Frédéric André Sargeant (born July 29, 1948) is a French-American gay rights activist and a former lieutenant with the Stamford CT Police Department. He participated in each of the nights of the 1969 Stonewall riots and was one of the four co-founders of the first Gay Pride march in New York City in 1970. He was vice-chairman of the Homophile Youth Movement at the time.
Early life
Sargeant was born in Fontainebleau, France, to an American G.I. father and a French mother. He grew up in Connecticut.
Sargeant moved to New York City at age nineteen. There, he met and began dating Craig Rodwell, who had recently opened what was then the country's only gay bookstore, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village. The bookshop was a gathering place for young gay activists, and soon Sargeant was managing the store and had become an active member of the Homophile Youth Movement (HYMN), which operated out of it.
Stonewall riots
After 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969, Sargeant and Rodwell were returning from dinner at a friend's home and were passing the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar and club owned by a member of the Genovese crime family. They saw a crowd of about 75 people gathered outside the Inn and a police car in front, and were told the club had been raided. As police emerged from inside the Stonewall leading a customer, someone began throwing coins at the officers and others joined in throwing objects and yelling insults, eventually forcing the police to retreat back into the building and call for reinforcements. A full-scale riot broke out between the responding Tactical Patrol Force and the crowd that lasted for several hours, with Sargeant and Rodwell staying until the sun came up.
In a radio interview that he gave to WBAI's New Symposium II days after the riot, Sargeant was asked what had set the crowd off and replied:
At dawn, the couple went back to their apartment, where Rodwell and Sargeant began writing the first of many leaflets calling for the gay community to seize the moment and stand up to the corrupt police and the mafia who controlled their neighborhoods. After returning to the Stonewall again for a second night of rioting on Saturday evening, they released the first leaflet on Sunday, June 29, 1969.
The headline of the first leaflet read Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars, and began,
The flyer continues with details about the corruption in the police department, the alliance between some cops and organized crime, the need to legalize Gay bars, and ends with these demands:
Starting that Sunday, Rodwell and Sargeant, aided by a group of volunteers, distributed about 5,000 copies around the city.
First Gay Pride march
As a member of Mattachine, Craig Rodwell had participated in July 4 'Annual Reminders' for gay rights at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. In an effort to make gay integration into society and the workforce seem non-threatening, Mattachine's Frank Kameny insisted on conservative dress and behavior at the protests: women were required to wear skirts and men suits, and no displays of affection were allowed between participants. At the Annual Reminder that was held just a week after the Stonewall riots began, Rodwell and other young activists balked at these restrictions, having come to the conclusion that more aggressive action was needed to achieve civil rights for gay people.
Five months after the Stonewall riots, in November 1969, the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) convened in Philadelphia. At the conference, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes of the lesbian activist group Lavender Menace joined Rodwell and Sargeant in proposing the following resolution:
That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged—that of our fundamental human rights—be moved both in time and location. We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.
Most of the preparation work was done by Sargeant, GLF members Michael Brown and Marty Nixon and Mattachine Society member Foster Gunnison Jr., who acted as treasurer. They utilized the bookshop's mailing list to gather support and participants for the march and negotiated the details with over a dozen different gay advocacy groups including Lavender Menace and the Gay Activists Alliance.