Download or read book The Mafia and the Gays written by Phillip Crawford (Jr.) and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mafia historically controlled gay bars as part of their vice rackets in many cities across the United States including New York and Chicago due to their once illicit status. A common misunderstanding among the general public is that the wise guys were eliminated from the gay bars following the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. However, organized crime kept a hidden hand -- often through violent means resulting in a few murders -- in many watering holes for the gay community at least into the mid-1980s if not later. Indeed, the Mafia hijacked gay liberation for political cover and used so-called Auntie Gays -- the Uncle Toms of the gay community -- as frontmen for their bars to evade suspicion. The Mafia and the Gays provides a comprehensive look at the mob's involvement with gay bars including the iconic Continental Baths which had Colombo protection and the infamous Haymarket which was under Genovese control. The Mafia and the Gays relies upon an extensive collection of historical sources including FBI files many of which have not been publicly available until recently acquired by the author through the Freedom of Information Act. --Back cover.
Download or read book The Velvet Mafia written by Darryl W. Bullock and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Concentrating on the friendship between impresario Larry Parnes, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and showbiz solicitor David Jacobs, the book details how they shaped the Swinging 60s, along with their associates including songwriter Lionel Bart (author of the hit musical Oliver!), record producer Joe Meek, Sir Joseph Lockwood (the head of EMI), Vicki Wickham (manager of Dusty Springfield and assistant producer on the influential TV show Ready Steady Go), songwriter and record label head Norman Newell, Simon Napier-Bell (manager of Marc Bolan), Kit Lambert (manager of the Who), playwright Joe Orton, and Robert Stigwood (manager of the Bee Gees and Cream). Drawing on rare and unpublished archive material, personal diaries, and new interviews from some of the survivors of that turbulent decade, The Velvia Mafia shows how--in the period leading up to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality and the founding of the Gay Liberation movement--LGBT professionals in the music industry were working together, supporting each other and changing history."--Publisher description
Download or read book Stonewall written by David Carter and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Carter's Stonewall is the basis of the PBS American Experience documentary Stonewall Uprising. In 1969, a series of riots over police action against The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, changed the longtime landscape of the homosexual in society literally overnight. Since then the event itself has become the stuff of legend, with relatively little hard information available on the riots themselves. Now, based on hundreds of interviews, an exhaustive search of public and previously sealed files, and over a decade of intensive research into the history and the topic, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution brings this singular event to vivid life in this, the definitive story of one of history's most singular events. A Randy Shilts / Publishing Triangle Award Finalist "Riveting...Not only the definitive examination of the riots but an absorbing history of pre-Stonewall America, and how the oppression and pent-up rage of those years finally ignited on a hot New York night." - Boston Globe
Download or read book Celluloid Activist written by Michael Schiavi and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celluloid Activist is the biography of gay-rights giant Vito Russo, the man who wrote The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, commonly regarded as the foundational text of gay and lesbian film studies and one of the first to be widely read. But Russo was much more than a pioneering journalist and author. A founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and cofounder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Russo lived at the center of the most important gay cultural turning points in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. His life as a cultural Zelig intersects a crucial period of social change, and in some ways his story becomes the story of a developing gay revolution in America. A frequent participant at “zaps” and an organizer of Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) cabarets and dances—which gave the New York gay and lesbian community its first social alternative to Mafia-owned bars—Russo made his most enduring contribution to the GAA with his marshaling of “Movie Nights,” the forerunners to his worldwide Celluloid Closet lecture tours that gave gay audiences their first community forum for the dissection of gay imagery in mainstream film. Biographer Michael Schiavi unravels Vito Russo’s fascinating life story, from his childhood in East Harlem to his own heartbreaking experiences with HIV/AIDS. Drawing on archival materials, unpublished letters and journals, and more than two hundred interviews, including conversations with a range of Russo’s friends and family from brother Charlie Russo to comedian Lily Tomlin to pioneering activist and playwright Larry Kramer, Celluloid Activistprovides an unprecedented portrait of a man who defined gay-rights and AIDS activism. “Schiavi tells a compelling story in this biography—from his re-creation of life on the streets of East Harlem and in Greenwich Village of the 1960s and 1970s to the way he conveys Russo’s excitement about his film research and popular education to his account of the AIDS years in New York City.”