Sip-In 52nd Year Celebration
For the 52nd anniversary of the historic Sip-In, NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project honors Dick Leitsch — one of the four homosexuals who went in search of a drink to challenge discrimination and changed history.
Here's what my pals at LGBT_History wrote about the Sip-In:
In 1960, David Carter explains, the NYPD “began a systematic campaign…to close all gay bars.” While no law specifically prohibited homosexuals from gathering or being served in bars, a post-Prohibition regulation prohibited bars from becoming “disorderly,” and that was interpreted as not allowing bars to serve homosexuals. In an effort to clarify the regulations—and to challenge the attack on queer spaces—members of Mattachine Society New York (MSNY) devised a plan that “revealed the extent to which they modeled their activism on the black civil rights movement…They determined that several members of the Society would enter a bar, announce themselves as homosexuals, and ask to be served. If they were refused service…, they would make a complaint against both the bar and the [state] for violating their constitutional rights to free assembly and equal accommodation.” On April 21, 1966, 52 years ago today, Dick Leitsch, John Timmins, Craig Rodwell, and Randy Wicker tried to put the plan in motion, though it proved difficult.
The targeted bar—which displayed a sign reading, “If You Are Gay, Please Go Away”—seemed an easy choice. Before they arrived, however, the manager learned of the plan and closed for the day. From there, the men went to two bars on 6th Avenue, both of which served them.
Finally, the group went to Julius’, a gay bar at West 10th Street & Waverly Place, where the bartender was willing to serve them until Leitsch convinced him to play along; refusing the group service, he announced, “I think it’s the law.”
The Sip-In, as The New York Times dubbed it, got a great deal of press relative to previous homophile efforts, and MSNY had the ammunition to challenge the unequal application of the “disorderly” regulation.
Julius, Bar, for its part, is still in business; a monthly Mattachine party marks the bar’s monumental role in queer history.
Partying like its 1966!
More photos: LGBT History, LGBT, Gay Rights
