Blues

On September 29, 1982, police raided Blues, a Black, Gay bar on West 43rd Street across from the New York Times. They brutalized the customers and destroyed the bar. On October 8th, after the mess had been cleaned up, they raided the bar again. It was the last Gay bar in the history of New York City. On October 15th, hundreds of members of the community demonstrated against the raid and its brutality.

The film is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It was digitized by MoMA with funds from New York University, through the efforts of Beau Lancaster, a graduate student at NYU who is writing about the raid. For more information about the Blues Bar and the raid, see Beau’s op-ed in the Washington Post:

I've forgotten the names of many of the people at the demonstration, but here are a few I remember:

02:29 -- Joyce Hunter
02:43 -- Ed Murphy (the Bouncer from the Stonewall)
03:54 -- Peg Byron & Sarah Schulman
04:50 -- Isaac Jackson
05:00 -- Robert Cohen
05:35 -- Blues Facade
06:39 -- Craig Rodwell
06:59 -- David Thorstad
07:00 -- Anne-christine d'Adesky