Queer History in Portland, Oregon (1941-1974)

In a Garden of Deviant Roses: Encountering Queer History in Portland, Oregon, 1941-1974 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in History. 2020 ________________________ ii Table of Contents Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Figures iii iv v viii Introduction 1 Chapter One - Shipping Out: Wartime and the Foundations of Postwar Queer Life in the City of Roses 21 Chapter Two - Those People Over There: Queer Cultural Spaces and the Geography of the City, 1945-1964 41 Chapter Three - “They Are Growing Stronger Each Week”: Containing the Homosexual Menace in the Rose City, 1947-1964 77 Chapter Four - “Perhaps Tomorrow”: Finding Homophile Politics in Portland 119 Chapter Five - Moving Along: The Sixties and the Shifting Nature of Queerness in Portland, 1963-1970 146 Chapter Six - “It’s Up to Us, Now”: Gay Liberation and the Remaking of Portland’s Queer Community, 1970-1974 165 Conclusion 207 Bibliography 214 iii Abstract Historians have widely understood the development of twentieth century queer lives in the United States to be intimately tied to the urban space of the largest American cities. Many of the most foundational studies on queer history have utilized a single-city model to address key historical questions about the growth and evolution of queer cultures, politics, and identities. But, in doing so, historians have largely overlooked the queer histories in cities that are smaller and less notoriously queer than metropolises like New York City, San Francisco, or Chicago. This thesis uses Portland, Oregon as a case study to examine key historiographic questions and themes in the context of a smaller American city. Through its focus on the City of Roses— as Portland is so often called— this thesis addresses the emergence, growth, and evolution of queer culture in the city alongside the city’s official treatment of queer gender and sexual subversion. By attending to the history of queer Portlanders between the entry of the United States into the Second World War and the maturation of gay liberation politics in the early 1970s, this thesis finds that there are rich and complex histories of queer life in smaller American cities, and that those histories can substantially diverge from the narratives of the nation’s metropolitan cores. iv Acknowledgements v made my work as a historian easier. In particular, I would like to thank both Robin Will and George Nicola. Additionally, I would also like to extend my gratitude to Mary Hanson at the City of Portland Archives, and the archival staff at the Oregon Historical Society for helping me navigate local archival collections and databases. I also want to express my thanks to Emily Pearson in the Penrose Library for aiding in my research, and for helping me explore my historical interests beyond the classroom through an internship she oversaw at the library. Lastly, I would also like to thank Dr. Annelise Heinz, a historian at the University of Oregon and a Whitman alum, for talking about my research with me over coffee last October. The insight and feedback I received from talking with her was fundamental to the trajectory of this project. Beyond the professors and historians that helped me throughout this project, I would also like to thank my friends, family, and loved ones from the bottom of my heart. Without the lifelong support from my mom, Tonya, and my dad, Kenny, I would never have arrived at this point or felt comfortable with the person I am today. The friends that I made at Whitman have also been foundational to my development as both a person and a scholar. Notably, I would like to thank Rachel Evered, Sophie Grossman, Merone Hadush, Maude Lustig, Calvin Lincoln, Emily Rigsby, and Ellery Shore for continually being there for me over these last four years. They are truly the ones who made my experience at Whitman so transformative, and I am unsure where I would even be without them. I would also like to thank my boyfriend and closest confidant, Donovan McKenzie, for always being there to listen to me blab on about bits of queer history, and for unyieldingly supporting me throughout this process. And finally, this thesis is dedicated to those who have fought—and continue to vi fight—to make both my hometown and country into more open and accepting places for queer people to live and love. Without the strength, resilience, and resistance that queer Americans have exhibited over the past century, I would not be able to live my life in the way that makes me happiest and most fulfilled. Although there is still a long way to go until all queer people can live openly and safely, the continual refusal of historical and contemporary queer Americans to acquiesce to the expectations of society has undoubtedly contributed to my success and happiness as a gay man and a queer historian. So, to all of the queer people who paved the way for the road that I now proudly walk on: thank you. vii Figures Figure 1: Map of Queer Spaces in Downtown Portland, 1945-1964 viii 40 Introduction Cities have been fundamental to the ways that historians have tried to understand the history of gay and lesbian sexualities and cultures across the twentieth century. For as long as historians have taken the history of American homosexuality seriously, they have asserted the central role of urbanization and the city in the formation and development of queer identities and cultures across the nation. In their pursuit of urban queer histories, however, historians have largely relied on the narratives that emerge from the most populous cities with the greatest notoriety for being “gay” or “queer.” For this reason, metropolises like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago have been studied the most thoroughly. Because of the strong link between queer history and urban spaces, these studies that have focused on large cities have also served as the foundation for our historical understanding of queer Americans. While some studies have rejected the preeminence of urban spaces in the historiography, many more have relied on a citycentered analysis.1 The field has largely been dominated and shaped by the single-city study; and, even those works that take a national or regional view have a tendency to focus on the experiences of a handful of the largest cities in the United States. By failing to research and analyze the experiences of cities that may not have been the “loudest” or the “gayest,” the prevailing historiography on queer culture and politics has overlooked historical sites that offer unique and divergent narratives that complicate prevailing 1 Historian John Howard’s masterful work Men Like That: A Southern Queer History looks at the history of Mississippi and the interactions between the rural parts of the state and their interactions with Jackson, the state’s urban capital. Howard holds that rather than acting as a centripetal force, like D’Emilio posits, cities can act as centrifugal forces for queerness in that they can disperse knowledge of homosexuality into rural areas. John Howard, Men like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 14. understandings of non-normative sexuality and gender expression in American society. In order to address this absence of small and mid-sized cities in the literature on gay and lesbian sexualities after the Second World War, this work uses Portland, Oregon as a case study. By placing a smaller city at the center of its analysis, this study makes the case for a renewed interest in single-city urban studies that focus on sites that lack the population, culture, and politics that have defined the queer histories of the largest American cities. While it must be acknowledged that a single-city approach limits this study’s ability to make broad, national generalizations, a focus on one smaller city serves as a demonstration that there are rich and meaningful histories of queerness beyond metropolitan centers, however disconnected from the supposed “cores” of the urban queer experience they may appear to be. By positioning Portland within larger historiographic questions like the role of police harassment and enforcement, the structure of queer communities, and the role of homophile organizations in gay and lesbian political organizing, the distinctly local characteristics and divergences from nationwide trends in discourse, politics, and culture become more apparent. Moreover, by attending to a city that was only of secondary (or even tertiary) importance to national events and processes, this study is able examine the contributions of a small city to greater transformations in the lives of queer Americans. Despite its small size and relative disconnectedness, the City of Roses—as Portland is widely known—has its own queer history filled to the brim with its own peculiarities. The case of Portland suggests that historians need to continue to engage with the urban study, but that they need to break out of a binary distinction between urban and rural to consider more closely how smaller 2 cities and local histories shaped queer life in the United States. Historiography From the outset, historians of queer culture in the United States have centered their analyses on the city. The earliest attempts to understand the history of queerness were conducted by gay and lesbian community historians who sought to create a useable past for the emerging gay rights movement. Figures like Jonathan Ned Katz collected relevant historical sources and used them to make the first analyses of the history of homosexuality and same-sex attraction. These early activist-historians were very interested in the role of the city, and the histories of the cities that they lived in (which tended to be large cities).2 Building off of scholarship done by these community historians, the first academic monograph on gay and lesbian history was D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, published in 1983. While D’Emilio did not focus on a single city, his work established urbanization and urbanity as the cornerstones of twentieth-century gay history. As a result of his focus on urban spaces, D’Emilio centered his analysis on New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.3 Several years later, in 1990, Allan Bérubé published Coming Out Under Fire, in which he argued that the extent of gay and lesbian culture greatly increased during the Second World War due to the predominance of same-sex interaction during wartime and the urban character of much of the homefront. In this work, Bérubé held that the “nation’s port cities,” like Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, and New York, became centers of urban gay 2 Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA (New York: Avon Books, 1976); and Steven Maynard, “‘Without Working?’: Capitalism, Urban Culture, and Gay History,” Journal of Urban History 30, no. 3 (March 1, 2004): 380, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203262814. 3 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. 3 culture, because the presence of soldiers on leave facilitated the development of gay and lesbian nightlife.4 Although neither D’Emilio or Bérubé focused on a single city, their foundational assessments of twentieth-century queer culture placed the largest American cities at the forefront of their histories. Building from the methodological and historiographic foundations of these early works, historians during the 1990s began to narrowly focus on single urban centers and their own queer histories. In 1993, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis published their work Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold. Kennedy and Davis’ project focused on the history of lesbians in Buffalo, New York between the 1930s and the 1960s. Their close look at a single city, rather than the entire nation, allowed them to make fine-grained analyses about the role of class, gender, and race in the development of a localized lesbian community. By centralizing a single city, Kennedy and Davis were able to attend acutely to the process of community formation and the evolution of that community over time.5 A year later, George Chauncey wrote and published Gay New York. Chauncey used the single-city approach to argue that there was a flourishing gay male culture in New York before World War II. Similar to the ways that Kennedy and Davis used the single-city study to analyze the role of class and race in lesbian community, Chauncey was able to use New York to discuss the growth of urban gay male culture in the first decades of the twentieth century.6 With the trailblazing success of both Boots of Leather and Gay New York, the preeminence of the single-city study was 4 Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 106-112. 5 Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993). 6 George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 18901940 (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1994). 4 solidified as a valuable and meaningful way to study sexual and gender minorities in the United States. This thesis ultimately continues the model that was established by Kennedy, Davis, and Chauncey. The single-city study model became entrenched in queer historiography in the late 1990s with the publication of two essay collections. The first, Creating a Place for Ourselves, was edited and published by historian Genny Beemyn in 1997. Each of the 11 essays in Beemyn’s book looked at the queer history of a different American city, and broadened the scope of cities to consider, adding less notorious sites like Detroit to the historiography. Then, two years later, historian David Higgs edited and published Queer Sites: Gay Urban History Since 1600. Higgs’ collection, and the historians who wrote the essays contained in the collection, applied the single-city model to a transnational approach by investigating the queer urban histories of cities like Paris, Moscow, and Rio de Janeiro. Moreover, the essays in this collection demonstrated that such an approach could be used to deal with queerness before the twentieth century, which most American queer historians have been unable to do. The number of essays and different historians contained within both Beemyn’s and Higgs’ collections attest to the degree to which the single-city study had become the dominant way that historians were engaging with a queer past.7 Shortly after Beemyn’s book was published, several monograph-length studies were written that applied the single-city model to cities outside of New York state. In 2000, Marc Stein published City of Sisterly & Brotherly Loves, which looked at the 7 Brett (Genny) Beemyn, Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories (London: Routledge, 1997); and David Higgs, Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories Since 1600 (London: Routledge, 2003). 5 intertwined history of gay men and lesbian women in Philadelphia. Whereas previous historians tended to look exclusively at either gay men or lesbian women, Stein was interested in the parallel and overlapping histories of Philadelphia’s gay and lesbian communities. Much like Kennedy, Davis, and Chauncey, Stein examined the development of discourses and spaces over time, bounded by the limits of the city of Philadelphia. A few years later, in 2003, a study of San Francisco called Wide-Open Town was written by Nan Alamilla Boyd, which focused on the role of gay bars and other queer spaces in the development of political action. Then, in 2006, Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons wrote and published Gay LA on the history of queer people in Los Angeles. In this work, they traced the contours of Los Angeles’ gay and lesbian communities across the twentieth century.8 With the wave of monographs in the early 2000s, the single-city urban study became seemingly overworked and historians began to organize their work around other frameworks. Throughout the last decade and a half, queer historians have largely focused on thematic and theoretical approaches to queer history, rather than through geography. But even then, these more recent histories have rested their arguments on the scholarly foundation laid down by single-city studies.9 The last several years have seen a return to the single-city model, however. 8 Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); and Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 9 Of particular note, see Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in TwentiethCentury America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Heather Murray, Not in This Family: Gays, Their Parents, and the Meanings of Kinship in Postwar North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); and Phil Tiemeyer, Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 6 Reinvigorated by the maturation of queer theory and queer studies, these more recent works of history have applied new historiographic questions and theories to focused studies of urban centers. In 2014, Beemyn published another book called A Queer Capital on the history of queer people in Washington DC. While Beemyn’s book extends the scholarship to Washington DC, their analysis emphasized the relationship between race and sexuality in the nation’s capital. Then, in 2016, historian Timothy StewartWinters’ Queer Clout extended queer urban histories beyond the coasts of the United States to the Midwest by focusing on the history of Chicago. Stewart-Winters was particularly focused on the ways that local electoral politics influenced and shaped the city’s queer activism and culture. Most recently, historian Julio Capó wrote and published Welcome to Fairyland in 2017, which applied the single-city model to the history of Miami before the Second World War. In this study, Capó held that the transnational characteristic of life in Miami shaped the nature of its urban queer cultures and communities. While these recent monographs have added a great deal to the existing historiography on queer sexuality and gender during the twentieth century, they continued to focus on the largest and most notoriously queer cities in the United States.10 An overview of the historiography of single-site urban studies of queer culture and community reveals several significant gaps. First, the coverage of small and midsized cities is incredibly scarce. Based on the 1950 census, all of the cities that have been examined historically, with the exception of Miami, have had over 500,000 residents 10 Genny Beemyn, A Queer Capital: A History of Gay Life in Washington D.C. (New York: Routledge, 2014); Timothy Stewart-Winter, Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Julio Capó, Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). 7 during the time period that they are covered.11 Importantly, these urban studies did not all examine the same time period. If we consider the studies that looked at the postwar and Cold War periods of American history, Kennedy and Davis’ history of Buffalo is the only one to look at a smaller city. Moreover, beyond Buffalo, the historiography has hardly touched on cities that do not play a central and visible role in the mid-century homophile movements or in post-Stonewall liberation politics. But, what about the smaller cities across the nation that were not at the center of national gay politics and culture? What about those cities that do not have a Stonewall riot, or those without notoriously queer districts like the Tenderloin or Boystown? Queer urban studies have been incredibly fruitful historical works, but they have hardly extended beyond the largest and “queerest” cities in America, particularly in their coverage of the postwar period. Through this thesis, I hope to add to the history of sexual and gender minorities in the United States by putting a mid-sized city into conversation with the historiographic questions and concerns of the larger cities that the existing corpus of scholarship has dealt with. For this purpose, I have turned to my hometown of Portland, Oregon and the history of its queer cultures. Why Portland? In the pursuit of filling the historiographic gap created by the field’s focus on large and notoriously queer cities, this thesis looks to the history of Portland, Oregon. While this historian is particularly interested in Portland because of his own connections to the city, Portland is ultimately an ideal city to engage with for the purposes of this study. Of primary concern, Portland’s population history and demographics are such that 11 Capó’s Welcome to Fairyland is the only monograph thus far to deal with a small city, but even then, he only focuses on the history of Miami before the Second World War. Moreover, Miami developed a reputation as a major queer city during the second half of the twentieth century. 8 the city was smaller during the mid-century than any other city that has been studied extensively by queer historians. Furthermore, Portland has a strikingly large number of archival collections and other sources that allow for the historian to study its queer past. And, alongside the availability of sources, community historians have done a lot of groundwork to establish a foundation from which this work can build from. Portland has never been a large city that can compare to the scale of influence and population of major American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. In 1845, Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove, two land speculators, surveyed “The Clearing,” a halfway point on the Willamette River between Fort Vancouver and Oregon City, and named the new township Portland. With waves of settlers arriving from the East, Portland quickly expanded to become the largest settlement in the Oregon Territory.12 Over the course of the rest of the 19th century, Portland’s centrality as a Pacific port city, facilitated by its position next to the Columbia River, continued the growth of the city. The population of Portland also grew due to urban consolidation during the 1890s, which incorporated nearby settler towns such as Albina and East Portland (which laid across the Willamette on the East bank). Between 1900 and 1910, the population of Portland doubled from about 90,000 to over 200,000 people. This growth was attributable to a booming economy, increased national notoriety from the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in 1905, and intensifying immigration from Europe and East Asia.13 After the growth of the 1900s, however, population growth dramatically 12 Jewel Lansing, Portland: People, Politics, and Power, 1851-2001 (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2005), 4-14. 