Letter from Don Slater, from Dec. 1990

Historians are talking on C-SPAN about how much harder learning history will be now that people no longer write letters.  So I thought I would share one, not important, letter Don Slater wrote to me here in LA while he was working in L. A.  It may be interesting if someone wants to know what he thought at the time of Stuart Timmons’ book on Harry Hay. (Or Troy Perry.) This letter was received on Dec. 3, 1990

Yes.  I wrote some time ago that Stuart Timmons' book about Harry, The Trouble With Harry Hay, had been published by Alyson. We got 2 review copies: 1 from Alyson via Timmons, and 1 from Dale Jennings who had been given a copy by Timmons here in the house when I had them over to meet. Martin, of course, is keeping the review copy we have given him, but I haven't seen the review yet. The book in my opinion is quite good. But unfortunately loaded with unimportant errors—all the result of Timmons’ relying almost exclusively on Kepner for his peripheral information. He had interviewed me a couple of times, but always for confirmation of what others had told him. I explained that I wasn’t going to second-guess, Jim or anyone else. If he wanted information about me or you, or the work we did, etc. I would have talked more to him. For instance, although it is not bad, most of the small bit about our break-up with ONE came from either Bill or Jim-or maybe both. And I said, okay, if those are your sources let it be. Everybody is mentioned including Tony (incorrectly),  me (incorrectly), no mention of our Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces, at least by name (which is strange considering that Harry was our head), no mention of you, and Dale wants to sue because he feels he’s been misrepresented. He has even consulted Herb Selwyn. But I say a suit would be the best thing that could happen to the book; I say this even thought I am basically in favor of it.  I can assure you, it was not easy for Stuart to deal with a living Harry Hay and all of the rest of the prima donnas still living. With all its errors the book is the best thing yet, and it should be allowed to die it own death; it doesn't need to be prodded. 

My fight at the moment is trying to get a review copy of the new biography of Troy Perry.  Jim and everyone else has it, but Troy sent me a formal note saying I would have to contact St. Martin’s Press if I wanted a copy. The whole tone of the note was distant. I want Chas. to review it in the same issue of the newsletter with Martin’s review of Harry, but I have a feeling that Troy may be afraid Charles will trash it since he ghosted the first biography as you know, and is not too happy with Troy who refused to give him any royalty. 

I will be writing to Karyn Schacter. But I can’t imagine a high school student is doing any serious “research,” as you call it.  She’s probably doing a school paper that’s all. You are wrong about Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. They send us things all the time, and always addressed to you. In fact, a lot of material coming to the box is in your name so it is likely that some directory or other lists us there with you as secretary. This is fine except large packages I can’t get if I go on Sundays, and United Parcel will not deliver to a PO Box so some things get sent back, I imagine because I never get them even when I phone, and ask that they be forwarded to the house. 

Yes, we get the Gay & Les. Hist. Co. Newsletter from SF. But I like the old cumbersome name better than the new one, and I haven’t seen your letter. However, I’m glad you are getting printed because despite the length of time you’ve been in the movm’t you're still generally unknown. 

Don 

Mark Segal, Mitchell Halberstadt, and the evolution of Pride

Mark Segal, of Philadelphia Gay News posted this, titled “Back to Christopher Street”:

Each year when I march in the New York Gay Pride parade — and that has become somewhat rare — I always say at the end, “Think this just might be my last one.” I said that four years ago, but there we were this past Sunday once again. But for us, it was somewhat special.

You see, the group that I marched with are the ones who created that march. It was our vision. Actually, Gay Pride was our idea, and this year we celebrated creating that march 44 years ago.

We used the march as an excuse to have a Gay Liberation Front reunion the night before. Very few know LGBT history, but GLF NY 1969-71 literally was the foundation that what we have today was built on.

There were homophile activists before us, but their agenda was equality for homosexuals. They wanted nondiscrimination. But GLF, which was created out of Stonewall, with many of us partaking in that monumental event itself, saw something different, and here is where we changed the world. Overstatement? I don’t think so, since we believed not just in simple equality, but in an actual gay and lesbian community.

In that first year, we created the first organization to help solve problems of gay youth. We created the world’s first gay community center. We issued heath alerts, created community-wide media, issued the first gay history book, dealt with sexism and racism in our community and, way back in 1969, we even had a transgender arm, called Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. We were LGBT people taking care of our own, and we did all of it openly.

That might sound strange to you, but in 1969, the Mattachine Society, a homophile organization, would not allow anyone under 18 into their offices, afraid that the police would raid them. We organized our youth, welcomed them to our meetings, set up a suicide hot line, a speakers bureau that went to schools, and, when the Village Voice would not publish the word “gay,” we marched on them. The laws were wrong, we were not!

