“The spirit of Gandhian agape that hung like a halo over Selma, with its nuns and angelic-faced students, was gone, replaced by a clenched militancy fueled by a despair expressed by Martin King's admission that his dream of Washington 1963 has turned into a nightmare.”

“During the ’50s, when little or nothing honest about gay male and lesbian lives was available culturally, how could a truth teller grab a niche? Not through high culture”

“The Movement in Amite County is pure and religious, uncontaminated by organizational in-fighting and hy­per-militancy. It is just two soli­tary organizers and a handful of local Negroes.”

“There were rabbis, junkies, schoolboys, actors, sharecroppers, intellectuals, maids, novelists, folk-singers, and politicians — 40,000 motives and 40,0000 people marching to Montgomery”

“Once gay power was a joyous cry in this town. Then the thrust toward radicalism died. The stuffed-shirt gay politico appeared. Lethargy set in”

Coming out is a beginning. Marching to Sheep Meadow is a beginning. Dancing our way to liberation is a beginning. But only a part of it.

The day was full of TV cam­eras, spontaneous singing, speeches, clapping, and the echo of Martin Luther King’s phrase: “I have a dream … ”

“They swept up Sixth Avenue, from Sheridan Square to Central Park, astonishing everything in their way... My God, are those really homosexuals? Marching? Up Sixth Avenue?”

“For almost 20 years, Sylvester has been an icon of San Francisco nightlife: outrageous, bold, proud. Today, he is a symbol of a totally different San Fran­cisco — a gay man struggling to stay alive”

“The day that federal troops rode into Galveston with orders to release those kept as slaves has been celebrated, in Texas and beyond, for 127 years, as Emancipation Day, as Jubilation Day, as Juneteenth.”