—John D’Emilio, Italian American Review “In [Schiavi’s] hands Russo’s life is both fascinating in its own right and a window into a larger milieu of activism during two critical decades.”—Italian American Review Best Special Interest Books, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography, Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association
Download or read book In the Closet of the Vatican written by Frederic Martel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times Bestseller - Revised and Expanded "[An] earth-shaking exposé of clerical corruption" - National Catholic Reporter The arrival of Frédéric Martel's In the Closet of the Vatican, published worldwide in eight languages, sent shockwaves through the religious and secular world. The book's revelations of clericalism, hypocrisy, cover-ups and widespread homosexuality in the highest echelons of the Vatican provoked questions that the most senior Vatican officials--and the Pope himself--were forced to act upon; it would go on to become a New York Times bestseller. Now, almost a year after the book's first publication, Frédéric Martel reflects in a new foreword on the effect the book has had and the events that have come to light since it was first released. In the Closet of the Vatican describes the double lives of priests--including the cardinals living with their young "assistants" in luxurious apartments whilst professing humility and chastity--the cover-up of numerous cases of sexual abuse; sinister scheming in the Vatican; political conspiracy overseas in Argentina and Chile, and the resignation of Benedict XVI. From his unique position as a respected journalist with uninhibited access to some of the Vatican's most influential people and private spaces, Martel presents a shattering account of a system rotten to its very core.
Download or read book Gay Power written by Betsy Kuhn and published by Twenty-First Century Books. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Come out for freedom! Come out now! Power to the people! Gay power to gay people! Come out of the closet before the door is nailed shut!" —Come Out! magazine, November 14, 1969 On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. They intended to shut the bar down—part of the mayor's order to clean up illegal businesses. The cops didn't expect much trouble, especially not from the gay men and women dancing and socializing at the bar. At that time, most gay people were afraid to expose their homosexuality. They could be arrested for having sex with one another. They could lose their jobs just for being gay. By 1969 a few gay people had started to speak out. They had filed lawsuits and staged peaceful protest marches to call attention to discrimination against homosexuals. But when the police raided the Stonewall, the bar's customers decided to take a stronger stand. They hurled rocks and bricks at the police. They chanted "Gay Power." This uprising gave birth to a new liberation movement. Gay men and women organized, demonstrated for their rights, and celebrated their sexual identities. They opened gay bookstores, held gay dances, and lobbied politicians to change laws that discriminated against them. Most important, they no longer lived their lives in secret. In this riveting story, we'll explore the decades of discrimination and abuse that gay people endured in earlier eras. We’ll also learn how gay people continue to fight for equal rights and recognition.
Download or read book Homintern written by Gregory Woods and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a hugely ambitious study which crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity. Woods shines a revealing light on the diverse, informal networks of gay people in the arts and other creative fields. Uneasily called “the Homintern” (an echo of Lenin’s “Comintern”) by those suspicious of an international homosexual conspiracy, such networks connected gay writers, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, politicians, and spies. While providing some defense against dominant heterosexual exclusion, the grouping brought solidarity, celebrated talent, and, in doing so, invigorated the majority culture. Woods introduces an enormous cast of gifted and extraordinary characters, most of them operating with surprising openness; but also explores such issues as artistic influence, the coping strategies of minorities, the hypocrisies of conservatism, and the effects of positive and negative discrimination. Traveling from Harlem in the 1910s to 1920s Paris, 1930s Berlin, 1950s New York and beyond, this sharply observed, warm-spirited book presents a surpassing portrait of twentieth-century gay culture and the men and women who both redefined themselves and changed history.