13 Lansing, Portland, 201-2, 258-60, 264-5, 271. 9 stagnated. Due to the decline of immigration and the rise of other urban areas in the Pacific Northwest, namely Seattle, growth in Portland dropped off. In 1930, Portland’s population was at 301,000. By 1970, its population had only increased to 382,000. Except for a slight boost due to World War II, Portland’s population hardly grew over the course of the mid-twentieth century. In lists of the hundred most populated cities produced by the Census Bureau, Portland consistently had twenty to thirty cities that were ranked as more populous than it was. The largest cities in the United States at the time of the 1970 census, namely New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, had over ten times as many people as Portland did.14 Portland’s relatively small size (compared to the cities that queer historians have studied thus far) and its lack of significant population growth makes it an ideal case study for the development of queer culture and community in a smaller city. Moreover, Portland’s distance—both geographically and demographically—from large well-studied cities allows the historian to assess the role that seemingly disconnected cities played in national trends and movements. The predominance of large cities in the historiography of urban queer culture can partially be explained by the availability of historical sources. Because homosexuality and gender non-normativity were subversive and cast as immoral for much of the twentieth century, the surviving historical record from before the rise of gay liberation is consistently quiet and understated regarding non-normative sexuality and gender expression. Thus, even for those historians who have researched the most populous and well-recorded cities, the availability of sources consistently presents a challenge to 14 Campbell Gibson, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990” (United States Census Bureau, June 1998), https://www.census.gov/library/workingpapers/1998/demo/POP-twps0027.html. 10 historical research. This barrier is even larger when it comes to dealing with smaller cities that did not have the same number of opportunities for record-creating events like scandals, political action, or police raids. Relatively speaking, however, Portland has a large number of sources that make such historical work possible. The availability of sources on Portland is largely the result of archival and community history work conducted by the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN). In conjunction with historians at Portland State and the local queer community, volunteer members of GLAPN have collected extensive archival collections that are now preserved at the Oregon Historical Society. GLAPN’s historical scholarship has also identified sources in the City of Portland Archives that would have otherwise been overlooked. Furthermore, and perhaps of greatest importance, GLAPN has also worked to conduct, transcribe, and publish oral history interviews with many Portlanders. This work would not have been possible without the foundational work done by GLAPN, nor without the support of its current members. Moreover, the availability of sources on Portland’s queer history has expanded due to the recent development of digitized sources and new digital tools. Digitized historical sources are now often scanned using optical character recognition software, which allows the researcher to conduct keyword searches using Boolean logic. The digitized version of all past issues of The Oregonian (Portland’s daily newspaper), and digitized collections from national gay and lesbian archives that are accessible through Gale’s Archives of Sexuality & Gender database allowed me to uncover much more about Portland’s queer past than was previously possible. Much of the scholarship in this thesis rests on a combination of physical sources collected by GLAPN and digitized 11 sources identified using digital methodologies. Conducting such a history on a smaller American city was only possible because of the vast number of sources made available by community historians and digital archiving initiatives. Such a multiplicity of sources is unlikely to be found for most other similarly-sized cities, and is only really available in Portland due to the work of local archivists and community historians. Alongside the wide availability of sources on Portland, there has also been some scholarship on the history of Portland’s queer subcultures, even if there has not been a single-city study on it. Historian Peter Boag has done a great deal of work on homosexuality in Portland, in the context of regional history on the Pacific Northwest. In 1999, he published an article on a 1912 vice scandal in Portland that centered on middleclass homosexual men, and how the response to that scandal was entwined with city politics. Building off this article, Boag published a book titled Same-Sex Affairs in 2003. In this book, he argued that Portland was a central site for a male homosexual subculture that emerged among working-class transient laborers in the Pacific Northwest. Importantly, Boag argued that this was a regional subculture, not limited to a single city. Following his work on the early twentieth century, Boag followed up and wrote an article for the Oregon Historical Quarterly that examined the history of Portland during the mid-century to try to understand why Portland never developed a homophile organization. Importantly, this was the first attempt by a historian to try to understand queer Portland through the lens of the prevailing historiography on mid-century urban queer cultures and politics. This thesis fundamentally builds off this article to understand the history of queerness in Portland via the single-city study model. In turn, this thesis complicates and adds to many of Boag’s conclusions. 12 Beyond Boag’s scholarship, community historians with GLAPN have also done a lot of work to uncover and describe Portland’s queer history. These historians have worked incredibly hard to identify historical locations, figures, and events that I may not have come across on my own.15 As community historians, however, they have been less concerned for the broader historiography, so their work largely isolates Portland from national trends and events. This thesis seeks to fill in gaps in the historiography on queer Americans while also synthesizing the important work of community historians into a single-city study on a smaller American city. Terminology The words that one uses to discuss historical same-sex desire and non-normative gender expression carry a great deal of weight behind them. As French theorist Michel Foucault forcefully argued in his foundational work The History of Sexuality, sex and sexuality are defined and constructed by the words, or discourses, that we use to talk about those topics.16 In this vein, those labels that I use to discuss sexual behaviors and identities in Portland must be carefully used so as to avoid straying too far into anachronisms. This is further complicated by the fact that the identities we may want to levy against historical actors (like “gay” or “homosexual”) may not have been identities that the actors themselves ascribed to. With these concerns in mind, this thesis uses specific terms like “queer,” “gay,” “lesbian,” and “homosexual” to identify distinct, yet overlapping, types of people while also trying to preserve as much clarity as possible. 15 While GLAPN’s work is certainly a community effort with numerous contributors, particular recognition should go to Tom Cook, George Painter, Robin Will, George Nicola, and Ismoon Maria Hunter-Morton. 16 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, Vintage Books Edition (New York: Random House, 1978). 13 Throughout this thesis, “queer” is used as a general umbrella category to talk broadly about anyone who acted out on homosexual desires or non-normative gender expressions. The use of “queer” here is necessarily anachronistic. During the early twentieth century, “queer” was initially used to describe masculine men who identified themselves on the basis of their sexual relationships with other men. As Chauncey points out, queer was once the most widely used term for men with same-sex desires and originally did not have a negative connotation. But then, during the 1930s and early 1940s, “gay” gradually replaced “queer” as the preferred label by homosexual men, and “queer” became known as a slur.17 Over the last several decades, however, “queer” has been reclaimed as an identity category by the contemporary LGBT movement, first by HIV/AIDS activists in the late 1980s and then by academics and scholars in the 1990s. Over the course of this thesis, “queer” is used broadly in its re-appropriated meaning to refer to those people with non-normative sexual and gender expressions. In this way, it encompasses anyone who we would today call “gay,” “lesbian,” “bi/pansexual,” or “transgender.” Moreover, “queer” is also used to refer to people’s gender and sexual behavior regardless of how they themselves may have identified. As countless historians have demonstrated, there were (and continue to be) many men and women who engaged in same-sex sex acts but continued to place themselves in normative sexual categories. Alongside this, “homosexuals” and “homosexuality” is used in this thesis to describe people whose sexual behavior was such that they sought out sex with members of the same sex. This does not mean that the given historical actor would have identified as “homosexual,” but simply that they engaged in sex acts with members of their own sex. 17 Chauncey, Gay New York, 13-19, 101. 14 As they are used throughout this thesis, both “queer” and “homosexual” are used to discuss people with non-normative sexual and gendered behaviors, rather than identities. Without the ability to widely determine the identities that Portlanders used, “queer” and “homosexual” are used much more broadly than defined identity categories are. Identity labels like “gay” or “lesbian” are used in this thesis when it is clear that the historical actors being considered would have used those labels. For someone to call themselves “gay” or “lesbian,” it required the person to connect their own sexual or gender behaviors to being a part of a defined minority category. It necessitated that they recognize themselves to be different from what others might expect to construct an identity around being not-“straight”. Therefore, “gay” and “lesbian” are used much more specifically to discuss people who had a sexual identity of being “gay” or “lesbian.” Due to a variety of historical trends, such as the rise of homosexual media and political organizing, “gay” and “lesbian” are used much more in the later chapters of this thesis. Beyond sexual identity categories, this thesis also makes a strong delineation between the use of “queer culture” versus “queer community.” Queer historians have tended to draw a boundary between “culture” and “community” to clarify relationality between peoples with shared experiences or identities. In this thesis, “culture” refers broadly to the set of spaces, behaviors, and ideologies that made up the facets of queer life in Portland. It does not require that people believe they are part of the “culture,” but rather just that they participate within it. “Community,” on the other hand, is used to discuss a sense of common belonging among queer people. For a “community” to establish itself, people must believe that there is a common interest that brings them together into closer relationality than with those people outside of the community. 15 Therefore, self-identification and an understanding that there are others with the same identity is required before a defined “community” can develop. For much of this thesis, there is not a “queer community” to speak of, and it is only with the rise of organizing in the 1970s that a gay and lesbian community developed in Portland.18 Chapter Overview Over the course of the next six chapters, I will be exploring the history of Portland through a thematic and semi-chronological approach, focusing on major historiographic questions that have been addressed in other single-city studies of queer culture. Considering the length of this project as a thesis and the existing nature of the historiography of Portland, I will be attending to the period between the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941 and the outgrowth of liberation politics in the early 1970s. This aligns well with the periodization offered by queer historians. Ever since D’Emilio’s foundational Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities first presented the argument, World War II has been seen as a major break in the history of twentiethcentury homosexuality. The vast majority of queer American history either begins with the war or ends shortly before it breaks out. As for the endpoint of this project, I have settled with ending it in 1974 with the decline of the Second Foundation, one of Portland’s early gay rights organizations. Much greater attention will be paid to these periodization boundaries in Chapters 1 and 6. Chapter One situates Portland in the history of World War II and its role in the 18 For discussions of “culture” versus “community” in the historiography, see: Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 6; and Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 7. In defining “community,” myself and other queer historians widely rely on Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised edition (London: Verso, 1983). 16 development of urban queer cultures. The war significantly shifted the demographics of the city, largely as a result of the massive shipbuilding industry that developed in North Portland. With a diverse labor force flooding into the city due to the war, vice industries flourished in downtown Portland funded by the relatively large wages of shipyard workers. The growth of vice during the war, coupled with the infusion of soldiers on leave in the city, created a setting ripe for the foundation of queer cultures. Importantly, I argue, the wartime experience and demographic changes allowed for the development of a bar-based culture for both gay men and lesbian women in the city. Chapter Two looks at how queer cultural spaces in Portland developed and changed over the course of the mid-century. This chapter finds that there were two distinct bar districts that arose in downtown Portland, and that they were partly segregated based on class status, though interactions between spaces surely occurred. In this regard, Portland’s queer culture looked similar to that of larger cities, in that class was a primary dividing line in the contours of urban queer cultures. Unlike cities such as San Francisco, however, Portland’s queer bars and spaces were more likely to be heterosocial spaces where both gay men and lesbian women occupied the same geography and often times the same bars. Additionally, all downtown spaces were predominately white spaces, largely a result of residential segregation and prevailing racism. At the end of this chapter, I examine non-bar-based cultural spaces, including softball teams, theaters, and private gatherings to assess how queer spaces were more broadly dispersed across the city than the history of the city’s gay bars may suggest. Chapter Three then investigates the topic of police enforcement and antihomosexual discrimination in Portland. Using a discursive analysis, this chapter 17 complicates the prevailing belief that queer Portlanders did not face an aggressive police force like so many others in large cities had during the mid-century. It argues that the Portland City Council and Police Department were intently focused on a policy of containment regarding its homosexual population. Two major homophobic discourses emerged in the city in the early 1950s: a nationalized one on the threat of homosexuals in the fight against communism, and a localized one focused on homosexual predation of children. These discourses combined with a Cold War mindset of containment to create a spasmodic approach of containing queer people to pre-existing bars and spaces, for fear that disrupting those spaces would cause a dispersion of homosexuality across the city. I argue that this method of enforcement began in the early 1950s and continued to the mid1960s, when both local and national discourses around homosexuality began to significantly shift away from the psychological model. Chapter Four turns to the history of homophile organizations and communications in Portland to reassess the role of these mid-century political groups in Portland’s queer history. These “homophile organizations” were the first gay and lesbian rights groups in American history and were established in the early 1950s. This chapter pushes back against Boag’s argument in his 2004 article that homophile thought was absent from the city to argue that there were in fact Portland men and women who were motivated and invigorated by the ideals of both the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. This chapter rests on sources uncovered using digital methodologies via digitized archival collections of the homophile movement. The chapter relies on a number of letters written between Portland gay men and lesbian women and the leaders of these homophile organizations, as well as other materials that reveal information about 18 Portland. Through these sources, the chapter concludes that Portlanders were not isolated from the homophile movement, despite the lack of a lasting local organization. From the late 1950s through the 1960s, many Portland gay men and lesbian women intensely engaged with the newsletters and magazines produced by these homophile organizations, and it even inspired some political action in the city itself. Moreover, the chapter presents a unique perspective on the history of homophile organizing, due to the fact that Portland never developed its own organization. Chapter Five then looks at the years between the Portland Police Department’s anti-bar crackdown in 1964 and the rise of liberation politics in 1970 to examine how queer life in the city changed during the second half of the 1960s. Unlike some of the largest cities during this same period, Portland’s queer culture and politics were not marked by increasing radicalism or activism. But two major changes took place during the decade in Portland. First, local discourses over homosexuality and queerness generally became more sympathetic. News reporters, police, and city officials stopped discussing homosexuality through the language of national security and child predation. And second, local urban renewal projects promoted by the city pushed on the boundaries of the downtown bar districts, and shook up the geography of queer spaces in the city. By the beginning of 1970, the Cold War era consensus on homosexuality in Portland had broken down. In its place, the foundations for an “open and proud” queer culture in the city were established. The last chapter of this thesis, Chapter Six, investigates the history of queer political organizing in the city to assess how the emergence of liberation politics changed the dynamics and contours of the city’s queer cultures and the development of 19 community. The first organization to emerge following the national outgrowth of gay liberation in 1969 was the Portland Gay Liberation Front (GLF). The GLF was a small organization that distinguished itself from the bar community and was mostly made of Portlanders who were active in the city’s flourishing counterculture. Tensions between gay men and lesbian women in the organization led to a split in the city’s queer community along gendered lines. In 1971, following the decline of the GLF, another organization called the Second Foundation was founded. The Second Foundation primarily catered to gay men, and actively emerged from, and engaged with, the city’s bar-based culture, bringing the middle class and the working class together. Alongside the founding of the Second Foundation, a lesbian community emerged on the East side of the city, centered on feminist spaces (such as bookstores and cafes) and communal housing. As argued across this chapter, liberation politics partially erased class-based divisions in the city’s queer culture, but intensified divisions between queer men and women in the city. Moreover, following the break between men and women, this chapter also traces the parallel growth of a lesbian women’s community and a gay men’s community during the early 1970s. The development of liberation politics, and the shifting boundaries of community that accompanied it, set the stage for the future of Portland’s queer culture and marked a significant rupture in its history. 20 Chapter One Shipping Out: Wartime and the Foundations of Postwar Queer Life in the City of Roses On December 8, 1941, one day after the bombing of the Pearl Harbor naval base, Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian, reported, “The Portland area mobilized for war . . . with grim realization that the mouth of the Columbia river is the closest mainland point from Japan.” Another article in the same issue began, “Saddened by the thought of another war and amazed at the suddenness with which it was thrust upon the nation, Oregonians in all walks of life from congressmen to housewives Sunday expressed the whole-hearted determination to ‘see it through’ to an early and triumphant conclusion.”19 These reports signaled the onset of dramatic transformations that would come to irreversibly change the structures and culture of Portland over the course of the Second World War. Due to its strategic inland location along the Columbia River, a major outlet into the Pacific Ocean, Portland became an epicenter for shipbuilding and manufacturing during wartime. Regional labor shortages prompted by the expansion of industry and the loss of male laborers to conscription resulted in a major population boom that saw thousands of men, women, and families flock to the city in search of industry jobs, particularly in the shipyards. It was in the context of these dramatic changes that the foundations for Portland’s postwar queer cultures were laid down. The rapid development of wartime industry and the accompanying population explosion in Portland created conditions that ultimately facilitated the development of 19 Herbert Lundy, “Portland Area Dons Full War Dress,” The Oregonian, December 8, 1941; and “Oregon’s Citizens Rally At Japanese Challenge to America in Pacific,” The Oregonian, December 8, 1941. 