Tom Ellis Q&A
Tom Ellis has worn a variety of hats in his lifetime from big city rockstar to Kansas artist (his autobiographical tapestry exhibit opened a few years ago in Chanute). After growing up on a Kansas farm, Tom went to the Kansas City Art Institute and Pittsburg State college for voice and art. In his post college life in New York, he bumped into Bob Dylan’s manager, actor Dean Dittman, and Stephen Schwartz, the creator of ‘Wicked.’ Tom’s band, ‘Molimo’, hired as their lead guitarist Ace Frehley – who would later go on to form KISS.
Little did Tom know that he would take part in one of our nation’s most historic events, simply by visiting his local bar. On the anniversary of Stonewall, we sat down with this unique Kansan who was there.
Tom: “I was there that evening. I came in during the riot. I did not go into the bar, it was a hangout for me. I was there the night before. And I saw the police outside, and knew something was up so I stayed outside. Saw the commotion...”
June 28th, 1969, was just the beginning of a series of events we know today the Stonewall Riots. But before the riots, there was just Stonewall.
Q: “Can you speak a little bit more on the culture that was Stonewall. A lot of people just know about [the Stonewall riots,] they don’t know [about the] community [engagement].”
Tom: “The Stonewall was the local bar for me, I used to live in the Village. It used to be a great dance place, along with being a pick-up bar and a bar bar… [Stonewall] was on a little street called Christopher St. Doesn’t get an awful lot of traffic. It’s a little narrow street. I think it’s a one-way, pretty sure. So, when you see a couple of trucks pull up to Stonewall… paddy wagons, you know something’s up. The police had a reputation for coming in every month or two… come in and get their bribes and leave. Otherwise they would start harassing the customers. It was very serious. You know, people could lose their jobs and their lives being caught going to a homosexual place. It was bad times for gays at that point.”
Tom and his husband Bob were the founders of the National Gay Taskforce (now National LGBTQ Task Force) along with Dr. Howard Brown, New York City’s openly gay Surgeon General. Kansan involvement in historical precedents is not unique, (bleeding Kansas, the Free State, and our recent historical decision to protect abortion), but Tom Ellis is.
Q: “There’s this idea behind Stonewall that it was just one person throwing a brick, and that was it…”
Tom: “Actually it wasn’t a brick, it was a bottle, and cans.”
Q: “Wow, do you want to do any clarifying on what that scene was?”
Tom: “I wasn’t inside, so I can’t… say for sure… Well there was no community at that point. It was a bunch of young guys who were, ya know, first of all this was the time of free love, before AIDS, and it was exciting. Just unimaginably hedonistic. And the dancing was great, the music was fabulous… everything just come together to make a beautiful era. And I had nothing, I was poor. I had a job at Bloomingdales, working the display department.”
The thriving LGBTQ community we know today wasn’t always that way. In fact, for Tom at the time, it was just him, his guitar, and a handful of people.
Tom: “The next day after the riots, I took my guitar down to the Stonewall and I sat on the steps and I started playing folk music and civil rights songs. And I had gathered about maybe 10 people, and we were just listening to the music. And the police drove by and very courteously said, ‘move on, please, this is not a place for a congregation.’ So we all just moved on and I must say the police seemed very polite at that point. The day after that, I don’t know how it happened. Someone started organizing a gathering in Washington Square, underneath the arc de triomphe, and… I think there were somewhere about 30 and 50 people. And we sat down and listened and talked amongst ourselves and things and someone said, ‘Let’s march up Fifth Avenue and talk to the mayor.’ People thought, ‘well, it’s a long ways but he should hear about this,’ ‘Let’s confront the police,’ and all that, so we started up Fifth Avenue. We didn’t have any, you know, passes or permits or anything like that, we just started marching up fifth avenue which is a one-way street going down. We stopped traffic all the way. I don’t know how far we got… I’m thinking like 20 to 30 blocks. You know, we kind of had a nice stream going there for a while. And I don’t know if any one of us had placards or anything… people were pretty mystified as to who these people were and what they were mad about. I don’t even know if it made the papers.”
Today, our country remembers America’s first gay pride parade as the 1970 Christopher Street Liberation Day where thousands of protestors marched from Stonewall Inn to Central Park. Little do many know of the smaller parade the year before, that started with some songs played on a guitar by Kansan Tom Ellis.
While our history books may not acknowledge the smaller events that culminate into massive movements, individual Kansans are absolutely integral in the larger puzzle of progress and our story for liberation.
Today, Tom is in Iola, creating art and working on an autobiography of his own life story. Tom exemplifies that LGBTQ Kansans are not just living in Kansas, they are thriving and making history.