Download or read book The Gay Agenda written by Ashley Molesso and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A joyful celebration of the LGBTQ+ community’s development, history, and culture, packed with facts, trivia, timelines, and charts, and featuring 100 full-color illustrations. Compiled and designed by queer power couple and illustrators extraordinaire, Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham, founders of the popular stationery company Ash + Chess, The Gay Agenda is an inviting and entertaining guide that pays tribute to the LGBTQ+ community. Filled with engaging descriptions, interesting facts, helpful features—such as historical queer icons and events and LGBTQ+ acronym definitions—this fabulous compendium illuminates the transformation of the community, highlighting its struggles, achievements, landmarks, and contributions. It also salutes iconic members of the LGBTQ+ community—the celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens who have made a notable impact on gay life and society itself. The Gay Agenda is a nostalgic look back for older generations, an archive for younger people, and a helpful introduction for those interested in learning more about the community and its contributions. From James Baldwin and Emma Goldman to Marsha P. Johnson and Jodie Foster; the Pink Triangle and the Rainbow Flag to Stonewall and the AIDS crisis; Matthew Shepard and Pulse Nightclub to Sodomy Laws and Obergefell; Drag and Transitioning to The L Word and The Kinsey Scale, Freddie Mercury and Ellen Degeneres to Laverne Cox and David Bowie, this magnificent digest is a keepsake honoring all LGBTQ+, and the ongoing fight to gain—and maintain—equality for all.
Download or read book Stonewall written by Martin Duberman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the Stonewall Riots, the first gay rights march, and the LGBTQ activists at the center of the movement. “Martin Duberman is a national treasure.”—Masha Gessen, The New Yorker On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history. With riveting narrative skill, he re-creates those revolutionary, sweltering nights in vivid detail through the lives of six people who were drawn into the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Their stories combine to form an unforgettable portrait of the repression that led up to the riots, which culminates when they triumphantly participate in the first gay rights march of 1970, the roots of today's pride marches. Fifty years after the riots, Stonewall remains a rare work that evokes with a human touch an event in history that still profoundly affects life today.
Download or read book The Mob and the City written by C. Alexander Hortis and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forget what you think you know about the Mafia. After reading this book, even life-long mob aficionados will have a new perspective on organized crime. Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s. Based on exhaustive research of archives and secret files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, author and attorney C. Alexander Hortis draws on the deepest collection of primary sources, many newly discovered, of any history of the modern mob. Shattering myths, Hortis reveals how Cosa Nostra actually obtained power at the inception. The author goes beyond conventional who-shot-who mob stories, providing answers to fresh questions such as: * Why did the Sicilian gangs come out on top of the criminal underworld? * Can economics explain how the Mafia families operated? * What was the Mafia's real role in the drug trade? * Why was Cosa Nostra involved in gay bars in New York since the 1930s? Drawing on an unprecedented array of primary sources, The Mob and the City is the most thorough and authentic history of the Mafia's rise to power in the early-to-mid twentieth century.
Download or read book Buying Gay written by David K. Johnson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1951, a new type of publication appeared on newsstands—the physique magazine produced by and for gay men. For many men growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, these magazines and their images and illustrations of nearly naked men, as well as articles, letters from readers, and advertisements, served as an initiation into gay culture. The publishers behind them were part of a wider world of “physique entrepreneurs”: men as well as women who ran photography studios, mail-order catalogs, pen-pal services, book clubs, and niche advertising for gay audiences. Such businesses have often been seen as peripheral to the gay political movement. In this book, David K. Johnson shows how gay commerce was not a byproduct but rather an important catalyst for the gay rights movement. Offering a vivid look into the lives of physique entrepreneurs and their customers, and presenting a wealth of illustrations, Buying Gay explores the connections—and tensions—between the market and the movement. With circulation rates many times higher than the openly political “homophile” magazines, physique magazines were the largest gay media outlets of their time. This network of producers and consumers helped foster a gay community and upend censorship laws, paving the way for open expression. Physique entrepreneurs were at the center of legal struggles, especially against the U.S. Post Office, including the court victory that allowed full-frontal male nudity and open homoeroticism. Buying Gay reconceives the history of the gay rights movement and shows how consumer culture helped create community and a site for resistance.
Download or read book Stonewall Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights written by Ann Bausum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first history of gay rights for teen readers, written by award-winning nonfiction author Ann Bausum. That’s the Stonewall. The Stonewall Inn. Pay attention. History walks through that door. In 1969 being gay in the United States was a criminal offense. It meant living a closeted life or surviving on the fringes of society. People went to jail, lost jobs, and were disowned by their families for being gay. Most doctors considered homosexuality a mental illness. There were few safe havens. The Stonewall Inn, a Mafia-run, filthy, overpriced bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was one of them. Police raids on gay bars happened regularly in this era. But one hot June night, when cops pounded on the door of the Stonewall, almost nothing went as planned. Tensions were high. The crowd refused to go away. Anger and frustration boiled over. The raid became a riot. The riot became a catalyst. The catalyst triggered an explosive demand for gay rights. A riveting exploration of the Stonewall Riots and the national Gay Rights movement that followed is eye-opening, unflinching, and inspiring.