21 queer subcultures in the city. While identifiable homosexual male subcultures had existed in the city since the late nineteenth century, the war substantially changed the nature of queer socialization in the city. Historians have widely noted that the Second World War transformed gay and lesbian life in large port cities like San Francisco and New York, where thousands of soldiers flowed through on their ways to military bases or on temporary leave. Because of this, historians of queerness and sexuality have tended to use the Second World War as a key periodization point for American queer history.20 But, Portland did not have the same conditions that these larger port cities had—it was not near major military bases and it did not have the same inundation of soldiers on leave. Rather, as will be argued throughout this chapter, the transformations brought on by the shipbuilding industry and the accompanying population boom created conditions that fostered the development of local queer cultures. While Portland was not impacted by the war in the same ways that large well-studied cities were, the war proved to be critical to the development of the city’s modern queer communities. Homosexual Male Subcultures Before the War It would be incorrect to say that the Second World War was the origin of public queer cultures in Portland. As historian George Chauncey has noted, historically recognizable subcultures of homosexual men have existed in urban centers since the late nineteenth century. These subcultures were largely constituted of men who did not identify themselves as “homosexual” or “gay,” but participated in social spaces that facilitated same-sex sexual interactions. As Chauncey notes, before the middle of the 20 See D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 23-39; Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire; and Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 108-123. 22 twentieth century, most queer men were only labeled as such “if they displayed a much broader inversion of their ascribed gender status by assuming the sexual and other cultural roles ascribed to women.”21 Thus, there were homosexual subcultures in urban spaces before the Second World War, but the men who were a part of those subcultures likely did not have a “sexual identity” per se. While the prewar communities of homosexual men in Portland were not as visible or as populous as those in New York (the subject of Chauncey’s study), historian Peter Boag has argued that Portland did in fact have male homosexual subcultures during the first half of the twentieth century. Portland’s early subcultures were notably segregated based on class and geography, and became the subject of controversy during a scandal in 1912. In his book Same-Sex Affairs, Boag found that there was a homosexual subculture among transient laborers in the Pacific Northwest’s lumber industry. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, transient labor was a central aspect of the labor system in the region, arising from economic instability and the seasonal nature of natural resource-based industry. The conditions of migratory labor created an intensely homosocial atmosphere where same-sex sex acts were widespread and socially acceptable among laborers. This homosexual subculture was so widespread that a common language of terms for sex roles evolved in the work camps.22 While much of this culture took place in lumber camps and other worksites across the rural Northwest, these men often came to Portland in search of off-season work. When they temporarily lived in Portland, migratory laborers tended to congregate 21 22 Chauncey, Gay New York, 12-13. Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 20-31. 23 in the Northeast portion of downtown, in what was then known as the North End. This portion of Portland had the highest density of lodging houses (inexpensive housing for temporary residents), which meant that it was both the housing and recreation center for these laborers. As a result of its cheap housing, the North End became a male-dominated space that was the center of vice in Portland for the first half of the twentieth century. In this way, the North End was similar to the Bowery in New York and the Barbary Coast in San Francisco at around the same time. In all of these urban districts, vice industries like gambling, prostitution, and illicit stage performances thrived, supported by the workingclass men who congregated in them.23 As in the Bowery and the Barbary Coast, the sexually charged atmosphere of the North End afforded homosexually-inclined men the anonymity and social environment needed to find others interested in same-sex sex.24 A distinct middle-class homosexual culture developed in parallel to the North End’s working-class culture. The presence of queer middle-class men in Portland was relatively unacknowledged before a scandal in 1912 forced the topic to be covered by local and regional newspapers. Whereas working-class men, and particularly those who were immigrants or people of color, were targeted by the Portland police for their sexual activities, white middle-class men tended to be overlooked by vice officers, largely because sexual deviancy was understood as a problem perpetuated by immigrants and non-whites. These middle-class Portland men were more likely to identify with the label of “homosexual” and tended to remain unmarried throughout their lives, unlike their working-class counterparts. Moreover, middle-class homosexuals avoided mixing with 23 24 Chauncey, Gay New York, 33-42; and Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 25-29, 40-44. Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 63-71. 24 the North End crowd and largely congregated in Portland’s central business district, in the southern part of downtown. Their sexual pursuits were less likely to occur in public commercial spaces, though evidence of cruising in downtown parks was abundant.25 In 1912, Portland police uncovered what they understood to be a network of over 100 middle-class homosexual men. By extracting confessions through interrogation, the police and city prosecutors put over fifty men before the courts on charges of sodomy or lesser convictions. The scandal was widely reported in Portland-area newspapers, and stirred up a great deal of discourse around sexual degeneracy and homosexuality in the city. Because the men under investigation were white and worked “respectable” middleclass jobs, Portlanders became much more concerned about the existence of same-sex sexuality in the city.26 Following the 1912 scandal, Oregon state law and municipal police enforcement intensified the penalties and frequency by which homosexual men were arrested and persecuted for their actions. Before 1912, the Portland police focused their anti-vice energy in the North End, predominantly targeting working-class immigrants and men of color for their sexual deviancy. But, following the 1912 scandal, middle-class white men quickly became new targets for vice officers. The scandal also prompted the Oregon legislature to expand the definition of sodomy under Oregon law, ensuring that oral and masturbatory sex acts would be covered by the charges. Moreover, eugenic ideals of sterilizing homosexuals entered into official Progressive-era political discourse in Oregon. While there was not enough support in the state for forced sterilization in 1913, 25 Ibid., 105-116. Ibid., 90-91, 135-139; and Peter Boag, “Sex & Politics in Progressive-Era Portland & Eugene: The 1912 Same-Sex Vice Scandal,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 100, no. 2 (1999): 158–81. 26 25 by 1917 the Oregon legislature passed a law that permitted the sterilization of “menaces to public peace, health, and safety,” which included homosexuals.27 The scandal of 1912 pushed homosexuality into Portland’s public discourses, raising the veil of silence and coded language. Over the course of the following three decades, publicly homosexual men were targeted by police and convicted of crimes ranging from sodomy to lewd misconduct for their sexual behaviors. Although direct discussions of homosexuality increased, the public nature of both working-class and middle-class queer cultures in the city was substantially quieted. Not until the homefront experience of the Second World War and its transformation of the city did Portland’s queer population begin to foster broader openness, publicity, and eventually community between each other. Wartime Labor, Shipbuilding, and the Transformation of Portland The most significant changes to Portland’s urban culture and social geography were spurred on by the shipbuilding industry that developed in the early years of the war. Labor shortages during the war prompted a population boom in Portland as industrialists encouraged men and women to come work in the new shipyards. The city’s attempts to deal with problems that arose due to such an influx of new residents, coupled with the presence of soldiers on leave, inadvertently prompted the resurgence of vice in downtown Portland. The earliest identifiable queer bars grew out of this vice-based milieu and the publicity of queerness in downtown increased. The changes that led to the establishment of shipbuilding operations in Portland began months before the United States formally entered the Second World War in 27 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 200-214. 26 December 1941. In September 1939, following the invasion of Poland by German forces, the United States Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt passed and signed the Neutrality Act of 1939, which formally established the “cash and carry” policy whereby Allied nations could purchase military goods from the United States. And then, a year and a half later, the federal government amended the policy so that the Allied powers did not have to pay for the material. These prewar policies meant to transition the United States out of its isolationist stance led to the early growth of the shipbuilding industry in Portland. As support for the Allied war effort gradually increased, the number of government contracts from the US Maritime Commission rose as well. In late 1940 and early 1941 pre-existing small shipbuilding operations like the Commercial Iron Company, the Albina Shipyard, and the Willamette Iron and Steel Company received lucrative contracts to begin pushing out Liberty-class cargo ships to aid the British war effort.28 In January 1941, the government gave an additional contract to Henry Kaiser, a regional industrialist who made his name through dam-building projects in the 1930s. Kaiser established the Oregon Shipbuilding Company, with shipyards on the east bank of the Willamette in North Portland. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the war, Kaiser received additional contracts to construct two large shipyards: one on Swan Island in the Columbia River to the north of Portland and another on the north bank of the Columbia in Vancouver, Washington.29 The growth of the shipbuilding industry in the years before the war, and its rapid 28 Carl Abbott, Portland: Planning, Politics, and Growth in a Twentieth-Century City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 125; and Amy Kesselman, Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver during World War II and Reconversion, SUNY Series in American Labor History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 13. 29 Abbott, Portland, 125-126. 27 expansion after December 1941, quickly resulted in both a labor and housing shortage in Portland. As urban historian Carl Abbott has put it, “[workers] came in a flood in 1942 and early 1943, as the Kaiser yards emptied the rural counties of Oregon, drew the underemployed from the small towns of Idaho and Montana, and recruited workers by the trainload on the east coast.” By 1944, the Portland metropolitan area had grown by over 150,000 people in just a little over three years. Early population growth created a housing crisis where the vacancy rate dipped as low as 0.5% in 1942, and rental rates skyrocketed.30 Initially the city responded by trying to promote the construction of housing on vacant lots in existing neighborhoods, but the demand was unable to keep up with construction. As a reaction to the thousands of laborers who were forced to leave Portland due to the absence of available housing, Edgar Kaiser, the son of Henry Kaiser, sought and received a contract in the summer of 1942 to construct 6,000 housing units on the Columbia River floodplain just north of the city limits. Construction was completed by December 1942, and the new town was given the name Vanport, a combination of “Portland” and “Vancouver”.31 Vanport’s location was settled on for its short distance away from the Kaiser shipyards on the Columbia, which allowed the Kaiser company to monitor the labor, recreation, and daily activities of their workers. Moreover, it concentrated the ethnically diverse labor force in an empty portion of the metropolitan area, distinct from the majority white neighborhoods that made up prewar Portland.32 Vanport and smaller housing projects across the metropolitan area ultimately helped 30 Carl Abbott, “Portland in the Pacific War: Planning from 1940 to 1945,” Urbanism Past & Present 6, no. 1 (11) (1980): 12. 31 Abbott, “Portland in the Pacific War,” 15-18. 32 Heather Fryer, “Race, Industry, and the Aesthetic of a Changing Community in World War II Portland,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 96, no. 1 (2004): 3-4. 28 alleviate the housing shortage by the end of 1943. The huge population boom created by the shipbuilding industry directly led to the resurgence of vice in downtown Portland. While bars, taverns, and gambling parlors existed throughout the city, they were densest in downtown Portland in the districts closest to the west bank of the Willamette River. This included the North End (the center of vice during the Progressive era and the Great Depression), Chinatown, and the central business district south of Burnside. These areas of downtown had widely been centers for vice and illicit activities long before the war, but the influx of shipyard workers with relatively high wages spurred the growth of gambling and prostitution in downtown Portland. As Abbott put it, “Since the median age of new shipyard workers was thirty and since half were unmarried, the market for liquor, gambling, and prostitution grew as rapidly as the demand for toasters and overcoats.” Although Mayor Earl Riley launched several campaigns during the war to try to clean up downtown, his efforts were stymied by the limited number of police officers the city had access to.33 The persistence of the downtown districts as the centers of vice in Portland was not preordained by any means. The city’s solutions to the problems of transporting the thousands of new shipyard workers to and from the shipyards inadvertently supported vice in the downtown core. While some workers lived close to the shipyards, many more were scattered across the city. The huge number of workers who needed to commute daily from their homes to the shipyards in North Portland quickly overwhelmed the city’s transportation infrastructure. By early 1942, the city’s existing transportation and roadways were unable to handle the number of workers who needed to get up to the 33 Robert C. Donnelly, Dark Rose: Organized Crime and Corruption in Portland (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), 50-51; Abbott, Portland, 129-130; Lansing, Portland, 337, 348-350. 29 shipyards. Tire shortages created by the war also limited the number of people who could afford to drive cars, so many relied on busses, which quickly were unable to handle the number of people commuting during rush hours. In response to this, the city established a ferry line that would carry workers from a landing at the foot of Northwest Davis Street on the bank of the Willamette to their respective shipyards. New bus lines were established to transport laborers from their homes in the southern and western portions of Portland to the new ferry landing, which lay on the edges of the North End. Although wartime industry workers were dispersed across the city, with the highest concentration of workers living in the Northeast part of Portland, the movement of workers from their homes to the shipyards and back again funneled them through downtown. Because the easternmost ends of downtown were visited daily by thousands of laborers on their way to and from work, it is no coincidence that these same areas became the centers of vice during and after the war. And, it is also no coincidence that those areas were where the earliest queer bars took root.34 Founding Queer Life The Second World War brought profound changes to life in Portland, and these changes ultimately resulted in an outgrowth of queer spaces and a shift toward a barbased queer culture in the city. The labor shortage created by the rapid expansion of the shipbuilding industry during the first year of the war led to overpopulation and congestion. These conditions facilitated an explosion of vice in the city. Within the wartime vice districts in downtown Portland, queer bars emerged to cater to 34 “Traction Use Hits New High,” The Oregonian, April 19, 1942; “Portland Traction Company Ad”, The Oregonian, September 2, 1942; and “Opening of Ferry Service Shifts Bus Hours, Routes,” The Oregonian, November 19, 1942. 30 homosexually-inclined servicemembers, laborers, and middle-class Portlanders. The historical record of queer life in Portland during the war is sparse to say the least. Public discourse had yet to identify homosexuality as a major cause for concern— officials, reporters, and the public were more anxious about the war, non-queer vice, and the looming challenges of reconversion after the war ended. For this reason, it is virtually impossible to determine the specifics of when spaces became queer and to what extent they catered to mixed (straight and queer) clientele or exclusively to queer Portlanders. The conclusions drawn below utilize the handful of relevant news reports and later evidence from the postwar period to identify the trends that arose out of Portland’s homefront experience. The earliest recognizable gay bars in Portland first opened up in the years between the economic recovery from the Great Depression and the outbreak of the war. But, there is no evidence to suggest that these bars catered to a queer clientele until the war began. In 1936, Marijan (Mike) Kokich opened the Rathskeller Beer Parlor on Southwest Taylor Street, on the edge of the central business district. A year later, in 1937, Paul Schneiderman opened the Music Hall on Burnside, straddling the division between Chinatown and the central business district. Both spaces seemed to have catered to prewar nightlife, as both served alcohol and hosted nightly cabaret and floor shows.35 Both the Rathskeller and the Music Hall came under scrutiny in 1950 when Portland police informed the city council that the bars permitted homosexual clients and their behavior.36 While both of these bars were surely queer spaces after the war, they seem to 35 “Paul’s Music Hall and Cabaret Ad,” The Oregonian, June 14, 1939; and “Rathskeller Beer Parlor Ad,” The Oregonian, February 14, 1940. 36 City Auditor, City Council Documents, March 9, 1950, no. 1117, City of Portland Archives and Records Center; Beka Smith, “Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965” (M.A., Portland State 31 have first developed their reputation during the war. In 1943, amidst efforts to clean up vice in the city, both bars had their liquor licenses jointly suspended by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) and the City Council. The licenses were suspended under charges of serving alcohol to minors and for remaining open past the mandatory military curfew at midnight. While reports from these suspensions did not directly mention homosexual activity or “lewd conduct,” the fact that both bars were targeted together in both 1943 and 1950 suggests that their queer clientele may have been a primary reason for their suspension. Both bars were able to stay open throughout the war, however, as they were still permitted to serve beer.37 The Music Hall and the Rathskeller were most likely supported largely by service members on leave. While shipyard laborers were the main impetus behind the explosion of vice in the downtown core, there is little evidence to suggest that homosexuality was widespread in the shipyards.38 Military personnel, on the other hand, were widely exposed to homosexuality during the war. Portland did not have the same constant influx of soldiers in and out of the city that other cities on the West Coast like Tacoma and San Francisco had, but servicemen from training camps in northwest Oregon regularly came to Portland in search of reprieve from the burdens of military service. During the war, the military tried to head off servicemen’s involvement with vice through the United Service Organization (USO) centers, but their success was limited. Portland’s central USO center University, 2002), 27; and Tom Cook, “Portland’s Gay Bars and the Rise of a Community,” Archived web page, Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, October 6, 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20030209011538/http://home.teleport.com/~glapn/ar04024.html. 37 “Board Slaps 2 Night Spots,” The Oregonian, March 20, 1943. 