Stonewall (49 page)

17
. Leitsch to Kameny, “Sunday” (July 1965). IGIC Papers, NYPL.

18
. Kameny to Leitsch, July 12, 1965. IGIC Papers, NYPL.

19
.
The Insider
(Mattachine Society, Washington, D.C.), July 1965. As a sample of Kameny's advance planning: Kameny to Colbert (Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters), June. 11, 1966; Kameny to Rodwell, June 20, 1966. IGIC Papers, NYPL.

20
. The account of the sip-in that follows derives from
New York Post
, April 17, 1966;
Village Voice
, May 5, 1966;
New York Times
, May 5, June 5, 1966; and Leitsch to Sheila Paine, April 29, 1966, Leitsch to Evander Smith, May 13, 1966, both in IGIC Papers, NYPL.

21
. For a particularly graphic account of entrapment, see Andrew Velez, “Looking Back in Anger,”
NYQ
, Nov. 3, 1991. Sascha L., who briefly worked the door at Stonewall (see p. 182), describes Gerling in those years as “looking like a drag queen—pumps and wigs.” She was admired, even beloved, Sascha L. says, for cursing out the cops (and occasionally even the judge) in open court for having entrapped and arrested homosexuals. “Don't you have a girlfriend?” she would bellow. “Don't you want to get laid or something? Why are you bothering these people?” The secret to Gerling's success in getting so many gay men sprung from jail was, according to Sascha L., not simply payoffs, but her willingness—“she used to be very hot”—to put out for several of the judges. She would postpone
a case if the “right” judge—i.e., one she had slept with—wasn't sitting. (Interview with Sascha L., Aug. 26, 1991.) Chuck Shaheen (interview, Nov. 20, 1991) also heard rumors that Gerling slept with some of the judges, and adds that she was also used by the Mafia as a lawyer.

Like many gay men of my generation, I carried Enid Gerling's phone number with me when I went out for a night's cruising. And like many others, too, I (though never arrested) came to regard her as something of a heroine for having gotten so many gay men out of jail. I said as much in the speech I gave dedicating Stonewall Place in 1989—and was promptly set right by Craig Rodwell (see Duberman,
About Time
, pp. 424–27). As recently as 1990, Gerling was employed as defense counsel for fourteen men arrested on drug charges in the West Village gay bar, the Ninth Circle (
Outweek
, Oct. 24, 1990). For a one-sided whitewashing of Gerling, making her into a selfless patron saint of liberation, see
NYQ
, Feb. 16, 1992.

22
. A substantial debate has opened up as to whether butch-femme categorization in the lesbian world of the forties and fifties
was
role-playing, and if so to what degree. The debate has been further enkindled by what has become known in the nineties as “the return of butch-femme.” For an introduction to the large literature relating to both the historical and contemporary debate, see especially Joan Nestle,
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader
(Alyson, 1992); Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Kennedy,
Boots of Leather
,
Slippers of Gold
(Routledge, 1993); the Karen Kahn interview with Nestle, “Constructing the Lesbian Self,”
Sojourner
, June 1992; and Lillian Faderman, “The Return of Butch and Femme: A Phenomenon in Lesbian Sexuality of the 1980s and 1990s,”
Journal of the History of Sexuality
, vol. 2, no. 4 (1992), pp. 578–96.

23
. The material on the Columbia strike is mostly taken from my essay, “On Misunderstanding Student Rebels,”
The Atlantic Monthly
, November 1968 (reprinted in Duberman,
The Uncompleted Past
[Random House, 1969], pp. 309–31). But a large literature exists on the strike; see, for example, Ronald Fraser,
1968
(Pantheon, 1988).

24
. Most of the details on life at Rikers are from my interview with Gregory Terry, August 29, 1990. Terry was also in the queens' cellblock in 1966, having been given a four-month sentence for “solicitation of a police officer.” Two years later, the same plainclothesman, not recognizing Terry, tried to entrap him again. Terry simply walked up to him and said, “Excuse me,
Officer
, do you have the time?” In 1974, by then employed as an investigator for the Legal Aid Society, Terry had the satisfaction of returning to Rikers to work on cases involving prisoners' rights.

25
. Interview with Ivan Valentin, July 5, 1991. Later, Ivan helped to win a major legal decision. In 1975, a moribund Connecticut state law barring female impersonators was resurrected to close Ivan's “Leading Ladies of New York” show. He took his case to the University of Connecticut School of Law, and the matter ended in more permissive legislation. (The story is told in Eric Gordon, “An Imitation of Images,”
The Hartford Advocate
, Oct. 27, 1976, Feb. 9, 1977.)

