Mary Ann Cherry
United States
She/Her
Mary Ann Cherry is an author, researcher, historian, and archivist whose work focuses on LGBTQ+ history and the preservation of community stories. A longtime Los Angeles resident, she befriended Morris Kight during the last decade of his life and, with his blessing, became his biographer. Her book, Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist, documents Kight’s extraordinary role in the early Los Angeles gay liberation movement.
Steps to Liberation
First Steps On the Liberation Front with Morris Kight
Mary Ann Cherry takes us back to a time when gay life in Los Angeles existed largely underground, when a police raid could mean arrest, violence, humiliation, or the loss of a job and family. On New Year’s Eve 1966, the Black Cat Bar in Silver Lake was raided by undercover LAPD officers. People were beaten and arrested, and Morris Kight, Rev. Troy Perry, and others immediately began raising bail money to get them out of jail. Kight understood that the real criminal behavior that night had been committed by the police.
But the response to the Black Cat raid became something much larger. On February 11, 1967, an estimated 200 to 500 people gathered outside the bar for a peaceful protest against police brutality and discriminatory laws. Cherry identifies this as the earliest large-scale public demonstration for LGBTQ rights in U.S. history. For a community accustomed to secrecy and survival, the protest created something new: a public expression of resistance and the first glimmer of a movement moving into the light.
Two years later came the Stonewall uprising. Kight received firsthand reports from New York as the rebellion unfolded, and although there was little national news coverage at the time, he recognized its significance. Stonewall became the second step toward liberation. In Los Angeles, activists were already challenging police raids, discriminatory businesses, and the medical establishment, while the Gay Liberation Front was developing a more visible and assertive movement.
The third step came on June 28, 1970, when Morris Kight, Troy Perry, Bob Humphries, and others helped create the first legal Gay Pride parade on Hollywood Boulevard. Called Christopher Street West, the parade brought people into the streets despite enormous fears about police violence, employment, family rejection, and public humiliation. Thousands came from across the region. They marched with signs, costumes, sequins, theatrical performances, animals, outrageous humor, and unapologetic pride. As Kight recalled, they marched with fear in their stomachs—but with enormous courage and devotion.
The parade changed more than public perception. It changed the movement itself. Before Christopher Street West, activists had largely been fighting defensively—challenging discrimination and trying to stop abuses. Afterward, Kight and others began building institutions that would allow gay people not simply to resist oppression, but to claim a place in the world and proudly hold it. Kight helped create the Gay Community Services Center, now the Los Angeles LGBT Center, as well as Van Ness Recovery House, the Stonewall Democratic Club, and numerous other organizations and community networks.
As the movement grew, so did the opposition. In 1978, California’s Briggs Initiative sought to prohibit gay people from working in California public schools. Kight and other organizers helped build a statewide coalition to defeat the measure. The campaign demonstrated the growing power and unity of a community that had once been forced into hiding. Only three weeks after the victory, Harvey Milk was assassinated, and the grief that followed helped propel gay liberation into a truly national movement.
Kight continued looking beyond the immediate battles. He helped envision the 25th anniversary of Stonewall as an international celebration, beginning work on the idea in 1985 and participating in the planning that ultimately produced Stonewall 25 and Unity ’94 in New York. At the 1994 Stonewall 25 rally, he called on the community to recognize what it had created and to carry that message into the world.
Cherry’s story ultimately presents Morris Kight not simply as a protester, but as a liberationist and builder. He helped move a community from hiding to visibility, from isolated acts of resistance to organizations, political action, Pride, and an international movement. The three early steps—the Black Cat, Stonewall, and Christopher Street West—became the foundation for countless steps that followed.
And perhaps that is why this story belongs so naturally in Steps to Liberation: liberation is not one event. It is a movement made up of people who decide, again and again, to step forward.