38 The shipyards did have the type of homosocial atmosphere that promoted same-sex desire in locations like the military and lumber camps, but there has not been a study on these labor conditions. Further research using shipyard records, arrest records, and oral histories could reveal that there was a large queer subculture in the shipyards, but no such study has been conducted as of yet. 32 was located downtown at the YMCA, only blocks away from the central business district and the heart of wartime vice.39 Historian Allan Bérubé has argued that both USO centers and surrounding vice districts in urban environments promoted same-sex relations between servicemembers. In the USO service clubs, relationships were quiet and could easily blend among the masses. But, servicemembers’ desires to express their sexuality more openly pushed many outside the confines of the USO centers and into urban nightlife. Due to this, Bérubé holds that spaces that “catered to the gay crowd flourished during the war” stretched “the prewar gay nightspots to their limits and beyond. These establishments often were clustered in the parts of town that were flooded with GIs, introducing gay life to a wider population of young men and women.”40 News reports of servicemembers’ sexual behavior in Portland were virtually non-existent, except for the occasional story about rising venereal disease rates and prostitution.41 Further research, possibly through oral history, would need to be conducted to address how queer servicemembers navigated Portland’s urbanscape, but historical trends from other urban centers suggest that servicemembers were an important clientele for the development of wartime queer spaces. Additional evidence of servicemembers’ involvement in early queer spaces is provided by the history of another queer bar that opened shortly after the war. Right after the war, in 1946, the Harbor Club opened up in the central business district. While this bar did not initially cater to a queer clientele, by the early 1950s it had become a major center of queer life in Portland. The Harbor Club quickly developed a reputation for 39 “Centers Grow in Popularity,” The Oregonian, March 24, 1943; and “USO Centers Attract Many,” The Oregonian, August 8, 1943. 40 Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 101-104, 113. 41 See, for example, “Sex Diseases Rise Sharply,” The Oregonian, December 4, 1944. 33 being a center of vice, and was soon placed “off limits” to military personnel.42 The Harbor Club was the only bar in Portland to receive such a designation, suggesting that it was particularly problematic in the eyes of local military officials. Bérubé argues that the official designation of “off limits,” given out by military police who surveilled urban areas, was largely used to harass gay bars. Therefore, the fact that the Harbor Club was cast as “off limits” suggests that it was an early queer space. But, as Bérubé also points out, the label also served as an advertisement to queer people who knew that the “off limits” designation denoted that there were others like them in the space.43 The growth of queer bars during and immediately after the war established two important trends that shaped queer life in Portland for the following thirty years. First, the bars became the first public spaces in Portland where queer people could go to find community, relationships, and a welcoming atmosphere. Before the war, the spaces that gay men went to in search of the same things were predominately “straight” places where, through coded language and body gestures, they cruised for sex.44 But, the bars changed this dynamic. Cruising certainly still occurred in these bars, but they were also places where queer people could openly dance, socialize, and flirt with others of the same sex. Following the war, bars became the lynchpin of queer community in Portland, and the Rathskeller, the Music Hall, and the Harbor Club were the first to create such spaces. And, second, these wartime bars also became the first to demarcate the two districts of downtown where future queer bars and spaces congregated. The Rathskeller and the Music Hall were both located west of Broadway and south of Burnside Street. This same 42 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4654, City of Portland Archives and Records Center; and “Boody Quits Council Meet to Dodge Vote on Tavern,” The Oregonian, April 26, 1957. 43 Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 121-123. 44 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 46-48, 65-73. 34 neighborhood became the center of Portland’s middle-class queer culture in the 1950s and 1960s. The Harbor Club was located closer to the bank of the Willamette River, east of Broadway between the Morrison Bridge and the Hawthorne Bridge. This district was where the vast majority of working-class queer spaces were located in the following decades. The war acted as a catalyst for the outgrowth of a bar-based queer subculture in Portland, and the wartime bars established practices that would reverberate over the next thirty years. The success of wartime queer spaces should not be taken to mean that the Portland police overlooked the presence of queer people in the downtown vice districts, however. In the summer of 1944, a group of four black “female impersonators” with “red pumps and sheer hose to skirts, wigs, and fancy handbags” were arrested at the Dunbar Hotel in the North End. They were arrested as part of a broader sweep through the hotel, which was believed to be a major site for gambling and other crimes.45 The police arrested them and eight men, and charged them with “disorderly conduct,” a standard charge given to queer people in Portland throughout the mid-century.46 Police implicated the four “female impersonators” in a series of assaults along Burnside that had purportedly been performed by black women. The police detective involved in the case simply speculated that “they might have been the ‘women’ who have picked pockets, slugged drunks, and waylaid the careless.” No follow-up report was published in The Oregonian and the “female impersonators” were released after paying a $50 fine for the disorderly conduct charge.47 The details given in the newspaper report on the arrest 45 “Women Prove to Be Men,” The Oregonian, June 22 1944. See discussion of police enforcement in Chapter Three. 47 “Women Prove to Be Men.” 46 35 provide no clarity on whether these “female impersonators” were drag performers or if they truly identified as female. But, either way, their non-normative gender expression drew the attention of police who were driven to suppress vice in Portland, resulting in their arrests and convictions. During the war, police also patrolled downtown streets and arrested Portland men for attempts to solicit sex from other men, or for public sex acts themselves. In December 1941, Robert Fitzpatrick and Leo Culley were arrested jointly on Southwest 3rd Avenue, in the midst of the central business district. They were both charged with sodomy, and bail was set at $2500 for each of them. As will be discussed in much greater detail in Chapter Three of this thesis, sodomy was a broad and non-specific charge under Oregon law that covered all variety of sex crimes, including same-sex oral and anal sex. When the crimes were for actions such as child molestation or assault of a woman, the newspapers tended to provide additional detail and treated those arrested as individual perpetrators. But, in the case of Fitzpatrick and Culley, they were arrested jointly and the news coverage of their arrests provided no specifics on why they were arrested, indicating that their “crimes” were of a homosexual nature. Moreover, after being held in jail for ten days, both Fitzpatrick and Culley were released and cleared of their charges, because there was “a lack of complaint”, which suggests that the actions they were arrested for were consensual acts between each other.48 Police enforcement did not change immediately due to the war. Standard practices of patrolling vice-ridden areas and arresting on sight remained the norm, which did not vary too much from enforcement during the 1910s and 1920s. The police were inevitably a reactionary force, so it took 48 “Morals Count Faced,” The Oregonian, December 19, 1941; and “Judge Drops Charges,” The Oregonian, December 30, 1941. 36 until the late 1940s for them to begin a systemic campaign that targeted Portland’s emerging queer subcultures.49 Beyond the bars and the downtown vice districts, which were predominately male spaces, lesbian culture and connectivity was likely promoted by the shipbuilding industry. The labor shortage created by the loss of men to the military and the rise of the shipbuilding industry allowed women to enter the industrial workforce in record numbers. In early 1942, the Kaiser shipyards began recruiting women. Over the course of the war, the Portland area shipyards ended up hiring the highest proportion of female industrial workers than anywhere else in the country.50 Initially, women were hired as helpers or welders, but by the end of 1942, women were being given roles as machinists, electricians, and journeymen. While some of the women who were hired to work in the shipyards were housewives before the war, most came from working-class backgrounds where they had been working as wage laborers for much of their adult lives. In the shipyards, labor was predominately segregated based on sex, with women mainly working in all-women crews. Single women and women without children in the Kaiser shipyards also lived together in single-sex dormitories built by the Kaiser company. These conditions created a homosocial atmosphere where women mainly interacted with other women. Historians of lesbian community have widely noted how homosocial environments during the war promoted the development of lesbian identity and culture. As historian Lillian Faderman argues, “World War II in particular brought great numbers of females of all classes into a society of women where they were able not only to expand 49 50 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 49-51. Kesselman, Fleeting Opportunities, 6. 37 friendships but to learn to appreciate other females as serious, self-sufficient human beings.” The war, “took them away from restrictive family relations and cast them into new environments where they might . . . forge for themselves a more personalized set of values.”51 While direct evidence of same-sex relationships between women in the Kaiser shipyards has not been identified by historians of the period, the environment and experiences of women in the shipbuilding industry surely facilitated the foundations of Portland’s postwar lesbian culture. Conclusion By the time that Japan formally surrendered in September 1945, the dramatic changes that swept over Portland had left a permanent mark on the urbanscape and culture of the city. The rise of the shipbuilding industry and the accompanying labor shortage led to an enormous population boom that crippled the city’s housing and transportation infrastructure. Amidst this tumult, the shipyard laborers supported the growth of vice in downtown Portland with their relatively high wages. It was in the midst of this vice-based culture in downtown that the earliest queer bars developed. Supported by the shipyard workers and soldiers on leave, these early gay bars took root in the southern half of downtown. Through their success during and after the war, the queer bars established downtown as the main area of Portland where queer culture could thrive. Arising from the crucible of the wartime homefront, Portland’s queer culture established a foundation from which it could build from for the next three decades. Importantly, this chapter demonstrated that the Second World War was a pivotal 51 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers : A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 121; see also Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 104-107, 113. 38 point in the development of Portland’s queer cultures. Although recognizable homosexual male subcultures had existed in the city in the early twentieth century, by the 1930s they had largely been suppressed and quieted. The war directly led to the resurgence of public queer culture in the city by facilitating the growth of bars and queer consciousness. This process has largely been noted to have occurred in larger cities like San Francisco, New York, and Detroit. But, what this chapter suggests is that the war directly shaped the nature of queer culture in smaller cities. Moreover, unlike these larger cities, the changes in Portland were not primarily facilitated by the movement of military personnel in and out of the city. Rather, it was the rapid expansion of the shipbuilding industry and its impact on vice in the city that created the conditions that allowed for queer bars to establish themselves downtown. Although the war ended in 1945, the changes that had swept over Portland in just a matter of four years could not be reverted. By the time that Portlanders celebrated the end of the World War on August 15, 1945, the foundations for the city’s modern queer culture had been solidified. 39 Figure 1: Map of Queer Spaces in Downtown Portland, 1945-1964 40 Chapter Two Those People Over There: Queer Cultural Spaces and the Geography of the City, 1945-1964 Following the Second World War, Portland’s queer population gradually came to establish spaces for themselves within the urbanscape of the city. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, queer Portlanders sought out and founded spaces beyond the privacy of their own homes where they could find others like them. This chapter examines the history of these spaces between the end of the war in 1945 and the city’s failure to shutdown queer bars in 1964. By attending to the geography of urban Portland, this chapter finds that downtown bars were the epicenter of queer culture in Portland during this period. Two distinct bar districts arose in downtown during the early part of this period that were differentiated from one another by the economic class of their patrons. In both of these districts, the spaces where queer men interacted and where queer women interacted also notably overlapped. While the downtown bars were foundational to the growth of community, they were not the only spaces that facilitated interactions. Queer people in Portland also met in private clubs, in public parks and theaters, and on softball teams, all of which served to further the development of queer cultures in Portland. By attending to the geography of the city’s queer cultural spaces, this chapter also wrestles with the apparent absence of queer people of color in both these spaces and in the local historical record. By the middle of the 1960s, queer Portlanders had successfully established cultural spaces across the city, with particular density in the downtown core. The vast majority of the historical record on the downtown bars and queer spaces comes from the hearings and reports that surrounded two anti-queer bar crackdowns in 41 1950 and 1964. Chapter Three deals with the significance of the 1950 and 1964 bar crackdowns, but for the purposes of this chapter it is only important to know that the City Council and Portland Police Department first tried to shutdown queer bars in 1950, and then renewed their effort in 1964 by refusing to recommend that any queer bar’s liquor license be renewed. Therefore, much of the information on the bars comes from the voices of those who opposed the existence of the bars and the publicity of queerness in Portland, rather than from queer Portlanders themselves. In conjunction with newspaper articles and oral histories, this chapter reconstructs the geography of Portland queer bars through the documents produced by the 1950 and 1964 crackdowns. The single-city study approach for studying the history of urban queer culture has always been intimately tied up with geography and the spaces that queer people occupied. Especially in a society where open expression of queerness could lead to hostility and violence, those few spaces where a queer person could have joined openly with other queer people proved foundational to the creation of culture, community, and organizations. Early urban queer historians recognized the innate links between urbanity, geography, and sexuality that are foundational to understanding how, why, and where queer cultures and communities develop.52 By focusing on geography, queer historians have also demonstrated that queer culture has never been strictly homogenous. Attending to space reveals greater complexity and change regarding the role of class, race, and gender in the making of queer cultures and communities. By focusing on the question of “who goes to socialize where?,” queer historians have been able to explore the changing 52 For example, the entire second part of George Chauncey’s Gay New York is devoted to exploring the geography of New York’s pre-war “gay world.” Chauncey spends entire chapters exploring the spaces of New York YMCAs, bathhouses, neighborhoods, and street corners. 42 dynamics of urban queer subcultures and where the divisions exist (both physically and socially) between those subcultures. For example, in their work on Buffalo, New York, Kennedy and Davis largely focused on the geographic elements of the lesbian community in the city. As a result of this focus, they were able to argue that, “by the mid-1950s groups of Black lesbian began to patronize Bingo’s and the street bars in the downtown section, and soon after, whites went to the bars which opened in the Black section of town, thereby ending the racial homogeneity of the lesbian bar community.” Moreover, they were then able to argue that class largely replaced race as the dividing line in Buffalo’s lesbian community at around the same time. These arguments were largely rooted in a geographic approach to the questions of race and class.53 Additionally, a geographic approach has also proven critical to understanding the converging and diverging dynamics of distinct queer male and queer female cultures. In the early part of his work on the history of Philadelphia, Stein focuses on the residential patterns of gay men and lesbian women to argue that they largely lived in the same parts of the city, and therefore came into contact with one another very regularly.54 Due to the centrality of geography and spatial analysis to the historiography on queer culture in the United States, this chapter utilizes a similar framework to try to understand the growth and evolution of Portland’s queer cultural spaces. Southern Downtown and the Growth of Working-Class Queer Bars During the late 1940s and early 1950s, a working-class queer bar culture developed in the southern part of downtown. It stretched from the west bank of the 53 54 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 111-150. Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 17-48. 43 Willamette River to SW 4th Avenue and was bounded to the north by Alder Street and to the south by Madison Street. Based on census data, in 1950 the district had the highest disparity between the number of men and women living in the area than anywhere else in the city with a ratio of eight men for every one woman.55 With its lack of families and abundance of single men, these conditions created an intensely homosocial neighborhood that facilitated male same-sex interactions in the area. These demographics did not change all that much over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. According to the 1970 census, the number of people living in the area had halved since 1950, likely as a result of urban renewal programs during the 1960s that rezoned the area for business.56 But, despite this decline, the population remained as uneducated as before, was just as maledominated, and continued to earn less money than the average Portlander.57 While the men who lived in this area were not necessarily the main customers at the queer bars, the demographics of the area help explain why this area became the center of Portland’s working-class queer culture. As Boag notes in his work on the Pacific Northwest, this area of downtown had actually been a middle-class homosexual male neighborhood during the early decades of the twentieth century. Before the war, young single men who were working white-collar jobs in surrounding businesses made the district into one of the most white, educated, and male-dominated areas in Portland.58 But the war greatly impacted the nature of the area. 55 “1950 United States Census of Population - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg.” (US Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, 1950). The working-class bar district was covered by census tract #54. See the back cover for a map of the census tracts. 56 Abbott, Portland, 210-217. 57 “1970 Census of Population and Housing - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg-Wash. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area” (US Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, 1970). The working-class bar district was covered by census tract #54. 58 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 114-116. 44 As part of the central business district, this part of Portland became a major center for vice during and following the war. Just several blocks south of the North End, this part of downtown was very much in the middle of the downtown vice industries that flourished during the war. These vice conditions, coupled with the broad changes to middle-class ideology that emphasized homeownership and suburbanization, substantially lowered the value of single-person dwellings in downtown. According to data collected during the 1950 census, the median level of education in the district was eighth grade, compared to the city’s overall median of twelfth grade. With this, the median income in the area was $854 per year, while the median income for all of Portland was $3,051.59 From these numbers, it is clear that by 1950 the area was no longer a center for middle-class culture, as Boag had found during the 1910s. The Harbor Club was the first queer space to cater to working-class Portlanders, helping establish the surrounding area as the center of working-class queer culture in the city. It first established its working-class reputation through its early days as a bar that attracted servicemen on leave. The bar served cheap liquor and beer, drawing in those servicemen and Portlanders with less money to spend on a night out.60 Once queer people started to congregate at the bar, the class demographics did not change. While some middle-class queer Portlanders visited the club, the vast majority of customers were working-class. The working-class background of the clientele at the Harbor Club was indicated by the presence of performatively masculine lesbian women, called “butch” in the queer slang of the time. In their book on lesbian community in Buffalo, New York, 59 60 “1950 United States Census of Population - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg.” “Mayor Schrunk Says Portland ‘Dead City’ on Vice Basis,” The Oregonian, March 13, 1957. 