I'm Eric Marcus and this is making gay history. We're hard at work putting together a new batch of episodes for our third season,

digging into my archive of decades-old audio cassettes

to bring you never before heard interviews with the people who lived and breathed

the fight for LGBT

civil rights.

Coming up in a couple of weeks is a new episode with Trans ICON Sylvia Rivera,

but first I'd like to reintroduce you

to our very first episode,

where we featured Sylvia's extraordinary voice

for the first time.

Sylvia happened to be at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, the first night of the big

uprising. On this tape you'll hear me call Sylvia Ray, which was one of the names she was going 1989 at 4 p.m. location is the home of Ray Rivera in Terry Town, New York.

Interviewer is Eric Marcus, tape 1, side 1.

The Stonewall wasn't a bar for drag queens.

Everybody keeps saying it was. So this is where I get into arguments

with people. They say, oh no, it's always a drag queen bar and it was a black boy's no Washington Square bar was the drag queen bar. Okay you

could get into the stone wall if they knew you and there were only a certain amount of drag queens

were allowed into the stone wall at that time.

We had just come back in from Washington. My first lover and I. We were passing

forts checks and whatnot, but we were making good money.

And so, well, let's go to Stonewall.

Let's do our thing, let's go there, you know.

...