We wanted to celebrate Stonewall and our achievements in June 1970. So we organized what today is known as the Gay Pride parade.

Well, the reality is that doing so 44 years ago means that many of us are getting up in years. While about 40 came to the Saturday night reunion, only about 14 of us marched.

The crowd roared when they saw these 14 old women and men marching with a simple banner that read “Original Marchers June 28, 1970.” When we arrived on Christopher Street, the hub of GLF organizing 44 years ago, it was our street. As we made our way down, the crowd went wild, and then something very touching: The police officer in charge of that area came over to our contingent with his officers in toe, stopped, took his cap off and bowed before us, followed by his officers. The crowed erupted ... 44 years ago, these were the guys who were fighting us at Stonewall.

Mitchell Halberstadt adds:

[This is a] fascinating article  — and in an unintended way, perhaps one with highly melancholy (or at least bittersweet) implications.

Except as an annual spectacle along the lines of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, this year may actually spell the end of these marches as we've come to know them. However sadly, that’s a trend that's been in the works for quite some time. This year’s events are merely the final nail in the coffin.

One can forever be nostalgic for the days of GLF, but as I (reluctantly) see it, this year’s march (no — perish the thought! — parade) represents a sort of symbolic victory lap for the “equality” agenda, both within the movement or community, and in a larger societal context. Lots of work remains, but (again, however unfortunately) it will quickly take on the character of a mopping-up operation — especially in comparison with everything that’s gone on between Stonewall and the present. Much as I might fear to say it (or even resent having to acknowledge it), that truth is likely to prevail — and wishing otherwise amounts to just that: wishful thinking.

The episode Mark describes, in which the cops bow to the marchers, makes for an all-too-perfect denouement — a final closing-out of that very narrative!

MH

PS: The perspective I've suggested above has been developing for some time; the transition I describe (as a shift in the center-of-gravity) began to be decisive at least by the early 1980s, with the outset of the AIDS epidemic.

For more on my view of this phenomenon, and on how it occurred, please see the concluding section of my article, “In Retrospect.”

Committee on LGBT History's statement regarding today's DOMA and Proposition 8 Supreme Court rulings

For LGBT rights, only a handful of Supreme Court cases have been as truly historic as today’s DOMA and Prop 8 decisions. We are proud that historians helped make them possible. Through amicus briefs and testimony at lower court levels, members of the Committee on LGBT History produced a rigorous understanding of marriage as an institution that has consistently changed over time. As historians of sexuality and gender, we also view the marriage decisions within the context of the Court’s other rulings this week, particularly those about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and adoption. The Committee on LGBT History urges scholars and the media to explore the ways in which these cases and the issues they address mutually inform each other. While collectively they seem to define equality in this moment as a kind of “difference-blind” sameness, the history of intersections between sexuality and race suggests that their implications will be more complex. For same-sex families in the South, for example, many of which are headed by African American women, changes to the Voting Rights Act could have deeper ramifications than the overturning of DOMA. Members of the Committee on LGBT History will continue to contribute thorough and nuanced scholarship to the ongoing work for justice.

Don Romesburg

Co-Chair, Committee on LGBT History

Gay Press, Gay Power: Great History

While there have been several books and efforts to discuss the history of publications in the GLBT movement / community, at last there is one that contains the basic research and expertise needed to pull into one place the basic facts, names, and information of the magazines, newspapers, newsletters that recorded that history which they helped to make. This book, Gay Press, Gay Power, edited by Tracy Baim, covers many of our movement’s publications from the start in the early 1950s to 2012. It contains new information, corrects some misinformation, and provides us with rich biographical information on the pioneering journalists who worked on these publications.

To put the history in context, there is a discussion, with examples, of the horrible coverage the media gave homosexuality until about the late 1960s, when coverage exploded after Stonewall. The publications started with the movement to gain equal rights for homosexual Americans, and thus this civil rights movement is documented by the very people who were active in the effort. A historian or researcher trying to see how coverage changed from the 1950s on could see the evidence by looking through editions of the Readers Guide to Periodicals Index.  Baim has done this for the reader.

The first publications are discussed in full in an early chapter by C. Todd White. They started during the worst of times, the McCarthy era when homosexuals and Communists were considered to be allies and were labeled as threats to the nation’s security. The first publicly available publication (1953), ONE magazine,  suffered from the same problems all early ones did: little income, people afraid to have their names as subscribers to a homosexual publication, businesses afraid to place ads, and few authors or journalists of note willing to let their names appear in the publication. There was also a problem few other causes had: there were homosexual people in hiding who tried to keep their sexuality from being questioned or discovered by loudly protesting the existence of a publication discussing homosexuality. Many such people later were arrested for homosexual acts and still refused to support the effort to educate the public and change laws.

Issue #1, Jan. 1953

But ONE was successful, and was joined by the Mattachine Review and then The Ladder, aimed toward women. The editors of ONE, led by Don Slater and attorney Eric Julber, fought a legal battle with the Post Office to protect its right to publish and mail a magazine subtitled “The Homosexual Viewpoint” and won only at the U. S. Supreme Court level in 1958. These three magazines were slowly joined by others each few years, and together they planted the seeds that are the major media the lgbt movement/community has today. The early publications were supported by an organization. Today most are independent.

The book is loaded with pictures of most of the publications covered—a great help as it shows the progression from early publications to those of today. As White says, they are “time capsules of their era.”  One clue to how things have changed is in observing the terms used in the three eras. First they were called homophile publications, then homosexual, then gay and, now gay and lesbian or lgbt.

Gay Press / Gay Power includes short biographies of some LGBT journalists who helped make the publications successful.  The index catalogs the large number of people covered and names hundreds of current LGBT publications.

Many readers will gain a sense of pride knowing the history of the GLBT media’s growth from ONE to the hundreds of publications that exist today, currently giving the community news and views, entertainment and education, continuously revitalizing those who seek to make life better for everyone and to make this a more perfect nation, for all citizens.

No historian or journalist can write on the subject without knowing the contents of this book because the history of a movement is told through the history of its publications.

Research Query RE: Don Jackson, Alpine Liberation Front

Mr. Glover,

I am a graduate student at University of Massachusetts Boston doing research on gay separatism. I recently contacted Mary Ann Cherry with a question related to her work on Morris Kight’s biography. She consequently referred me to you on the matter. 

I am trying to get a better understanding of who “Don Jackson” of Alpine Liberation Front is or was as an individual. I am aware of his role as an activist and his writings for various publications during the early ’70s, but I have yet to encounter any source material that provides any insight into his background or character. 

If you happen to have any direct knowledge or know of specific source material relating to this matter that you would be willing to share it would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jacob

Dear Jacob:

I apologize for not checking my other email addresses.  I am aware of Don Jackson and will try to find some mention in the few copies of ONE/Tangents Magazine I have here, as I am in LA the state, but our Homosexual Information Center files are in L.A. the city, at Cal State Northridge (library) and ONE Archives at USC (library).

As I gather you know, Jackson was involved with Morris Kight in that wonderful Alpine County invasion, which, as usual, found the media lazy and gullible. Morris was good at exploiting their stupidity. But it was a wonderful educational effort. I think Time magazine and others covered the cause, so it should be in some Web site archives—I think Time says all of its issues are now online.

I assume The Advocate covered this.  I hate to speculate but will give some things that may or may not be true.  I thought he wa in the San Francisco area, but he may have been involved with Morris in work in L.A., such as the PRIDE group from which The Advocate came. 

My version of the Alpine adventure is that Jackson or others came up with the idea of fooling the public by saying that since there were so few citizens in Alpine County, if only a few homosexuals moved there, they could control the government, get government money, etc.  

I never knew if the citizens there were really concerned, but there are bigots (a few thankfully) everywhere. BUT the idea was pure camp and was a truly gay thing. So they started telling the public about this, and the media fell for it.

Few of us thought many of us would go to the isolated, cold place—and we opposed ghettos. And considering the nuts who are still trying to isolate themselves from the world in Idaho, fearing the government is going to destroy us, that it is not a good idea today.

I checked a book of early pioneers/activists (Before Stonewall, edited by Vern Bullough) and three other books and none mention Alpine or Don Jackson.  (Not even the biography of Morris.) I am sending this on to a few others who might know more and i wil let you know if i find other mentions.  It is strange that the “event” is ignored in our movement/community but was so big in the media.

Book Review of Interest

Review of Martin Duberman's Dual Bio of Deming and McReynolds by Doug Ireland, The Rag Blog. 

From Allen Young:

Doug reviews Martin Duberman’s recently released A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds. Historian Duberman is known as the father of gay studies, and Deming and McReynolds are “two openly queer Americans who devoted their lives to the struggles for peace and social justice.” Ireland tells us that A Saving Remant is “radiant with an emboldening and unquenchable humanity.”

Perhaps we should check it out?