26
. Interview with Joe Tish, Nov. 15, 1991. Both Tish, in his late sixties, and Frankie Quinn, in his late seventies, continue to do drag shows—mostly at senior-citizen centers.

27
.
Steven Watson interview with Minette, 1979 (transcript courtesy Watson); Robert Heide, “Drag Queens,”
Other Stages
, vol. 2, no. 16 (April 17–30, 1980).

28
. Steven Watson interview with Holly Woodlawn, n.d. (transcript courtesy Watson). See also Holly Woodlawn's
A Low Life in High Heels
(St. Martin's, 1991).

29
. Free [Abbie Hoffman],
Revolution for the Hell of It
(Dial, 1968), p. 29.

30
. Hoffman,
Revolution
, p. 102.

31
. The TV clip is from the PBS show
Making Sense of the Sixties
(tape courtesy Marty Jezer, to whom I'm also grateful for letting me see the page proofs of his book,
Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel
(Rutgers University Press, 1992).

In
Do It!
(Ballantine, 1970, p. 129), Jerry Rubin wrote: “Look at the criminal record of a political activist. It reads like the record of a sex deviant—public nuisance, loitering, disorderly conduct, trespassing, disturbing the peace.”

32
. Interviews with Robert Heide, 1990 and 1991.

33
. Hoffman,
Revolution
, pp. 33–37; Jezer,
Hoffman,
109–110; Emmett Grogan,
Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps
(Little, Brown, 1972), pp. 399–401.

34
. The account is in Todd Gitlin,
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
(Bantam, 1987), p. 231. The fabrication, in Jim's mind, is the more egregious in a book that—except for this trivializing incident—entirely lacks any treatment of gay oppression or liberation.

35
. Hoffman,
Revolution
, pp. 32–33.

36
. This account is largely drawn from my interviews with Fouratt, but the “on the map” quote is from Hoffman,
Revolution
p. 91.

37
. Hoffman,
Revolution
, pp. 91–92; Jezer,
Hoffman
, 146, 149–50.

THE LATE SIXTIES

1
. As quoted (in both paragraphs) in Clare Coss, “Single Lesbians Speak Out,”
Lesbians at Midlife: The Creative Transition
, Barbara Sang, Joyce Warshow, and Adrienne J. Smith, eds. (Spinsters Book Company: 1991), pp. 137–38.

2
. The following account of the Kansas City conference, and the events surrounding it, largely derives from the IGIC Papers, NYPL, and two privately held manuscript collections: the Gunnison Papers and the William B. Kelley Papers. The two private collections are storehouses of previously unresearched material on the homophile movements, and I am indebted to both Gunnison and Kelley for giving me access.

The essential items used for describing the first planning conference are as follows: Gunnison to Leitsch, Jan. 22, 1967 (formalisms); William Kelley to Leitsch, Feb. 26, 1966; Leitsch to Kelley, Feb. 28, 1966—all in IGIC Papers, NYPL; “Persons in Attendance,” Feb. 18–21,
1966, Gunnison Papers, gives a complete roster of individuals and organizations; William B. Kelley, “Minutes of the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations, Kansas City, Mo.,” 21 typed pages, Kelley Papers. Kelley was recording secretary for the conference. The full “Statement of Purposes,” drawn up by Clark Polak, is in the Gunnison Papers; it includes the resolution about “objective research.” For Gunnison's reactions to individuals: Gunnison to Inman, March 9, 22, Sept. 18, 1966, Gunnison Papers. For his retreat from barbershop work: Gunnison to Inman, Oct. 11, 1965, Gunnison Papers.

3
.
The Homosexual Citizen
, April 1966. Foster repeated his argument on the importance of “upgrading our image” in
Mattachine Midwest Newsletter
, vol. II, no. 1 (January 1966).

4
. “Ten Days in August” was actually three consecutive conferences rolled into one: the Fourth National Convention of the DOB; the Consultation on Theology and the Homosexual; and, from August 25 to August 27, the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations (a name Del Martin had suggested during the Kansas City meeting). The roster at San Francisco, compiled by Gunnison, is in his papers. Most of the leaders present in Kansas City returned for the San Francisco conference (but not Nichols, Gittings, Grier, Inman or Tobin); and Dorr Legg, Harry Hay, and Jim Kepner were present for the first time. For the range of events:
Viewpoint
(Florida Mattachine), October 1966, and
Citizens' News
, vol. V, no. 10 (October 1966).

