYC's first gay (read: gay & lesbian) demonstration at...

4/ ... the Whitehall Induction Center on September 19, 1964. In 1965, he participated in the first gay demonstration at the White House. From there, again in 1965, Craig went on to conceive of what was to be a five year series of picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia..

5/ ... called the Annual Reminder. In 1966, he participated in the Julius's Bar Sip In, designed after the early civil rights Sit Ins in the South. The NY State Liquor Authority then had a law that prohibited the serving of drinks to homosexuals in bars. That denial of...

6/ ... service led to the first successful legal challenge of any anti-gay law in the country. In 1967, Craig left MattachineNY & founded the Homophile Youth Movement. At the same time, he opened the first gay and lesbian bookshop in the world, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop.

7/ I met Craig at the bookshop in 1968 and we fell in love. We soon rented an apartment at 350 Bleecker Street, 3V, which quickly became Craig's secondary base of operations. I joined him in working at the bookshop. In an almost prescient way, our apartment overlooked the...

8/ ... rear of the NYPD's Sixth Precinct.

Early in the morning of June 28,1969, we were walking home along Waverly Place and could see an unusual number of people gathered in the area directly in front of the Stonewall Inn. We learned that a police raid was underway as we...

9/ ... joined the group. We were standing at the curb directly across the street as a police paddy wagon arrived. The police began to bring out the arrestees and the crowd began to yell. One butch lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who was struggling against being led to the...

10/ ... paddy wagon, was about 5-6 feet away from us & cried out, "Why don't you guys do something?" The already angry crowd reacted and the first night of the Stonewall riots began. Craig's baritone voice shouted, "Gay Power!" We remained throughout the night, returning to...

11/ ... the apartment at dawn. Craig began to work on a leaflet calling for a demonstration that night to protest the police action earlier, for distribution by HYM members.

That night, still June 28, an even larger crowd gathered and police reinforcements from the Tactical...

12/ ... Patrol Force created the next night of rioting.

Craig produced more leaflets during the days of the Stonewall riots. We all protested throughout the riots over the rampant police corruption and involvement with Mafia control of gay bars. The riots ended on Wednesday...

13/ ... night and, as gay rights activist Jerry Hoose noted, we felt letdown. Not so, Craig. He was only just getting started.

We were finalizing plans on Thursday for a bus to bring picketers to the fifth Annual Reminder in Philadelphia on Friday. Craig wanted to keep the...

14/ ... bookshop open for people who were for looking information concerning the riots and meetings occurring all over the city about the next steps we all wanted to see taken. Rotary phones, leaflets and word of mouth were the social media of that time. He told me before he...

15/ ... left that would be the last Annual Reminder and that we would be doing something else the next year to commemorate the Stonewall riots. When he returned he set about working with pre-Stonewall militants and the energized newcomers to the gay liberation movement.

16/ Meetings continued through the summer and fall. On the 2nd of November, Craig's proposal for a commemorative march on the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots was approved at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations annual meeting in Philadelphia.

17/ We returned and the meetings began of the Christopher Street Liberation Day Umbrella Committee, many at our apartment. Craig struggled to get people to regularly attend through the winter and spring. Mainstays like Michael Brown, Marty Nixon and Marty Robinson were...

18/ ... essential. The date of the march arrived and it went off well. The crowd was beyond our expectations.

A few years later the CSLDUC acceded to the West Village business community's request that rather than starting in the WV and ending in Central Park, that the march...

19/ ... start uptown and end in the WV. Craig objected to delivery the gay community on a platter to the still existent Mafia bars and, upon approval of the proposal, Craig quit the committee.

In 1973, Craig moved the bookshop from its original location at 291 Mercer Street...

20/ ... to 15 Christopher Street, opposite Gay Street.

Craig went on to lead the change in the Christian Science Church's homophobic policies in later years.

You can learn much more about Craig's lifelong activism in his surprisingly good Wikipedia...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Rodwell

21/ ... article. Craig passed away on June 18, 1993 of stomach cancer. Thankfully, he never saw the Amazon elimination of his bookshop nearly 16 years later in 2009.

I miss him.