45 historians Elizabeth L. Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis argued that, “the tough bar butches did not conform to the code of dress required for success at most jobs, particularly white-collar jobs, nor did they conform to the moral values of the middle class. And it is this which gives them the unmistakably working-class character of their life.”61 Masculine-presenting lesbians were regular clients at the Harbor Club, as indicated by newspaper reports. In 1952, a columnist wrote that, “Six women...all dressed in mannish dress [were] seen coming downstairs” out of the Harbor Club. And then, in 1962, The Oregonian reported that three women, “all dressed as men”, were arrested inside the Harbor Club for fighting one another.62 The widespread and consistent presence of butch lesbian women in the Harbor Club suggests that it was primarily a working-class space throughout its existence. With this said, however, we must be cautious in linking the descriptor “dressed as men” to a single type of lesbian woman. Did the newspaper reporters and police officers see a woman with make-up who wore pants as “mannish,” or did they only put that label on women who could readily be mistaken for men? By all indications, there was much more nuance to the ways that queer women dressed and presented themselves than the eyes of “straight” men could understand. As discussed briefly in Chapter One, the Harbor Club did not initially open with the intent of being a space for queer customers. The historical record does not reveal when it first became a queer space, but based on the fact that it was the only bar to receive an “off limits to military personnel” designation in the late 1940s, it seems likely 61 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 82. William Moyes, “Behind the Mike,” The Oregonian, January 15, 1952; and “Vice Officers Arrest Trio,” The Oregonian, December 3, 1962. 62 46 that it had some queer customers beginning during the years immediately after the war. Moreover, in 1963, when the club came under scrutiny from the city, city councilmembers and vice officers referenced the “off limits” designation as evidence that the club “should have been closed many years ago.” This suggests that it had been a queer space for a number of years.63 The Harbor Club was also not exclusively a queer space. Based on police reports from the early 1960s, the bar seems to have been a latenight spot, where both queer men and women went after other bars in the area closed for the night. Vice officers who surveilled the bar reported that at “approximately 1:00, after all the retail malt beverage outlets have closed, all [homosexuals] of both sex converge on The Harbor, packing it, with standing room only.”64 During the day and evening, the bar was a mixed crowd, with at least enough heterosexual customers to create the perception that queer people only arrived late at night. Historian Genny Beemyn has noted a similar pattern in the Washington DC bar scene during the same period. Beemyn argues that, “a number of bars that were patronized entirely by lesbians, gay men, and/or bisexuals at night were “straight” dining facilities during the day. The fact that a number of bars had very disparate clienteles at different times was often known by straight patrons.”65 Because the Harbor Club was the last spot for queer Portlanders during their nights out, the time when they arrived at the Harbor Club and the number of people who went likely fluctuated in response to the rise and decline of other bars in the area, but 63 “Mayor Schrunk Says Portland ‘Dead City’ on Vice Basis”; and City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 1, 1964, no. 4654, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 64 City Auditor, City Council Documents, November 27, 1964, no. 4654, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 65 Brett (Genny) Beemyn, “Race, Class, Gender, and the Changing Social Landscape of Washington’s Gay Communities, 1940-1955” in Creating a Place for Ourselves, ed. Brett (Genny) Beemyn (New York: Routledge, 1997), 185. 47 further research is needed to confirm this. Beyond the Harbor Club, the history of queer bars in the working-class bar district during the late 1940s and early 1950s is murky. This was likely due to the fact that other bars had a mixed clientele of both heterosexual and homosexual patrons, so they did not develop a public reputation beyond what was communicated within queer social networks. During this period, several bars on Southwest 3rd Street, on the block between Salmon and Taylor Streets, acquired a homosexual male customer base, though by no indication were they exclusively queer spaces. These bars primarily catered to merchant seamen, some of whom may have been inclined to engage in same-sex relations, as earlier transient laborers in Portland had been. One of these bars, Dinty Moore’s, had a bartender named Margaret Bernice Norris, who was widely known by the moniker “Mama Bernice”. At Dinty Moore’s, Norris developed a reputation as a welcoming, maternal figure for Portland’s gay men. While the beginning of Dinty Moore’s gay customer base cannot be identified, Norris began working there in 1949, and had a welldeveloped notoriety by the early 1960s, which suggests that a homosexual male clientele developed sometime in the 1950s. From Dinty Moore’s, working-class gay men expanded to neighboring bars such as The Reed and The Lotus Club, which had similar atmospheres and also catered to merchant seamen.66 Beginning the mid-1950s, Portland’s working-class queer bargoers expanded past the Harbor Club and other mixed bars that they went to, forging new queer spaces out of existing “straight” bars. During this period of growth, bars became queer through the 66 Cook, “Portland’s Gay Bars and the Rise of a Community”; Tom Cook, “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour,” Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, 1999, https://www.glapn.org/6045walkingtour.html; and City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 1, 1964, no. 4631, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 48 gradual occupation of bar space by queer Portlanders. Why those initial people began to move from spots like the Harbor Club and Dinty Moore’s to nearby bars without a reputation for being queer is unclear. Expansion may have been facilitated by atmospheres that tolerated homosexuality, or sympathetic owners, less homophobic clientele, or even through intentional occupation. Because existing queer working-class bars were not closing, the growth of queer bar spaces in the early 1950s suggests that the number of bargoing queer Portlanders was increasing. Either way, the population was large enough to support new spaces beyond what had already been established. A similar process of expansion occurred in Buffalo, New York during the same time period. From their oral interviews, Kennedy and Davis note that working-class lesbian women (and some gay men) in Buffalo articulated a desire to expand the number of bars that they went to, and they did so by directly occupying the space and resisting efforts to get them to leave.67 One of these bars that was originally “straight” that became queer in the 1950s was the Half Moon Tavern. Opened by Sophia Cereghino in 1939, the Half Moon Tavern was located on Southwest Morrison St., along Front Drive. Based on newspaper records, Cereghino was able to keep the bar away from the crime and vice that tended to shape the bars in the surrounding area. Research into the Half Moon Tavern has not led to any solid evidence about when it became a queer space. But, by the late 1950s, it was certainly a center for queer socialization in Portland, suggesting that it at least began to become queer some years before then. In an oral interview reflecting on his experience in Portland during the latter years of the decade, Norm Costa remembered the Half Moon 67 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 94-96. 49 Tavern and the Harbor Club as the two bars he went to regularly. Moreover, in 1958, the Half Moon Tavern became the site for the formation of Portland’s drag queen court, then called the Court of Transylvania. In the bar, Portland drag queens and gay men celebrated the coronation of Empress Eugenie I, who purportedly established a court of queer Portlanders that met regularly at the Half Moon. The Court of Transylvania was the earliest incarnation of what is today the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court.68 Because the Half Moon Tavern was so notorious by 1958, it most likely underwent its transition from a “straight” to queer space sometime in the mid-1950s. The process of creating new spaces where queer Portlanders could find one another was most notably facilitated by the pre-existing presence of other vices like gambling and prostitution in “straight” spaces. The two bars that exemplified this were the Old Glory Tavern and the Dahl and Penne Tavern. The Old Glory Tavern, located on the southeastern edge of the working-class district, was established sometime in the early 1940s. In 1964, when the city was targeting queer bars, W. F. Whitley, the lawyer for the owners of the tavern, argued that the tavern was not in “the finest end of town” and that it was inevitably going to “draw a clientele that lives in the area,” referring to the male working-class residents of the neighborhood. While the focus for the city was on the existence of gay men and lesbian women in the tavern, the City Council also emphasized reports that “prostitutes and pimps” were “openly soliciting” within the business. When vice officers testified to the conditions of the bar, they stated that the Old Glory had once catered to “the prostitutes and the narcotic addict” in downtown Portland. In 1964, the 68 W. Holman, “A Gay History Lest it Be Forgotten,” The Northwest Gay Review, June 1977; Oral history interview with Norm Costa, interview by Stephanie Munley and Ruben Reynaga, November 13, 2000, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, https://digitalcollections.ohs.org/sr-4143-norm-costa-oralhistory; and “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” 50 Old Glory Tavern was understood as a long standing problem for vice officers, and it was believed that its queer clientele predated a change of ownership in 1961.69 Unlike in the Harbor Club or in the Half Moon Tavern, this space had a record of other vices. As with other bars, it is difficult to ascertain when the Old Glory Tavern became a queer space, but it was likely facilitated by the existing vice-based atmosphere in the club. The overlapping nature of queer and sex work spaces is widely noted in the historiography of this period. Dual spaces allowed queer people to establish places for themselves where they would not be the center of attention or scandal. It allowed gay men and lesbian women to exist in a space where they could readily perform queerness under the guise of being in the tavern for other purposes. Moreover, the boundary between queer clientele and sex work clientele was likely not that defined—prostitutes very well may have been queer themselves, but would not have been acknowledged as such by Portland vice officers.70 The Dahl and Penne Tavern followed a similar trajectory as the Old Glory Tavern. Sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the tavern, which had been open since the 1890s, became a queer space. Its proximity to other bars like the Harbor Club and Dinty Moore’s was likely the primary reason why it became a queer space. But with this said, Dahl and Penne’s, as it was colloquially called, was a major site for illicit gambling in the city.71 Because the tavern was already known for its underground 69 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4628, City of Portland Archives and Records Center; and City Auditor, City Council Documents, December 3, 1964, no. 4628, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 70 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 96-101; Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 53; and Chauncey, Gay New York, 80-84. 71 “Seven Picked Up in Police Raid,” The Oregonian, February 12, 1947; “‘The Character’, ‘The Spy’, Room Conversation Topics on Tape,” The Oregonian, March 15, 1957; and “Gaming Charged,” The Oregonian, February 26, 1957. 51 characteristics and its persistence through the city’s various anti-vice campaigns, it was a site where queer Portlanders could gather without risk of coming under fire. And, this strategy ultimately paid off— Dahl and Penne’s was not targeted in the 1964 crackdown on queer bars, and it succeeded as a major queer nightspot until 1983.72 Beginning in the late 1950s, a new wave of bar expansion took off with bars opening on the premise that they would be queer spaces. In 1959, the Transfusion Inn opened on 1st Ave., just a block away from the Old Glory Tavern. From its opening, the Transfusion Inn was a working-class lesbian bar. In ads placed in The Oregonian, the owner advertised the bar with two female rabbits, with long eyelashes and lipstick, which may have served as some form of indication that it was a queer womens’ space.73 Within the social milieu of southwest downtown Portland, the Transfusion Inn developed a reputation for catering to single women without “respectable” jobs. When asked by the City Council about the clientele at the Milwaukee Tavern, a middle-class lesbian bar, its owner claimed, “I don’t have the Transfusion’s trade up there. I have women that work, not go out and bum.”74 This description suggests that masculine, butch lesbian women— who would have been interpreted as unrespectable—were a significant portion of the customer base, indicating a working-class clientele in the Transfusion Inn. Interestingly enough, the Transfusion Inn appears to have been the first exclusively lesbian bar in Portland. While there were some exclusively male spaces, such as Dinty Moore’s and Dahl and Penne’s, queer women had only been able to patronize mixed gender bars like the Harbor Club and the Half Moon Tavern. The lack of an exclusively lesbian bar before 72 “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” “Transfusion Inn Ad,” The Oregonian, May 9, 1959. 74 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4629, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. The Milwaukee Tavern will be discussed more thoroughly below. 73 52 the Transfusion Inn was most likely due to patriarchal gender norms and expectations that prevented most women in the 1950s from having the income, resources, and autonomy to allow them to keep a women’s-only bar afloat. This factor was only amplified by the fact that the working-class bar district was such an intensely maledominated part of the city. Long standing bars also became queer spaces through the movement of popular bartenders from one nightspot to another. One major example of this was the Model Inn, which first opened sometime in the late 1940s. In 1962, the owner, Nicholas Polechrones, hired Jay Scott from the Old Glory Tavern. According to his own testimony at a City Council hearing, Polechrones held that Scott had previously worked at a number of queer bars, including the Transfusion Inn, another lesbian bar called the Cartwheel Tavern, and the Old Glory Tavern before coming to the Model Inn. At those bars, Scott developed a following among lesbian women. When she was hired at the Model Inn, her “fanbase” followed her, in turn making the bar into a new queer space. Scott’s influence was so strong that the Model Inn became colloquially known as “Scotties” among Portland lesbian women. During said City Council hearing, both the City Council, and Polechrones and his lawyer believed that Jay Scott was to blame for “catering and bringing” lesbians to the Model Inn. The blame cannot solely be on Scott, however. Polechrones purportedly knew about Scott’s reputation, and sought to hire her anyway, suggesting that the decision to hire her was a strategic business decision. In a letter from 1963, a Portland lesbian woman named Barbara described the clientele at “Scotties” as the “more obvious type” of queer woman. Barbara’s comment indicated that the women who went to the Model Inn were visibly queer, suggesting that they tended to be 53 masculine-presenting lesbians, much like the women who went to the Transfusion Inn and the Harbor Club. Due to Scott’s influence and the clientele of surrounding bars, the Model Inn became a working-class nightspot that primarily catered to lesbian women.75 Popular bartenders also provided an opportunity for new bar owners to create a thriving business with success dependent on queer Portlanders. In 1962, Arthur Brannen opened Mama Bernice’s Tavern, named after the infamous bartender at Dinty Moore’s. Dissatisfied with the management at Dinty Moore’s, Margaret Norris (“Mama Bernice”) looked for alternative employment. Brannen sought out Norris’s assistance, and together they opened up the tavern. Brannen was responsible for the financials, and Norris managed and conducted the nightly business. Predictably, Norris’s decision to move from Dinty Moore’s to her new tavern meant that her regulars followed her to Mama Bernice’s. Norris’s notoriety among working-class gay men brought quick success to Mama Bernice’s Tavern, allowing the bar to flourish as a queer space. The centrality of Norris to Portland’s queer community reverberated across the decades. In 1966, Mama Bernice’s Tavern was forced to close and sell all of its bar equipment, likely due to rising rental rates from nearby urban renewal projects.76 From there, Norris moved to work at a nearby bar that had recently opened, called the Other Inn. The Other Inn, supported by Norris’ popularity, remained open into the early 1980s.77 Upon her death in 1986, her 75 Letter from Barbara to the Daughters of Bilitis, October 18, 1963, MS Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 2. 76 See Chapter Five. 77 Community historians have held that Mama Bernice’s Tavern closed in 1964, but it appears in the classified ad section of The Oregonian in 1966 and it was also listed in the first edition of Damron’s Address Book in 1966, suggesting that it closed no earlier than the latter half of 1966. See “Office, Store Equipment” Classified Ads, The Oregonian, June 23, 1966; Bob Damron, The Address Book, Mid-1966 Edition (San Francisco, CA: Pan Graphic Press, 1966), https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C2779994; and “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” 54 obituary referred to her moniker, Mama Bernice, and directed readers to donate to an AIDS crisis fund in her name. Moreover, she is memorialized in an annual humanitarian award given out by the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, Portland’s contemporary drag court.78 Burnside, Goose Hollow, and the Development of Middle-Class Queer Spaces Approximately half a mile away from the multitude of bars where working-class queer Portlanders gathered, a smaller district of nightspots for middle-class queer people developed. It was located on the southern side of Burnside street, straddling the western edge of downtown and the northeast portion of the Goose Hollow neighborhood. This district notably encompassed an area of downtown that would eventually become known as the “Burnside Triangle” by Portland’s queer community and served as the closest thing that the city had to a “gayborhood” during the late twentieth century.79 Although the area does not appear to have been known by that moniker before the 1970s, it is noteworthy that it was the middle-class district that ultimately persisted through both popular and geographic memory as the “gay district.” But, in the early 1950s, it was not at all apparent that this area of downtown would become the center of queer life. The middleclass bar district was decidedly wealthier and more residential than the working-class bar district. The average annual income of those who lived in the middle-class bar district was over three times as much as the average income of those who lived in the workingclass district. Additionally, there were many more families and a much higher proportion 78 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4631, City of Portland Archives and Records Center; “Margaret B. Norris”, The Oregonian, Obituary, February 13, 1986; and “Mama Bernice Humanitarian Award,” Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, n.d., https://www.rosecourt.org/index.php/awards/mama-bernice-humanitarian-award. 79 Jack Rushall, “Why Portland Can’t Have a Gayborhood,” Willamette Week, March 7, 2017, https://www.wweek.com/culture/2017/03/07/why-portland-cant-have-a-gayborhood/. 55 of women to men than there was in the working-class bar district. While the residential and socioeconomic patterns in the middle-class bar district facilitated the development of an urban environment that promoted “respectable” establishments, those who lived in this part of downtown were generally still working-class.80 As mentioned briefly in Chapter One, the first bar to develop with a clearly middle-class clientele was the Music Hall. First opened in 1937 by Paul Schneidermann, the Music Hall did not become a queer space until sometime during, or shortly after, the Second World War. Within a few years of opening, the Music Hall began to hold regular cabaret performances, dances, and female impersonation acts. Due to these rather erotic shows and their subversion of gender and sexual norms, the Music Hall eventually developed a substantial queer clientele. By no means did the Music Hall become an exclusively queer space, but there were enough queer customers to make it a scandalous place.81 The middle-class nature of this nightspot can be pieced together from various sources. First, the Music Hall held nightly shows with known performers and largely advertised itself as a “supper club,” indicating that it was a place for a nice dinner and a show, which would have appealed to and been accessible to a middle-class customer base.82 Second, police reports from the city’s crackdown on the Music Hall in 1950 suggest that the queer clientele was hard to distinguish from the rest of the crowd. Based on a police report from 1950, the police were forced to rely on their interpretation of 80 “1950 United States Census of Population - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg.”; and “1960 Census of Population and Housing - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg-Wash. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area” (US Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, 1960). 81 Paul’s Music Hall and Cabaret ad, The Oregonian, February 22, 1940; “Damage Suit Filed,” The Oregonian, May 1, 1947; “Council Raps Entertainers,” The Oregonian, March 17, 1950; and “Council Takes Rap at Entertainers,” The Oregon Journal, March 17, 1950. 82 “Paul’s Music Hall and Cabaret ad”; and Constellation Records ad, The Oregonian, November 5, 1957. 56 gestures and mannerisms, rather than outward appearance.83 Because the police were mainly looking for expressions of femininity among men and the masculinity among women, as well as same-sex touching, it seems that the queer customers of the Music Hall largely conformed to heterosexual norms within the space. As historians have noted, middle-class gay men and lesbian women in the mid-century were much more conservative with their performance of queerness. Middle-class queer Americans tended to be more concerned about the degree to which they appeared “homosexual” or “lesbian” to viewers. Their status and careers rested more on how others viewed them, thereby requiring maintenance of a heterosexual appearance.84 As mentioned earlier in this chapter, it is nearly impossible to assess exactly what was legible as “queer,” “gay,” or “lesbian” to members of the Portland Police Department. But given that the police were unable to identify many queer women or men, it seems likely that there were not many subversive gender behaviors going on, suggesting a lack of butch lesbian women or very effeminate gay men in the space. Because of its supper club atmosphere and the gender presentation of its patrons, the Music Hall can confidently be said to have been a middle-class queer space. Three blocks away from the Music Hall was the Buick Cafe, which appears to have functioned as an afterhours lesbian bar. The historical record is particularly silent regarding the Buick Cafe. It has proven particularly challenging to identify when it first opened, when it closed, or to what degree it was a queer space. Information about the 83 City Auditor, City Council Documents, March 16, 1950, no. 1117, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 84 Chauncey, Gay New York, 100; Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 143-145; and Betty Luther Hillman, “‘The Most Profoundly Revolutionary Act a Homosexual Can Engage in’: Drag and the Politics of Gender Presentation in the San Francisco Gay Liberation Movement, 1964–1972,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 1 (2011): 153–81. 57 Buick Cafe comes through the 1950 police reports on the Music Hall. Through their surveillance of lesbian women at the Music Hall, vice officers discovered that many women went to the Buick Cafe after the Music Hall closed for the night. In their larger report on lesbian women, the police wrote that, “these women are reported to attempt their pick-up at the Music Hall and in case of failure before the hall closes, they then retire to the Buick Cafe . . . and look for other prospects.”85 With the Buick Cafe, a similar pattern to the bars in the working-class area emerged; middle-class queer Portlanders moved from bar to bar over the course of the night, seeking new crowds and environments for their sexual and social pursuits. Importantly, the Buick Cafe largely escaped the scorn of the city. It does not appear to have been targeted by the city’s crackdowns and barely appeared in The Oregonian. The only mention of the cafe was in 1959, when a job ad was placed looking for a new waitress.86 While specifics cannot be identified, this job ad suggests that the Buick Cafe was open throughout the 1950s. Because of its location and its association with the Music Hall, it can be deduced that the Buick Cafe was a space where middle-class lesbian women could go and not worry about being “found out” as queer. When the Music Hall was closed due to pressure from the city in 1950, it left middle-class queer Portlanders without a bar to go to. Some women certainly went to the Buick Cafe, but its popularity seems to have been limited at best. During the mid-1950s, a new middle-class space for queer and gay men called the Tel & Tel Tavern developed. Located several blocks from where the Music Hall had once stood, the Tel & Tel Tavern 85 86 City Auditor, City Council Documents, March 16, 1950, no. 1117. “Help Wanted - Waitress”, The Oregonian, June 4, 1959. 58 was a long-standing bar space that changed owners and names throughout the twentieth century. Popular memory of the space suggests that it may have been queer as far back as World War II, when servicemen on leave went looking for a place to release sexual energy in bars near the downtown bus depot.87 But, the historical evidence does not indicate any queer clientele at the space until it became the Tel & Tel Tavern in 1957. It is very likely that the bar operated as a mixed space, with both queer and “straight” customers, for much of the 1940s and 1950s, though this is not confirmable. In 1962, the Tel & Tel Tavern was bought by Derek Akerson and renamed “Derek’s Tavern.” When Derek’s Tavern was investigated by the Portland City Council in 1964, Akerson’s lawyer suggested that “the previous establishment,” the Tel & Tel Tavern, had numerous citations for its homosexual clientele. Not much seems to have changed with Akerson’s ownership. He continued to cater to gay men and provided a safe space for them to express themselves. In fact, during the City Council hearing, Akerson and his lawyer provided the staunchest defense of homosexuality and their right to serve them than any other bar owner had.88 The Tel & Tel Tavern and Derek’s Tavern both seem to have largely attracted a middle-class gay male customer base. In police reports on Derek’s Tavern, vice officers reported that, “the evening hours find it frequented primarily by the male (homosexual) of the higher class or persons of means. . . . Apparently [the owners] have encouraged these persons, due to the fact that they are 87 “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour”; David Grant Kohl, A Curious and Peculiar People: A History of the Metropolitan Community Church in Portland and the Sexual Minority Communities of Northwest Portland (Portland, OR: Spirit Press, 2006), 29. 88 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 59 good spenders.”89 With reference to those homosexuals of “the higher class,” and their propensity to be “good spenders,” the police clearly understood Derek’s Tavern (and its predecessors) to be a middle-class space, distinct from the working-class bars. Although it continued to change hands and names throughout the rest of the twentieth century, the barspace remained an important place for Portland’s queer community into the 1980s. In the late 1950s, around the same time that the Tel & Tel Tavern certifiably became a space for gay men, a lesbian bar called the Milwaukee Tavern was opened by Edna Jordal. Unlike the Tel & Tel Tavern, it does not appear that the barspace was queer before it opened as the Milwaukee Tavern. Before opening the tavern, Jordal worked temporarily at working-class lesbian bars to make ends meet while her husband was sick. Upon her husband’s death, Jordal used her connections in bars like the Transfusion Inn to open her own bar that would cater to lesbian women. In this way, the Milwaukee Tavern functioned, from its opening day, as a queer space. Compared to the Music Hall and Derek’s Tavern, the Milwaukee Tavern was more likely to have working-class women. Police reports on the tavern stated that officers found women who “could be identified as lesbians. They dress like men, act like men . . . .” While these women were the most visibly queer, and were thereby readily identifiable, their masculine appearance and mannerisms also could mean that they were of a working-class background. With this said, however, middle-class patrons seem to have predominated in the space. When pressed by the City Council, Jordal insisted that her customers were unlike those at the Transfusion Inn: “I don’t have the Transfusion’s trade up there. I have women who work, not go out and bum. I have everything from physicians to clerks that behave 89 City Auditor, City Council Documents, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 60 themselves.”90 While Jordal was certainly attempting to defend herself against accusations of running a crime-ridden bar by appealing to class stereotypes, her articulation of the types of careers that her main customers held indicated that it was a middle-class queer space. Moreover, in the same 1963 letter where Barbara described the clientele at the Model Inn as the “more obvious type,” she also described the customers at the Milwaukee Tavern as the “quieter type.” While we cannot really know what she meant by this, on its face value Barbara’s letter seems to suggest that the women at the Milwaukee Tavern were more reserved. Combined with the other evidence on the tavern, Barbara’s comment about the “quieter type” of women further indicates a middle-class clientele, who most likely would have been less overtly queer than the working-class women at the Model Inn may have been.91 Through a comparison of the working-class and middle-class queer bar districts, a glaring difference emerges: working-class queer bars were way more numerous (or at least visible) than their middle-class counterparts. Why was this? One possible answer has been discussed briefly above— privacy was critical to middle-class queer lives. Before the rise of liberation politics and gay rights in the 1970s, middle-class queer people tended to be much more concerned about their public appearance and reputation. For white-collar workers, both men and women, getting “found out” was much more threatening to their way of life than it was for the working class. By going out to public spaces with queer notoriety, middle-class queer people put themselves into situations where they may run into co-workers, bosses, or neighbors. Moreover, those who went to 90 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4629, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 91 Letter from Barbara Humphries to the Daughters of Bilitis, October 17, 1963. 61 bars ran the risk of being harassed or arrested by police. For this reason, middle-class queer Portlanders were less likely to go to bars, meaning that there were less people overall who could keep middle-class queer bars afloat. For those with enough money to own houses, private gatherings and parties in homes were much more common and central to queer socialization than the bars were. Homes provided privacy and security, away from the gaze of heterosexual peers and city police.92 The boundaries between the working-class and middle-class bar districts were certainly not impermeable. Lying only half a mile away from each other, opportunities for interaction between the two disparate regions of downtown were widespread. The classed nature of the bars discussed above were general trends, rather than exclusive designations. As evidenced by the mixed class clientele at the Milwaukee Tavern, both working-class and middle-class queer Portlanders could find themselves in the same space. By most indications, the differences between working-class and middle-class queer cultures in Portland would have made the difference between working-class and middle-class patrons quite apparent. Additionally, because middle-class queer people were more concerned with status and reputation, they may have been less likely to go to the working-class bars than the working-class patrons were to go to the middle-class bars. The bars were not the only place where queer Portlanders would have mingled regardless of class. As will be discussed below, public spaces like parks, theaters, bathhouses, and newspaper stands brought queer people together regardless of class. 92 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 43-44, 62-64, 134; Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 27; and Roey Thorpe, “The Changing Face of Lesbian Bars in Detroit, 1938-1965,” in Creating a Place for Ourselves, ed. Brett (Genny) Beemyn (New York: Routledge, 1997), 173-178. 62 Beyond the Downtown Queer Bars While downtown bars were undeniably the center of queer life in the city between 1945 and 1970, queer spaces and sites of socialization also developed outside of the bars and beyond the downtown core. Downtown theaters, public parks, and bathhouses functioned as major cruising grounds, fomenting the development of gay male community in the city. Outside of downtown, across the Willamette River, alternative spots for queer socialization developed. Neighborhood bars and private member-only clubs arose, catering to localized and intimate networks of queer Portlanders. Furthermore, recreational activities also brought queer Portlanders together, allowing them to participate in the city’s public life while maintaining their queer identity and community. These various spaces added up to push queer subcultures beyond the walls of downtown taverns and bars. Beyond the bars, however, queer Portlanders interacted in several downtown spaces that were within walking distance of both the working-class and middle-class bar districts. One major site of overlap was in shops that sold magazines meant for a gay or lesbian audience. In Portland, most of the stores that sold queer material doubled as smoke shops and sold magazines and newspapers from behind the counter. The city’s attempt to crackdown on the distribution of “obscene materials,” meaning queer literature, revealed five separate smoke shops that sold such material.93 The most notorious of these shops was Rich’s Cigar Shop, which was located directly halfway between the working-class and middle-class bar districts. Rich’s sold a variety of different queer magazines and books. On its shelves, queer Portlanders could find 93 Stan Federman, “Indictments Name 5 Shops in City Center,” The Oregonian, January 28, 1965; and “Books Lack Appeal for Normal,” The Oregonian, November 10, 1965. 63 physique magazines, gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels, and homophile magazines like The Ladder and The Mattachine Review.94 Physique magazines, which functioned under the guise of being fitness and health magazines, were an early form of gay male pornography that contained photos of scantily-clad hypermasculine men. These magazines, as well as cheap pulp novels with titles like “Dancehall Dyke” and “Lesbian Roommate”, might have drawn working-class men and women into the shop. On the other hand, magazines produced by the first gay and lesbian rights organizations, who called themselves “homophile organizations”, drew in middle-class queer Portlanders. These homophile organizations were fundamentally middle-class groups that pushed for gay and lesbian rights through an appeal to respectability politics.95 Rich’s Cigar Shop and other nearby smoke shops were the main location to purchase these materials, thereby making them prime sites for interclass mixing and socialization in Portland. Within the downtown milieu, a number of public spaces became major cruising grounds for gay men looking for sex. The most notorious and long-lasting spot was Lownsdale Square, just a block away from Dinty Moore’s, in the midst of the workingclass bar district. Boag has noted that Lownsdale was a cruising ground as far back as the 1910s. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Lownsdale remained a queer site, with men cruising the park’s pathways and having sex in the park’s public restroom.96 As suggested 94 Rich Cigar Shop 1963 Purchase Statement, February 4, 1964, MS Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Box 13, Folder 9, Gale Archives of Sexuality and Gender.; Federman, “Indictments Name 5 Shops in City Center”; and “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” 95 David K. Johnson, Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 6-21; David K. Johnson, “Physique Pioneers: The Politics of 1960s Gay Consumer Culture,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 4 (June 17, 2010): 867–92, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.0.0342; and Meeker, Contacts Desired, 101-102, 198-199. 96 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 113-115; “Morals Count Faced,” The Oregonian, April 26, 1953; “Two Sentenced to Long Terms,” The Oregonian, September 23, 1955; and “Offense Brings Probation Term,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1969. 64 by Chauncey in his study of New York, cruising in public parks functioned as a major entrypoint into a city’s queer culture. Newcomers and young men would first find out about the best parks to go to find other homosexuals, and from there, they would learn about bars and taverns. Evidenced by newspaper reports of those arrested in Lownsdale Square during the 1950s, many men from outside of Portland would first find sexual partners by cruising in downtown parks.97 Outside the space of public parks, gay men also sought out one another in dark, anonymous public spaces like theaters and bathhouses. The Circle Theater, located on Southwest 4th Ave., between the workingclass and middle-class bar districts, was a major site for cruising. It had an upstairs balcony where gay men went and waited for others to make subtle gestures to them. In describing the theater during the 1950s, longtime Portland resident Norm Costa held that, “that’s where everybody met each other and had sex either upstairs or in the bathrooms.” Police knew about the Circle’s reputation, and sometimes made arrests on morals charges, but the city never sought to close the theater down.98 Bathhouses also functioned as major cruising sites for Portland gay men. The two most widely known baths during the period under consideration were McMahon’s Steam Baths and the Aero-Vapors Bathhouse. McMahon’s was across the street from the Circle Theater, so there was likely a large degree of intermingling between those two spaces. McMahon’s first opened in 1906, but it does not seem to have become a queer space until 97 Chauncey, Gay New York, 180-184. For examples of out-of-town men who were arrested for cruising, see, “Man Jailed,” The Oregonian, May 27, 1956; “Term Suspended,” The Oregonian, June 2, 1956; and “Court Time Set,” The Oregonian, July 27, 1956. 98 Oral history interview with Norm Costa, interview by Stephanie Munley and Ruben Reynaga, November 13, 2000, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, https://digitalcollections.ohs.org/sr-4143-normcosta-oral-history; “Morals Charges Bring 3 Arrests,” The Oregonian, June 24, 1948; “Morals Charge Lodged,” The Oregonian, October 4, 1952; and “Police Nab Two,” The Oregonian, June 13, 1956. 65 the 1950s. As a men’s-only space, with cheap bedrooms and baths, the space readily facilitated cruising and sexual interactions between men. Aero-Vapors Bathhouse opened in the late 1950s, and quickly became another site for gay cruising. The privacy and anonymity afforded by the bathhouses, as well as their outward representation as a simple, cheap space to bathe, meant that queer men could go into these spaces with little worry about being arrested by Portland police.99 Queer spaces were also established and patronized beyond Portland’s downtown core. Although the historical record of these spaces is much scarcer than the downtown bars, there existence was just as important to local queer lives as the much more notorious bars were. Beyond nightspots and cruising spaces, recreational activities served as an important site of socialization for Portland’s queer subcultures. The starkest example of this was a women’s softball team called the Florists. With the financial backing of Portland florist Erv Lind, the Florists became one of the best softball teams in the nation during the 1950s and 1960s. Their home field was in Normandale Park, in Northeast Portland. While the Florists were not an exclusively lesbian team, and did not outwardly identify as such, many of the players were queer and participated in Portland’s broader queer subculture. In an interview about her time on the Florists, long-time Portland resident Louise “Chris” Mazzuca referred to her teammates, stating that, “in retrospect, yeah they were mostly lesbians, but I was clueless.” One of Mazzuca’s teammates, Pat Cach confirmed this in her own interview, saying that, “I didn’t know anyone who was straight on it.” The team fostered connections between lesbian women in Portland, helping create close-knit social circles. In her interview, both Mazzuca and 99 “1999 Gay History Walking Tour”; Kohl, A Curious and Peculiar People, 15. 66 Cach suggested that the team would regularly hold parties in their homes and would often go to the downtown queer bars. The Florists played in a competitive national league, so players regularly travelled across the country together for tournaments and games in other states, making connections beyond the bounds of Portland’s urbanscape. Sometime in the late 1960s, another queer softball team arose called the Lavender Menace, which Cach coached.100 It does not appear that the Florists or the Lavender Menace were known as queer groups outside of the players themselves. This suggests that there may have been other sports groups that were made up of some queer Portlanders, but were not outwardly presenting themselves as queer. The history of the Florists softball team demonstrates that queer community in Portland did not just form in bars, clubs, and bathhouses, but that it also developed in the greater public spheres of daily life. Importantly, it also suggests that queer women were more likely to find spaces for themselves outside of the bars and other nightspots, but this is difficult to confirm and would require further research. Queer people in Portland during the 1950s and 1960s also gathered in private clubs, which allowed for the development of close-knit networks away from public and official harassment. These private clubs required a vetting process and the purchase of a membership card before patrons could gain access to the space. Through this, club owners could self-police their membership to ensure that they remained out of the city’s gaze.101 One such private club in Portland was called “Guys and Dolls,” and was owned 100 Oral history interview with Louise “Chris” Mazzuca, interview by Sarah Tolle and Andrew Clark, February 10, 2011, SR 11231, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; and Oral history interview with Pat Cach, interview by Aaron Powell and Dorothy Zapf, February 4, 2011, SR 11232, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. 