Stonewall Historian David Carter: Stonewall - from 'Riots' to Gay Revolution NY 2004

The Events of the Night of Stonewall - analysed in detail

Ref 56: Martin Duberman

a lesbian and not in a good mood...

Ref 57: 

Eye-witness 1: "fancy, go-to-bar drag for a butch dyke"

Ref 58: 

Eye-witness 2: Jennifer Hardy watching from Christoper Park (opposite Stonewall Inn)

"...husky "bull-dyke", of a bigger size and with a "nasty temper"."

Ref 59: 

Eye-witness 3: Steve Yates watching from Christoper Park (opposite Stonewall Inn)
remembered "a rather beefy, good-sized woman" and a "typical New York butch."

Ref 60: 

Eye-witness 4: a woman witness wrote to a friend "a dyke - stone butch"

Page 150 Paragraph 2

Ref 61: 

Eye-witness 5: Harry Beard "the lesbian's fight with the police had begun inside the bar..."

Ref 62: 

 Eye-witnesses 5, 6 & 7: Harry Beard, Gene Huss & Don Knapp 

it was a request to police to loosen the cuffs resulted in blow to her (sic) head

Ref 63:

 Eye-witnesses 3 corroborates eye-witness 5 Steve Yates & Harry Beard
"They were man-handling her out of the door to try and push her into a a squad car..."

Squad car is an important detail - the paddy wagon was full (ref to come)

Ref 63:

Like Beard, Yates remembered handcuffs: 

"They had her pushed down with her hands cuffed behind her"

(CBD: which makes the subsequent struggle even more incredible)

Page 151 para 1

Letter records: "Everything went along fairly peacefully until...a dyke... lost her mind - kicking, cursing, screaming & fighting [CBD: lost her mind? Post-Traumatic-Stress due to sexual violence can look like that]

a woman - possibly the same woman - urged the gay men watching her struggle to help her: 

"Why don't you guys DO something?"

Bob Kohler: at about this time "a couple of kids threw some change over."

The cops closed the paddy wagon, got rid of the paddy wagon, because they obviously felt something was going to happen."

"As the heroic fight by the lesbian who had twice escaped the (police) car neared its end, the crowd.... ERUPTED.

The woman's (sic) fighting "set the whole crowd wild - berserk!"
Both the Village Voice reporters are agreed that it was the lesbian's struggle with the police that ignited the 'riot' (rebellion)
Lucian Truscott's eye-witness account: "It was at that moment the scene became explosive."
Howard Smith's eye-witness account: pinpoints the police bodily throwing her inside the car on the third and final attempt to put her in the vehicale (police car not the paddy wagon which was full) as the moment "the turning point came"

Berkeley Barb: agrees with Howard Smith's version -
"After the lesbian was thrown into the car (sic), "the crowd shrieked, "Police brutality!" "Pigs!" A few coins sailed through the air. pine (the senior police officer) ordered three police cars and the paddywagon to leave with the prisoners before the crowd became more of a mob."

Leo E Lawrence (Berkely Barb) wrote 2Pigs were loading her (sic) into the 'wagon' (police car) when she shouted to a big crowd of bystanders (sic) ie not doing anything except watching?

p152

Steve Yates and Jennifer Hardy likewise remember the lesbian's resistance as triggering the crowd's violence.

My friend Gino...started yelling at the police. They'd started dragging a woman (sic) out (of what? CBD: the Stonewall Inn)  and he started yelling at them to "let her go!".  "Leave her alone, let her go!" I didnt know her name or anything about her (sic). I just remember that was the thing that Gino...became so enraged by the woman's mistreatment that he wrenched the heavy cobblestone out of the ground and threw it all the way across Christopher Street. It landed on the trunk of a police car with a terrible screech... That's when the police backed in and barricaded themselves in(side) the Stonewall (Inn).
[CBD: an admission they had lost control

Jennifer Hardy's recollection agrees with Steve Yates' (in) that they both depict a gradual buildup of the crowd's anger that suddenly let loose in a violent outburst. "It (the incident with the lesbian woman?) just seemed like a catalyst for the whole thing to break loose was... HER getting out of the car and screaming and getting shoved back in the car and then getting out again because she was getting real p***ed off. And the crowd started getting real ugly and bigger.

p153

not quite finished but nearly there.

CBDimyon 7 June 2019