As Vito recalls in his interview: “In 1967 or ’68, I invited Dick Leitsch, of the Mattachine Society to come speak at our school. Credit: Courtesy of Charles Russo.īut Vito first began challenging the status quo when he was an undergraduate at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, New Jersey. Vito read a flyer that was being handed out at the vigil and that led him to join the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). Vincent’s Hospital, which was then located on 7th Avenue and 13th Street at the northern edge of Greenwich Village.
Vinales had jumped from the police station’s second-floor window and was impaled on an iron fence. Vincent’s Hospital for Diego Vinales, who was arrested on March 8, 1970, in a police raid of the Snake Pit bar (in his Making Gay History interview, Vito mistakenly dates the raid to July 1969). In my interview with Vito, you’ll hear him trace the start of his activism to a candlelight vigil outside St.
Episode Notesįrom Eric Marcus: The late author and activist Vito Russo is best known for his 1981 landmark book, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, and for co-founding both GLAAD (originally known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Credit: New Line Presentations, Courtesy of Charles Russo.
