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In a small news story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the police chief later confirmed that the raid was designed to weed out “known homosexuals.”Ībby Drue the night of the raid on Ansley's Mall Mini-Cinema, August 5, 1969 Other theater patrons-gay men, lesbians and drag queens among them‚ confirmed what she already suspected: The police had arrested a number of LGBTQ people for charges ranging from public indecency to illegal drug possession. When Drue was finally allowed to leave, she found the theater's owner and his projectionist handcuffed behind the concession counter. They asked what you were doing and who you were, and they took your picture.”
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They would look you in the eye, and you had to show them your license. I was lined up against the wall by myself. “It was just absolutely insulting in a lot of ways,” says Drue. According to Drue, they screamed, “We're being raided!” But other patrons understood intuitively why the police had showed up. Much of the audience, which according to a contemporary article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution numbered around 70 people in all, was left disoriented. I even think I had a submarine sandwich I was in the middle of eating. “They had everybody get up and line up,” Drue said. One officer shouted, “It's over!” A contemporaneous report in the underground counterculture newspaper Great Speckled Bird noted that ten policemen in total had arrived on the scene, with three lingering by the theater exits to catch patrons trying to slip out. Police officers rushed in through the aisles, shining flashlights into the audience.
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Although several miles removed from the earliest gay bars, Ansley's was the only place in town to watch a movie featuring same-sex attraction, according to Drue.Īround 15 minutes into the film, Drue heard a whistle. The theater, which regularly featured edgy indie films that locals maligned as pornographic, was known for its hospitality to the gay community. Tucked inside an open-air shopping mall, Ansley’s Mini-Cinema lay on the border of the wealthy neighborhood Ansley Park, across the park from Atlanta’s main gay haunt at the time, Midtown. Drue, a lesbian, wanted to witness it for herself. Just a few months earlier, the film, a satire of old Hollywood westerns, made waves in the New York Times for its portrait of gay desire. On the night of August 5, 1969, Abby Drue arrived at the Ansley Mall Mini-Cinema in Atlanta for a screening of Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys.