Walter L. Williams' legacy

Karen Ocamb has written a wonderful article here.

I am glad I sent out my (unspell checked it turns out) email before reading Karen's excellent report.  It covered most of my concern.  I should say that many times before I have admitted that I was "present" and knew people and events and paid little attention and so missed perhaps important, relevant points.  So I am not surprised that I knew little of Walter Williams.

And as is pointed out, my view was affected by the dispute still going on between the two factions of ONE.  I do not think anyone currently at ONE Archives knows of the valid issues, then or now.

I do not believe  Hawkins' account, reprinted by Ocamb, of what happened when Don Slater died.  I never heard of him until years later. The person who DID tell this tale was John O'Brien.  It was a lie from start to finish.  Jim Schneider was with Tony Reyes when Don died and much time after.  He is the one who boxed up the material for storage so that Tony could sell the house (and move to the house in Colorado). While most of this time I was back in Louisiana, I WAS there at the time covered and at the memorial service, who else was???

The first point is the fact that I sat with Vern Bullough—as I had sat with Dorr Legg for a moment, a brief one, after the legal settlement, to voluntarily divide books—to start placing part of our part of the ONE collection with the library at Cal State, Northridge.  Nothing else had been done before that action.  No John O'Brien, and certainly no Hawkins.

Partly due to the effort, as we understood it, of Walter Williams, USC was giving a place for the ONE collection, which was mainly Jim Kepner's ILGA material.  And Jim, et al., approached us again to join the other two parts at 909 W. Adams.  There had been a previous address, and that I think is when Harry Hay et al. had been involved, and that location didn't work out, and so 909 W Adams was the place we were offered a separate room for our collection.

Once we moved in (and prior to that O'Brien had helped, but he then "helped himself" to, stole part of our material—he made a moral rather than a legal decision to take what he wanted) we discovered other workers at ONE were stealing our material. As they had refused to honor their pledge of a private room, we removed our materials. Some ONE people lied and tried to stop us moving our own material, which is now mainly at CSUN.

I never understood where Willliams was in this manipulation of HIC. I do not recall Harry Hay telling us not to move in, but Dale Jennings and Don Slater had told us not to.  But when Don died—and with the promise of our material being kept separate and under our control—we felt it was a good choice, as both Don and Dale (and now Todd White) had been USC graduates.

I do know for a fact that the 909 W. Adams facility would NOT have been ready for years, if ever, if John O'Brien had not left and Jim Schneider placed in charge.  He got USC to fulfill its promise to donate money and material to refinish the former fraternity building, and that is why I was in favor of placing the material there and we were there at the opening.

Looking for information on Don Lucas

When I put in the name Donald Stewart Lucas, I got five or six links, including EBSCOHOST which gives links—which I can't get—from back issues of Advocate, including HIC (which I had never known of) AND even one item from “Jeannie's Lamp.”  One on our picketing  of the L.A. Times  (10-13-71), and on our Directory of Publications (8-77). (The main link is to SFGATE and it is obituary but good.  Then link to even FIBLibrary but not much and link to Archies Unbound Collection, ok, and LGBTran  which lists him, and Hal's being in Council on Religion and the Homosexual.  And main link to GLBTHistorical Society.  Notes written by Martin Meeker, and Paul Gabriel (oral history),  Online Archive of CA also has him but not much on us.

Philadelphia's Gay History Wiki

Regarding the (Philadelphia) Gay History Wiki: 

Thanks to Don Kelly for sending this link. Very interesting. I'm not sure the purpose and who is doing it.  I only "know" several names, obviously Mark Segal (PGNews) BUT in the list of out of towners is the name of a local "hero" Chuck Selber, whom I knew slightly, and I knew  a friend and co-ACT-UP person and friend of his and mine, Billy Smith.

The listing is very short, and I forget but assume he died in 1992 and it is an obituary.  He was a co-founder of the first attempt at a gay group in the ArkLaTex, GLAD, which met at the Episcopal Center at Centenary College.  It should be said that another co-founder, the main one, was David Dement, who has also died, a son of a later mayor of Bossier City.  The founding meetng was held at the Holidome which David's father managed at the time, and the visitor was Houston activist, Ray Hill.

Internal disagreement in a sense killed GLAD, BUT from its ashes came what is the still very active AIDS service organization here, the Philadelphia Center (a strange name it seems to mention on a website for Philadelphia activists).

As to the list of organizations, I think they missed Janus Society which was the name of Clark Polak's group. He, of course, published Drum Magazine, the first attempt to combine physique magazines with serious ones like ONE.

Thoughts on article on Manning/military, etc.

Regarding the Summer 2013 issue of UltraViolet/LAGAI-Queer Insurrection:

It is interesting to see/hear the experiences of others in the movement/cause, and thus their views on issues, such as the Manning San Francisco Pride March conflict.

I have never been involved in a Pride event—although representatives of the orgaization did.  I think of writer Joe Hansen who represented Tangents/HIC in the first (1970) one in L.A. (Christopher Street West) and the fact that Don Slater argued with the organizers over their rejection of some people/groups.  Specifically I think of the Gay Nazis.  Don of course felt a homosexual archive/library had to have material on all aspects of a movement.  He did think the organizers of an event had a right and legal/moral duty to control who and what was done under their control.   But being truly gay, and playing devil's advocate, he had  fun fussing that these people—whom we thought were FBI—were being “discriminated” against.  We believed that the FBI also showed up when we (and other groups) did the military/homosexual events in 1966, our Motorcade.  We used them and there was no trouble.

So you see Manning is old news to us.  He combines the issues you are concerned with then-how to view the military, national security, who represents our community in public event, etc.

By the way, I think  RFD is the only other community publication that is concerned with prisoners.

Best wishes in your work.

A magazine is NOT a newsletter--and it is strange that Lisa Keen would make that mistake

Lisa Keen’s (Keen News Service) article on "Top Five LGBT Supreme Court Cases" in the 6-2-13 issue of Windy City Times is a good idea, but it is incompetent and unethical for her to refer to ONE magazine as a “newsletter.”

While she also may want to be PC, we never referred to ONE as a gay & lesbian publication—it said boldly on the cover, “The Homosexual Viewpoint.”

A journalist/historian should understand what the founders did from the very start—knowing how closeted people would try to hide from even the only available publication speaking for and to the community, a professionally done magazine. I repeat, it was understood that an amateur publication would be rejected as unimportant—so the magazine had to be done professionally, and it was.

We had a newsletter, ONE Confidential, and the first academic publication, ONE Institute Quarterly, important even though most “academics” today seem to have never heard of ONE, Incorporated’s academic work.

There is of course a book available that would give basic information on the movement/community media, Gay Press, Gay Power, edited ironically by WCT publisher, Tracy Baim.

Old, but no clue how I got here

Speaking of being old, I have been trying to look back and see if there is/was a pattern in my life and how I would describe myself if I were someone else.  No clue.  I think I was cute, but not too masculine.  I had to make all the moves, but had at least three boys in high school so had sex and loved being in the band.

My sister, now dead, and I were “religious”—she played the piano and we sang in the choir (would you believe I actually took voice lessons?  I think an excuse to give money to lady in church who was a widow.). I don't know if my personality changed.  I do know I once thought that it would be better to be bi—(more chances).   I think there is no doubt that I would be the same if i were hetero.  Lazy.  Drifted through life but lucked out.

I had hard time learning to do pushups, And to learn to “play” the flute—I could not blow across the thing.

I did not make friends at LSU, in the Army, and lucked out when I found ONE and liked them and felt at home and was lucky enough to have family support and could serve the cause.  Dorr would say, yes, when you found time away from the Marines you kept looking for—I found a few and fresh from the Navy Melvin.

My few streaks of independence were sort of strange. I first ignored orders not to open and close the curtain at the theater I worked for because I had thought that was a sophisticated big town thing—and should have been fired.  I just did not show up for an added KP in the Army was willing to take the risk as didn't think I deserved the punishment, so didn't and went to library and nothing ever happened.

When I got kicked out of the Army I didn’t think much of it for myself—was only in for two years anyway.  Today I think that i was a lousy soldier.  I got upset when what I wanted didn't happen—had no thought of what was good for the Army. 

I drove my lovely Pontiac convertible home to Bossier City, left it and a note saying I was ok and not to worry, walked over the bridge to the T&P train station on N Market (later a temporary library, Noel memorial) and got on the train with about $200 and went to L. A.

I loved it the moment I saw it on a family vacation—I didn't want my family to hurt for my sexuality, but I had no problem with it.  Like the Army I didn’t think they would suffer wondering about me.  Later I joined the church and that meant the B.C. church knew where I was and my father visited me.

It had to be luck. I got a paper found an ad for a dormintory bed, and then found a job, got it and didn’t get invovled with ONE till after going to the Mattachine convention in Denver, 1959.

Job didn’t ask much about discharge.  Did get my LSU record, which was terrible, Same for 2nd job—first was (Anderson Clayton) Cotton Co., doing cables, And 2nd was what is still Retail Credit, and should have checked discharge as, like current questions about man who exposed NSA, they didn’t bother to check even though I had access to personal files of people with credit.

When house here burned in ’89, I moved back. We thought of building a library—not a good idea, even now, no demand, and now internet is important and I stayed here as cheap and had house, etc.  Do not see any old fellow students, only neighbors, not even glbt people. I traveled in early days, Dallas every month, etc.  Not strong enough to do much now, but still want to see Hot Springs, and Cajun 

country.

Enjoying internet and TV and eating too much—but not expensive.  So I am where I started. 

So now let’s see how things go for our issues.  That keeps me young.

I can retire-The Daily Show says all that needs saying on the subject

While each decade has seen more and more people (mostly friendly) discuss homosexuality and being glbt in America (sorry Canada & Mexico), I feel confident in saying that last night, The Daily Show, with John Oliver, in the Gay Watch section of the news, said all that needs saying on  current issues: the Boy Scouts, the Vatican’s Gay Lobby—except for the picture of Anderson Cooper and a gay pope.