101 See Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 62 for a discussion of private clubs in Philadelphia. 67 by a queer woman named Vera Hunt. Guys and Dolls was not advertised in Portland newspapers and seems to have avoided any trouble with the City Council and the Portland police, so it was not documented well. The only records of the bar come from letters written by Hunt to Al de Dion and Del Martin, leaders of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, the two largest homophile organizations. In these letters, Hunt provided extensive detail about the operations of the space and the community that formed within it. In describing the private nature of the space, Hunt wrote, “We have had no trouble with the law at all. It is by card only. The law is always welcome to come in.” Hunt believed that the members-only aspect of Guys and Dolls prevented behaviors like over intoxication, fighting, or underage drinking that tended to draw the attention of Portland police. Because it was private, there were only between 150 and 200 people that were permitted to even come into Guys and Dolls. With a small, regular customer base, the connections between members seem to have been particularly strong. In her letters, Hunt described how members would “go to the beach to cool off” together during the summer months, and how some even planned to travel to Hawaii together. Moreover, as will be discussed extensively in Chapter Four, the close-knit members of Guys and Dolls also began to form their own political organization, however informal, in the late 1950s.102 How people discovered private clubs and to what extent there were other clubs like Guys and Dolls were not discussed in Hunt’s letters. What the presence of Guys and Dolls does demonstrate, however, is that there were alternative, private nightspots where 102 Letter from Vera Hunt to Albert de Dion, June 1, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 49-50; and Letter from Vera Hunt to Del Martin, February 24, 1960, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “San Francisco - Housing and Transportation National Convention Files Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/BkB5T0, 2-5. 68 queer people in Portland gathered, and that these spaces were important to those who occupied them. Queer bars were also not solely restricted to the downtown area of Portland. Although the evidence of bars outside of downtown is much scarcer (due to a lack of police and city harassment), there were clearly neighborhood bars that catered to a much more localized queer population than the downtown bars. One such bar was the Jamboree Room, which was located in Northeast Portland, on the other side of the Willamette River from downtown. During the day, the Jamboree Room catered to Russian immigrant men who lived in the area. But then, at around 10 at night, it became a queer bar.103 The existence of the Jamboree Room suggests that there may have been other neighborhood queer bars across the city, drawing in local networks of queer Portlanders. Due to the fact that these neighborhood bars appear to have been overlooked by the city and Portland police, they are virtually non-existent in the documentary record. Extensive research using oral history would need to be conducted to confirm the extent and popularity of bars beyond the downtown core, however. As a result of its location in a more racially diverse neighborhood in the city, the Jamboree Room catered to a queer clientele that was more ethnically diverse than the downtown queer bars were.104 By all indications, the queer subcultures that gathered in both the working-class and middle-class bar districts of downtown were predominately White. This is evidenced by two factors. One, police reports of the downtown queer bars and the City Council hearings about those bars hardly mention the race or ethnicity of the 103 Beka Smith, “Gay Bars, Vice, and Reform in Portland, 1948-1965” (M.A., Portland, OR, Portland State University, 2002), https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2961/, 81-82, 116. 104 Ibid. 69 bar’s clientele. The absence of racial signifiers in the discourse over the bars suggests that the bars were mainly filled with White patrons. For example, vice officers and City Council members were quick to note that prostitutes at the Old Glory Tavern were “both Negro and Caucasian,” but never referred to the race of the “homosexuals” they were so very concerned about.105 The second piece of evidence that suggests the general absence of people of color in the downtown bar districts is the fact that the vast majority of queer men who were arrested downtown were White. While this does not completely negate the possibility that there were queer people of color downtown, it does suggest that they were not cruising or openly displaying their sexuality—either because they were not there in the first place, or because did not feel that they could safely do so.106 Generalized racism and hostility toward people of color certainly promoted the all-White atmosphere in downtown queer bars, limiting the safety of those spaces for queer people of color. Some people of color surely found their way into the bars from time to time, and a few may have even been “regulars,” but the historical record supports the notion that the downtown queer bar districts were overwhelmingly White spaces.107 So where were queer people of color, and where did they gather? Well, the current answer to that is simply that we (historians) do not really know. Compared to the large urban centers that queer historians have studied thus far, Portland was much more 105 City Auditor, City Council Documents, December 3, 1964, no. 4628, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 106 This assessment is based on a process where I cross referenced the names and addresses found in newspaper reports of arrests with biographical information contained in vital records held by Ancestry.com. Of the 70 men I was able to identify who were clearly arrested due to their sexuality, not a single one appears to have been Black. And, only a few were listed on draft cards as having a “Dark” complexion, which was distinguished from the “Light Brown” or “Dark Brown” complexion. 107 Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 65-67; Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 113-131; Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 52-56; and Howard, Men Like That, 93-99. 70 ethnically homogenous. The state of Oregon had a long history of racial and ethnic exclusion laws that intentionally designed and defined the state as exclusively White. Although such laws were gradually relieved or removed from the state’s law books during the first half of the twentieth century, early Oregon’s white supremacist visions largely succeeded.108 While the Second World War prompted the immigration of many people of color from the South and the East Coast, as of the 1950 census, there were only 13,200 people of color (“nonwhites”) who lived in Portland. Therefore, over 96% of the population in Portland was white during the 1950s. And, this percentage only increased over the course of the decade. Among the non-White population, 9,500 of the city’s population of color were African American, constituting the largest non-White ethnic group in Portland during the mid-century. The remaining 3,700 people of color were predominately people of Asian descent.109 Queer Black Portlanders most likely socialized in Northeast Portland, where the vast majority of Black people in Portland lived. Initially, the new wartime Black laborers and their families sought to live in North Portland along Williams Avenue in the Albina neighborhood, where the prewar Black community was the strongest, though certainly not the majority. Housing policies and covenants developed in the early twentieth century that prohibited black people from living in many neighborhoods in Portland meant that the Albina neighborhood and North Portland were the only parts of the city where black 108 Thomas C. McClintock, “James Saules, Peter Burnett, and the Oregon Black Exclusion Law of June 1844,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 86, no. 3 (1995): 121–30; Quintard Taylor, “Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Oregon Country, 1840-1860,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 83, no. 2 (1982): 153–70; William Toll, “Black Families and Migration to a Multiracial Society: Portland, Oregon, 1900-1924,” Journal of American Ethnic History 17, no. 3 (1998): 38–70; and Marie Rose Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 29-72. 109 “1950 United States Census of Population - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg.”; “1960 Census of Population and Housing - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg-Wash. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area”; and Abbott, Portland, 121. 71 people could rent and purchase housing. Following the establishment of Vanport at the end of 1942, many Black families and laborers were provided housing in the new town, but official limits on the number of Black people that could live there limited the relief. At the end of the war, shipyard layoffs and a postwar housing shortage created by the return of military personnel forced many Black Portlanders to rely on cheap public housing, such as those available in Vanport. By 1948, 33 percent of Vanport’s population was Black, with the rest of Portland’s Black population congregated in the Albina neighborhood. Then, in May 1948, a dike of the Columbia River collapsed and flooded Vanport, destroying the homes and communities of those who lived in the wartime housing project. This forced many Black Portlanders to seek shelter and housing in Albina, exacerbating residential segregation in the city. During the 1950s, residential segregation only intensified as more White people moved away from Albina, and Black Portlanders continued to wrestle with discriminatory housing practices.110 The overwhelming dominance of racial segregation in the urbanscape of Portland surely foreclosed the possibility of downtown spaces that catered to queer people of color. If there were in fact queer spaces for Black Portlanders, then those spaces would most likely be in the Albina neighborhood, or somewhere nearby. This historian’s research methodology was unable to turn up any substantial evidence of distinct queer subcultures for people of color. But, based on the historical record of other cities, queer subcultures during the mid-century were very much shaped by segregation and race relations in urban sites. For example, in Buffalo, New York, the 110 Stuart McElderry, “Building a West Coast Ghetto: African-American Housing in Portland, 1910-1960,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 92, no. 3 (2001): 137-148; and Greta Smith, “‘Congenial Neighbors’: Restrictive Covenants and Residential Segregation in Portland, Oregon,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 119, no. 3 (2018): 358–64, https://doi.org/10.5403/oregonhistq.119.3.0358. 72 black lesbian community and the white lesbian community were distinct from one another throughout the 1950s. As Kennedy and Davis argue, “the separateness of the Black lesbian community was partially due to racial prejudice which made segregation the unofficial but pervasive custom of tavern and neighborhood life in the North.”111 A similar form of racial prejudice was dominant among overwhelmingly White Portlanders during the 1950s and 1960s, and would have promoted the development of separate queer spaces and cultures along racial lines. While Portland may not have had a Black queer subculture like Buffalo, it seems much more likely that it did have such a subculture, and that it has simply been obscured by the historical record. In order to confirm this, future historians should focus on looking at surviving records from Portland’s Black community during the 1950s in an attempt to figure out how queerness played out in the Albina neighborhood. Through oral histories, they should also try to capture living memory of what it was like to be Black and queer before the rise of both Black and gay liberation, which could possibly yield information about where queer Portlanders of color went to find others like them. Outside of Albina and Northeast Portland, Chinese and Japanese Americans constituted the next largest ethnic minority in the city. Historically, the majority of Portland’s Asian-American population lived in the city’s “Chinatown,” in the northern half of downtown. But, by the mid-century, Portland’s East Asian population had largely dispersed throughout the city, and many had left the city following the war and the forced internment of the city’s Japanese-American population.112 Although many of the policies 111 112 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 114. Abbott, Portland, 121. 73 and practices that had led to the residential segregation of Black Portlanders also applied to Asian Portlanders, they did not lead to a distinct Asian neighborhood in the city. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to determine where queer Asian Portlanders would have socialized if there was such a public space. As with Portland’s (possible) queer Black subcultures, future historians must utilize alternative sources— like oral histories—to try to approach to topic of queer Asian subcultures in the city. While the downtown bar districts may have been the most visible examples of queer culture in Portland during the 1950s and 1960s, the downtown bars and taverns were certainly not the only spaces where queer people could find one another. From newspaper stands and theaters to private clubs and softball leagues, queer people pushed beyond the walls of dark and stuffy taverns to create alternative spaces where they could be themselves. Additionally, while the downtown core may have been the center of queer life for the entire twentieth century, there were queer spaces scattered across the city. While these non-downtown spaces are not nearly as visible in the historical record, they seem to have been important to those who patronized them. By paying attention to these spaces outside of downtown, future historians may be able to identify additional queer subcultures that are obscured by the types of sources used in this thesis. Conclusion Despite its smaller size—relative to those cities that have been studied thus far— Portland had a thriving queer subculture throughout the mid-twentieth century. Like larger cities, Portland developed a wide variety of queer spaces, ranging from private home parties to crowded taverns and highly successful softball teams. Despite being less populous than the cities that have historically and popularly been seen as the epicenters of 74 queer culture during the mid-century, Portland’s queer subcultures flourished before the rise of liberation politics. Its size may have limited the sheer number of spaces available to queer people— for example, Portland had around 20 identifiable queer bars, while Philadelphia had over 60 different queer barspaces.113 But, given its relative size, and thus its smaller population of queer bargoers, Portland had a higher proportion of queer spaces to its population than larger cities. Portland’s queer spaces followed important trends that have been identified in the historiography of larger cities. Primarily, class was a critical factor in determining what spaces one could comfortably go into. As discussed above, Portland’s working-class and middle-class spaces were geographically segregated. Working-class queer Portlanders gathered in the ground-level bars of the central business district, while middle-class folks went deeper into downtown, finding one another in bars along Burnside Street and the edge of the Goose Hollow neighborhood. In this way, the history of Portland’s queer subcultures strengthens the arguments of historians like Elizabeth Kennedy, Madeline Davis, Roey Thorpe, and George Chauncey, who have all posited that class-based distinctions were foundational to the development of twentieth-century queer cultures.114 Furthermore, Portland’s queer spaces were much more mixed in regards to gender than spaces were in other cities during the 1950s and 1960s. The majority of the working-class bars in downtown catered to both gay men and lesbian women, while the middle-class bars were largely separated by gender. This diverges significantly from the historiography. Kennedy and Davis found that middle-class gay men and lesbian women 113 Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 57-58, 69-70. Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 138-145; Thorpe, “The Changing Face of Lesbian Bars,” 165179; and Chauncey, Gay New York, 66-76, 99-127. 114 75 were the ones to socialize with one another in Buffalo, rather than the queer working class. Moreover, Stein found the lesbian women and gay men mainly socialized separately in Philadelphia, but came together in a select number of spaces.115 Comparatively, in Portland, working-class gay men and lesbian women came together most of the time, and segregated in only a handful of bars. These dynamics would gradually change over the course of the late 1960s and 1970s. But throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, class was the primary division in the mainly white queer subcultures of downtown Portland, while gender was less of a factor than it was in other cities. 115 Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 135; and Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 61-69. 76 Chapter Three “They Are Growing Stronger Each Week”: Containing the Homosexual Menace in the Rose City, 1947-1964 Queer lives during the 1950s and 1960s were inextricably tied to the history of anti-homosexual campaigns conducted by municipal police departments, state policies, and federal investigators. Historians have held that police enforcement was a daily anxiety for publicly queer Americans—police came into parks, bars, and even homes on the hunt for sexual deviancy and “lewd” behavior. Some cities, like New York and Philadelphia, faced regular bar raids where gay men and lesbian women were rounded up and jointly arrested on some ill-defined charge. These campaigns were often conducted under the guise of rooting out urban vice and targeting immorality. News reports of these arrests and raids tended to be the most public acknowledgement of homosexuality during the 1950s and 1960s, shaping public perceptions of homosexuality and queerness. Some historians, such as Nan Alamilla Boyd, have also argued that the sustained antihomosexual campaigns in urban centers promoted the development of queer political organizing before the rise of liberation politics.116 The historiography of queer urban cultures has emphasized the central role of police enforcement in the trajectory of queer subcultures and communities at the mid-century. The history of police enforcement in Portland, however, has been widely interpreted as being different from these other, major cities. In an article he wrote on the rise of political action in Portland’s queer community, historian Peter Boag argues that 116 See, for example, D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 49-53; Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 155-176; Howard, Men Like That, 93-99; and Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 108-147, 223-236. 77 police enforcement in Portland was notably weaker than that of other cities. He attributes the lack of political organizing in Portland to the relative absence of bar raids and harassment in the city. “The air of openness,” Boag argues, “apparently had helped suffocate political organizing in the city. There appeared to be no need after 1964 for Portland bars to remain active . . . to present a unified front against municipal policies and actions. Because police did not constantly harass bar patrons, there was little immediate incentive to protest.” Popular memory in Portland’s queer community also holds that the city did not have intense campaigns against queer people and spaces. Those who lived during this period understand Portland to have been a “wide-open town” with little police harassment.117 While Boag and public memory may be accurate in their assertion that there were not as many raids or sweeps as there were in other cities, this does not mean that there was not a concerted effort by the City Council and Portland Police Department to suppress homosexuality and queerness in the city. This chapter argues that the Portland Police, in conjunction with the City Council, organized their anti-homosexual policies around a strategy of containment. They believed that they could not simply harass queer Portlanders out of the city, but rather, that they could contain them to specific areas of the city. This policy was shaped by Cold War discourses over national security and anxieties about homosexuals as threats to children and the family. Through their pursuit of this strategy, Portland officials sought to constrain the public spaces where queer persons could gather, while also eliminating the presence of queer Portlanders outside of these narrowly defined spaces, under the guise of cracking down on “sex crimes.” This policy of containment was dominant from the 117 Boag, “‘Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,’” 34-35. This memory of little police enforcement is also a refrain that I have heard in numerous conversations with older queer Portlanders. 