The account of the San Francisco conference that follows, is again drawn largely from materials in the Gunnison and Kelley manuscript collections. For the argument over accreditation: Dorr Legg to Kelley, March 16, 1966, and Clarence A. Colwell to “Dear Friends,” Aug. 5, 1966, both in Kelley Papers. For the proliferation of resolutions: William B. Kelley, “Preliminary Summary of Substantive Actions Approved by the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations …” Kelley Papers. For Strait's remark:
Citizens' News
, vol. V, no. 10 (October 1966). Another negative assessment (“National Conference Made Few Advances”) is in
The ARC News
(Sacramento), vol. 1, no. 8 (Sept. 1966).

5
. Stuart Timmons,
The Trouble with Harry Hay
(Alyson, 1990), pp. 214, 223.

6
.
ONE Confidential
, vol. XI, no. 9 (September 1966). Polak's remarks, which follow in the next paragraph, are excerpted in
Citizens' News
, vol. V, no. 10 (October 1966).

7
. The quotes in this and the following two paragraphs are from the typescript of Foster Gunnison, Jr., “Three Concrete Steps to Further the Homophile Movement,” Gunnison Papers.

8
. Del Martin, “The Lesbian's Majority Status,”
The Ladder
, June 1967. The name “NACHO” was not formally adopted until the 1968 convention.

9
. Jerome Stevens to Richard Inman, Sept. 12, 1966, Gunnison Papers. Gunnison had been appointed by the Rev. Clay Colwell, who was “Moderator” of the August 1966 conference. Colwell, a heterosexual, was chosen to preside because he was “independent” of the organizations involved and could be “trusted” (Gunnison to Duberman, Dec. 22, 1991)—less a shrewd calculation, perhaps, than a measure of homosexual self-distrust. Gunnison thought Colwell “the best non-homo homo that ever was,” and adduced as proof that when Colwell had been “‘groped' at the Saturday evening SIR dance,” he “didn't do anything about it. That's the acid test of dedication as far as I am concerned” (Gunnison to Inman, Sept. 18, 1966, Gunnison Papers). When Colwell resigned in 1967 due to ill health, he was replaced by another heterosexual, Robert W. Cromey, of St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in San Francisco (Inman to Colwell, Sept. 5, 1966, and May 25, 1967; Inman to Cromey, June 24, 1967—all in Gunnison Papers).

One of Foster's most enjoyable times during the convention was the evening he took Doris Hanson and Virginia Bruce out to San Francisco's famed nightclub Finocchio's, to see the female-impersonator floor show. Hanson, a close friend of Barbara Gittings, “took a crush” on him (that is, according to Foster) and “was in a most unlesbianlike frame of mind whenever I was around.” Virginia Bruce was a well-known transsexual who wrote and lectured on the subject. Foster “admired her. She's really no kook,” he wrote Inman, “quite sincere, a real tough problem she has to deal with, and a wry sense of humor.” (Gunnison to Inman, Sept. 18, 1966—Gunnison Papers.) A few years later, Foster was asked to escort a transsexual named Charlayne to a meeting in New York of the West Side Discussion Group, and though he found her “kind of cute,” he added (in a letter to Barbara Gittings, Jan. 12, 1970—Gunnison Papers), “Why can't people just stay with what God gave them? I didn't know whether to offer her a cigar on the train, or what to do.”

10
. Gunnison to Inman, Sept. 18, 1966, Gunnison Papers; attached note to Duberman describes the course of the therapy.

11
. Marvin Cutler,
Homosexuals Today
—
1956: A Handbook of Organizations and Publications
(ONE, Inc., 1956). “Warren D. Adkins” (Jack Nichols) published a brief (seven-page) “The Homophile Movement: A Historical Perspective,” in
The Homosexual Citizen
(Washington Mattachine's monthly), April 1967.

12
. The quotations in this and the following paragraphs are all from Foster Gunnison, Jr., “An Introduction to the Homophile Movement” (The Institute of Social Ethics, Sept. 1967), Gunnison Papers.

Foster's bolder side can also be seen in two other pieces he wrote in 1966–1967. In an extended review of Ronald Atkinson's
Sexual Morality
in
The Homosexual Citizen
(December 1966), he chastised Atkinson for failing to demolish the psychoanalytic view of homosexuality as “illness”; argued that homosexuality was “an unchosen condition, resistant to change”; and even made an oblique case for homosexual marriage. In another piece for
The Homosexual Citizen
(“The Hidden Bias: The Homophile Movement and Law Reform,” March 1967), Foster argued against a pending British bill that would place the age of consent for heterosexuals at sixteen, but for homosexuals at twenty-one, as a double standard that would compromise the effort to win acceptance “under the same rules that apply to everyone else.”