Download or read book Vice Patrol written by Anna Lvovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vice Patrol: Cops, Courts, and the Struggle over Urban Gay Life chronicles how local police and criminal justice systems intruded on gay individuals, criminalizing, profiling, surveilling, and prosecuting them from the 1930's through the 1960's. Anna Lvovsky details the progression of enforcement strategies through the targeting of gay-friendly bars by liquor boards, enticement of sexual overtures by plainclothes police decoys, and surveilling of public bathrooms via peepholes and two-way mirrors to catch someone "in the act." Lvovsky shows how the use of tactics indistinguishable from entrapment to criminalize homosexual men in public and private spaces produced charges brought forward and disputed by attorneys and evidence that had to stand before judges, who at times intervened against punitive policies. In Vice Patrol the author demonstrates how developments in the psychological, medical, and sociological handling of homosexuality filtered into police stations, courthouses, and the wider culture"--
Download or read book Wide Open Town written by Nan Alamilla Boyd and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-04-13 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco, from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball energized the gay community. Includes excerpts from oral histories of lesbians and gay men who have lived in San Francisco since the 1930s.
Download or read book The Stonewall Reader written by New York Public Library and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it, with a foreword by Edmund White. Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, presented by The Publishing Triangle Tor.com, Best Books of 2019 (So Far) Harper’s Bazaar, The 20 Best LGBTQ Books of 2019 The Advocate, The Best Queer(ish) Non-Fiction Tomes We Read in 2019 June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
Download or read book Official and Confidential written by Anthony Summers and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times–bestselling author’s revealing, “important” biography of the longtime FBI director (The Philadelphia Inquirer). No one exemplified paranoia and secrecy at the heart of American power better than J. Edgar Hoover, the original director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For this consummate biography, renowned investigative journalist Anthony Summers interviewed more than eight hundred witnesses and pored through thousands of documents to get at the truth about the man who headed the FBI for fifty years, persecuted political enemies, blackmailed politicians, and lived his own surprising secret life. Ultimately, Summers paints a portrait of a fatally flawed individual who should never have held such power, and for so long.
Download or read book The Stonewall Riots written by Marc Stein and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, the most important moment in LGBTQ history—depicted by the people who influenced, recorded, and reacted to it. June 28, 1969, Greenwich Village: The New York City Police Department, fueled by bigoted liquor licensing practices and an omnipresent backdrop of homophobia and transphobia, raided the Stonewall Inn, a neighborhood gay bar, in the middle of the night. The raid was met with a series of responses that would go down in history as the most galvanizing period in this country's fight for sexual and gender liberation: a riotous reaction from the bar's patrons and surrounding community, followed by six days of protests. Across 200 documents, Marc Stein presents a unique record of the lessons and legacies of Stonewall. Drawing from sources that include mainstream, alternative, and LGBTQ media, gay-bar guide listings, state court decisions, political fliers, first-person accounts, song lyrics, and photographs, Stein paints an indelible portrait of this pivotal moment in the LGBT movement. In The Stonewall Riots, Stein does not construct a neatly quilted, streamlined narrative of Greenwich Village, its people, and its protests; instead, he allows multiple truths to find their voices and speak to one another, much like the conversations you'd expect to overhear in your neighborhood bar. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the moment the first brick (or shot glass?) was thrown, The Stonewall Riots allows readers to take stock of how LGBTQ life has changed in the US, and how it has stayed the same. It offers campy stories of queer resistance, courageous accounts of movements and protests, powerful narratives of police repression, and lesser-known stories otherwise buried in the historical record, from an account of ball culture in the mid-sixties to a letter by Black Panther Huey P. Newton addressed to his brothers and sisters in the resistance. For anyone committed to political activism and social justice, The Stonewall Riots provides a much-needed resource for renewal and empowerment.