78 early 1950s to 1964, when the city was forced to reevaluate its strategy following its failure to close the downtown queer bars. Because Portland did not have the same type of enforcement that other well-studied cities had, this chapter provides an analysis of a different form of anti-homosexual tactics that reflected prevailing ideas about national security and foreign policy during the Cold War. Discourses of Containment and Menacing Homosexuality Two distinct discourses emerged in the postwar years that combined to shape the nature of the Portland Police Department’s response to the growth of queer culture in the city. The first discourse that shaped Portland’s police enforcement was the idea of the homosexual as a menace to society. Before and during the Second World War, psychologists and medical officials articulated a psychomedical view of homosexuality that defined it as a social illness. With the outgrowth of public queer culture— and thereby greater public discourse about homosexuality—Americans were widely exposed to these prevailing medical theories of who homosexuals were, and how they were created. In the late 1940s, these ideas readily combined with widespread public anxiety over sex crimes involving children. Parents, communities, and local governments sought to deal with the perceived rise in sex crimes by targeting the “sexual psychopath,” the imagined perpetrator of crimes against children. From the psychomedical model and the cultural panic over “sexual psychopaths,” homosexual persons emerged as menaces to society that needed to be suppressed.118 At the same time that homosexuality was being 118 The label “homosexual menace” used to describe this discourse was first articulated by historian John D’Emilio in John D’Emilio, “The Homosexual Menace: The Politics of Sexuality in Cold War America,” in Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 226–40. 79 transformed into a societal threat, a discourse of containment was developing. Containment was first articulated as a geopolitical strategy by the Truman administration in the early days of the Cold War. Operating from the belief that the Soviet Union was driven to expand its influence, President Truman and his administration sought to counter communist expansion by “containing” the Soviet Union to the territory that was already under its sphere of influence. Containment became the defining feature of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. While “containment” was formally just a geopolitical doctrine, the idea permeated American society and thought during the early Cold War. Through national events like the Lavender Scare, Cold War ideology overlapped with anxieties about homosexuality to create amalgamations of queer Americans that were threatening to national security. In Portland, the discourse of menacing homosexuals combined readily with the discourse of containment to define the city’s approach to dealing with queer people. The psychomedical model of homosexuality that formed the foundation for the discursive creation of the homosexual menace first developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The burgeoning field of psychoanalysis, led by figures such as Sigmund Freud, held that homosexuality was the result of improper sexual development. These psychologists argued that homosexual tendencies were normal during early adolescence, but that the normal young man and woman would quickly grow out of this stage to mature and develop heterosexual desire. Before the Second World War, these ideas were mainly isolated to medical and psychiatric discourses. But, upon entering the war, the United States military began to develop a screening process for homosexuality that partially relied on the foundations laid by psychoanalysts. By doing this, military 80 psychologists made homosexuality into something that could be diagnosed, rooted out, and targeted. During and after the war, this psychomedical model became the main way that American society came to understand the growing public presence of queer cultures across American cities. In the minds of Americans in the late 1940s, homosexuality was understood as a psychopathic illness—arising from childhood experiences—that presented a threat to standards of moral conformity.119 The psychomedical understanding of homosexuality readily combined with a wave of sex crime panics that swept across the country shortly after the Second World War. With rising birth rates, anxieties about children in the late 1940s were at an all-time high. Newspapers reported on national and regional crimes involving children with increasing levels of sensationalism, further striking fear into the hearts of parents and local officials. Historian Phillip Jenkins argues that there were two periods where anxieties about sex crimes involving children spiked: 1947 to 1950 and 1953 to 1954. Americans imagined the threat to their children as a singular problem, defined by the shadowy, violent deviant, interchangeably referred to as either the “sex psychopath” or “sex fiend”. The “sex psychopath,” though not officially a psychological diagnosis, was understood through mid-twentieth-century medical terminology. The “sex psychopath” was someone with “compulsive and irresistable behaviors” who was “interested only in the immediate satisfaction of his instinctual drive” to sexually assault children through “force, brutality, or violence, even sufficient to cause death.” While the “sex psychopath” did not necessarily evoke an image of the homosexual, the two became conflated with 119 John C. Spurlock, “From Reassurance to Irrelevance: Adolescent Psychology and Homosexuality in America,” History of Psychology 5, no. 1 (February 2002): 38–51; Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 151170, 256-260. 81 one another, in both popular and official discourse. Because Americans were viewing both the “sex psychopath” and homosexuality through psychomedical terms that emphasized improper sexual development, the two concepts had a significant degree of overlap. Moreover, because the causes of both sexual psychopathy and homosexuality were linked to child development, Americans came to believe that interactions with sexual deviates during childhood could throw the child off proper development, in turn creating a sexual deviate out of the young child.120 The fusion of the “sexual psychopath” and the psychomedical model of homosexuality during the late 1940s meant that Americans came to see homosexual men (and sometimes women) as predators and molesters. In this way, the imagined homosexual menace became a major discourse in cities across America, including Portland. The anxieties surrounding the homosexual menace were particularly strong in Portland. As Peter Boag notes, “While Portland’s media, officials, and concerned citizens responded to sex crimes in their various guises, the perceived threat of male homosexuals troubled them most.”121 The sex crime panics of the late 1940s and early 1950s swept through Portland. One article in a December 1950 issue of The Oregonian titled “They Prey on Children” warned parents about the risks of the sexual psychopath, and provided them information on how to be on the watch for sexual predators. The article also criticized the seemingly low sentencing minimums for sex crimes under Oregon law. One of the examples provided was, “attempted homosexual molestation” with only “90 days” in jail. Moreover, in a list of things for parents to watch out for, the article emphasized 120 Philip Jenkins, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 52-67. 121 Boag, “‘Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,’” 17. 82 male effeminacy as a danger. “Police records indicate that the private place of instruction in music, art, dancing, or drama offers excellent opportunity for sex abnormals,” the article argued. Evoking stereotypes of homosexuals during this period, the article continued, “show business has attracted more sex abnormals than any other field of endeavor.” This article was illustrated with numerous photos of shadowy men in long trench coats and wide-brimmed hats, evoking the visual of a single, wayward man as the “sexual psychopath.”122 Beyond articles on sex crimes specifically, Portlanders were also exposed to parenting advice columns that emphasized the link between childhood development, homosexuality, and sexual predation. The late 1940s was the hour of the expert in American society. Off the heels of victory in the Second World War, Americans looked to scientists, psychologists, and other experts for the solutions to the problems they faced. Americans trusted experts to warn them of dangers from abroad as well as from home. In her book on American family life during the 1950s, historian Elaine Tyler May argues that, “as participants in the cold war consensus, [experts] offered solutions to the difficulties of the age that would not disrupt the status quo. In the process, they helped focus and formulate the domestic ideology. For these experts, public dangers merged with private ones, and the family appeared besieged as never before.”123 As part of their unwavering trust in experts, mothers and fathers in the late 1940s and early 1950s looked to daily and weekly advice columns that appeared in a serialized format in newspapers across the country. As May suggests, the “experts” who were writing the advice columns 122 Eilen Ewing, “They Prey on Children: Police Need Parents’ Help in Apprehending Sexual Psychopaths,” The Oregonian, December 17, 1950. 123 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 22. 83 tended to be conformist and conservative in their outlook, and “advocated adaptation rather than resistance.” In this way, the advice column expert helped create and bolster prevailing sexual ideologies during the mid-century. One popular advice column in Portland newspapers was called “Worry Clinic,” and was written by Dr. George W. Crane, a psychologist and physician. “Worry Clinic” was a nationally syndicated column that appeared in newspapers across the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. In a 1953 column that appeared in The Oregonian, Crane wrote about one of his patients, a young man with homosexual inclinations: “He is psychologically a homosexual, though he has never had any improper contact with his own sex. This boy’s greater affinity for his own gender is rooted in a frustrated childhood.” In regard to dealing with the “problem,” Crane declared, “Homosexuals are not born that way! They could all be transformed into heterosexuals, if the motivation and will power were adequate.”124 Through advice columns, as well as news reports, psychological, medical, and child development experts emphasized the role of improper sexual development in the creation of the homosexual menace. However, they did not lead with sympathy, as they also emphasized the homosexual menace’s unwillingness to change and conform to societal expectations. Local news reports on violent crimes involving homosexual men and minors were another source for the construction of the homosexual menace in local discourse. In May 1956, Klamath Falls, a city in southeastern Oregon, was disturbed when two young girls found the “bruised, nude body” of 14-year-old Alvin Eacret in a rural wilderness area. A 124 George W. Crane, “Worry Clinic,” The Oregonian, February 7, 1953; and see also, Crane, “Worry Clinic,” The Oregonian, May 9, 1951; Crane, “Worry Clinic,” The Oregonian, May 18, 1951; and Crane, “Worry Clinic,” The Oregonian, September 1, 1953. 84 local coroner found that “a belt had been wrapped tightly around the neck” of Eacret and that a “piece of cloth had been stuffed” in his mouth. The coroner concluded that, “the boy had apparently been the victim of a sex deviate.” State homicide detectives tracked down Eacret’s killer, a 28-year-old lumber mill worker named Billy Junior Nunn in Alturas, California, just beyond the Oregon border.125 Nunn was quickly convicted by a jury for first degree murder, which mandated the death penalty under Oregon law at the time. Nunn’s case was automatically appealed up the state’s court system, eventually making its way to the state supreme court in 1957, in which the court upheld his conviction.126 Following this decision, Nunn’s death sentence was blocked by Governor Richard Holmes, who was morally and politically opposed to the use of the death penalty. In 1959, Governor Holmes commuted Nunn’s sentence, reducing it to life in prison.127 Nunn’s case and the ensuing battles over his conviction stirred up a great deal of attention regarding the details of the killing. Initially, police interviews and news reports referred to his actions as a “sexual killing” or “sex slaying,” but did not emphasize the same-sex characteristic of his acts. After his conviction, however, his homosexuality was placed at the center of news coverage about him. Over the course of 1958, when Nunn was awaiting commutation from Governor Holmes, all references to his case referred to him as the “homosexual killer.”128 In 1958, amid the debate over Governor Holmes’ 125 “Man Admits Slaying Boy,” The Oregonian, May 4, 1956. Randall B. Kester, State v. Nunn, No. 212 Or. 546 (Oregon Supreme Court January 29, 1958). 127 “Governor Says Nunn Term Life,” The Oregonian, January 8, 1959. 128 For references to Nunn as a “sexual killer,” see, Lyle Downing, “Confessed Killer of Klamath Falls Boy Brought to Oregon to Face Grand Jury,” The Oregonian, May 5, 1956; “Nunn Arraigned on Sex Slaying,” The Oregonian, May 6, 1956; “Jury Indicts Mill Worker,” The Oregonian, May 12, 1956; “Nunn Convicted of Sex Slaying,” The Oregonian, July 27, 1956; “Sex Slayer Faces Death,” The Oregonian, August 2, 1956. For Nunn as a “homosexual killer,” see, “The People’s Own Corner,” The Oregonian, May 1, 1958; Bob Sever, “Oregon Voters Face Decision on Value of Capital Punishment,” The Oregonian, October 26, 1958; and Bob Sever, “Attorney Backs Death Penalty: Why Kill Tiger But Save Human Beast?,” The Oregonian, October 28, 1958. 126 85 pending decision about commuting Nunn’s sentence, a supporter of the death penalty wrote a letter to the editors of The Oregonian about Nunn’s case. In his letter, the man held that, “The Nunn case was a deliberate killing to cover up a homosexual crime committed by Nunn.”129 By the time that the case was wrapped up and Nunn was put into prison for life, Portlanders and other Oregonians saw the killing as a result of Nunn’s own homosexuality. In the minds of Portlanders, Nunn did not kill Alvin Eacret because of his own homicidal and violent predilections, but rather because he had a desire to have sex with other men and did not want others to find out. Through the case of Billy Junior Nunn— as well as other violent crimes that could be linked to homosexuality— Portlanders came to equate homosexuality with violent sexual assault. Homosexuality was not just a threat to a child’s development; it was now a matter of life or death for the child. As exemplified by the discourse surrounding Nunn’s atrocious crime, the homosexual menace became an important site for overlapping anxieties connected to violence, sexuality, and children’s well-being during the 1950s. Amidst the sex crime panics of the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was a great deal of pressure from Oregon voters to expand the penalties and definitions for sex crimes. While it took several years for them to do so, in 1953 the state passed a “psychopathic offender” law that allowed anyone over the age of 16 to be convicted as a sexual offender for being involved with any youth under 15. But, beyond these statutory adjustments, there was a demand for municipal police to root out and crackdown on “sexual psychopaths” in Portland.130 Driven by Cold War anxieties about the homosexual 129 “The People’s Own Corner,” emphasis mine. George Painter, “The Sensibilities of Our Forefathers: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States - Oregon,” Sodomy Laws, 2001, https://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/oregon.htm. 130 86 menace and public pressure to deal with “sexual psychopaths”, the Portland Police and municipal government began a strategy of containment. The second discourse that laid the foundation for Portland’s response to its burgeoning queer subcultures was the Cold War discourse of containment. “Containment” was first articulated as a concept by American officials during the first years of the Cold War. George Kennan, a diplomat to the Soviet Union under President Truman’s administration, was the first to propose an official policy of “containing” the Soviet state. In his infamous “Long Telegram,” Kennan argued that the Soviet Union was driven to constantly expand its borders in order to counter its enduring insecurity arising from its position as a communist state in a capitalist world. In an article that he wrote for the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947, Kennan first articulated the strategy of containment as the best way to counter Soviet expansion. In this article Kennan wrote, “it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”131 Containment became the official policy of the United States government toward the Soviet Union in 1947 when President Truman supported providing aid to the Greek and Turkish governments, who were “threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists.” In a speech to Congress, President Truman proclaimed, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”132 From 131 X. (George Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (1947): 566–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/20030065; and George Kennan, “Long Telegram” (Wilson Center, February 22, 1946), https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf. 132 Harry S. Truman, “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress,” March 12, 1947, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp. 87 this moment in 1947, until the mid-1960s, containment became the official, guiding policy of the US government toward the Soviet Union. It defined the first half of the Cold War, and the discourse of “containing” that which was threatening permeated throughout American society. The ideology of containment emphasized the bipolarity of global politics and culture, drawing distinct boundaries between the morally just and democratic capitalist world and the corrupt, terrorizing communist world. While formally just describing the foreign policy of the United States during the early Cold War, containment also became an apt metaphor for describing the boundaries of everyday life in America. As literary scholar Alan Nadel argues: [containment] also describes American life in numerous venues and under sundry rubrics during that period [the early Cold War]: to the extent that corporate production and biological reproduction, military deployment and industrial technology, televised hearings and filmed teleplays, the cult of domesticity and the fetishizing of domestic security, the arms race and atoms for peace all contributed to the containment of communism. Containing communism, as an analogy for dealing with non-conformity in American culture, became the defining characteristic of society from the late 1940s to the mid1960s. Historians of American Cold War culture have held that domestic stability and conformity were emphasized as part of the nation’s efforts to contain communism. In her work titled Homeward Bound, Elaine Tyler May holds that “Domestic anticommunism was another manifestation of containment: if presumably subversive individuals could be contained and prevented from spreading their poisonous influence through the body politic, then the society could feel secure.” May locates containment’s strongest impact in the cultural construction of the family and the home: “More than merely a metaphor for the cold war on the homefront, containment aptly describes the way in which public 88 policy, personal behavior, and even political values were focused on the home.”133 As May posits, containment did not just shape critical decisions made in the Oval Office; it also framed American society’s approach to all that was subversive. Containment culture and ideology served to amplify the need to define “proper” gender and sexual behavior through its counter position to subversive, immoral sexual behavior. It acted to encourage women to fulfill their expected roles as mothers and wives, to constrain sexuality to the bounds of marriage, and to castigate homosexuality as a threat.134 During the early years of the Cold War, two national events took place that linked the developing discourses of containment and of the homosexual menace together: the publication of the Kinsey Reports, and the ousting of homosexual men and women from the United States State Department. On January 3, 1948, Alfred Kinsey, a sexologist at Indiana University, published an 804-page book called The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male that analyzed the sexual histories of over 5,000 men that Kinsey had interviewed. Kinsey’s work strikingly concluded that 37 percent of American men had had at least one same-sex sexual experience that resulted in orgasm. Moreover, he found that over 12 percent of American men had lived exclusively as homosexuals for at least a three year period. Five years later, Kinsey published The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, which found similar, though slightly less common, trends for homosexuality in American women. The conclusions of the Kinsey Reports were met with a great deal of hostility by members of the scientific community, and society as a whole. Kinsey’s findings had extensive implications for American’s understanding of their own society— 133 May, Homeward Bound, xxiv-xxv. Ibid., 10-29; 100-118; and Jane Sherron De Hart, “Containment at Home: Gender, Sexuality, and National Identity in Cold War America,” in Rethinking Cold War Culture, ed. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 124–55. 134 89 it suggested that homosexuality was widespread, both for men and women, and that Americans widely did not abide by prevailing sexual norms like abstinence before marriage or rigid monogamy.135 While the Kinsey Reports were not solely focused on homosexuality, the vast majority of reporting on Kinsey’s work focused on its findings about same-sex sexual histories. An article published in The Oregonian that previewed Kinsey’s findings began, “A study of sex facts about white, American males from small childhood to old age showing that more than half of them could go to jail as sex offenders at some time in their lives was released to the press Tuesday at Indiana University. The study shows a great difference between what men are supposed to be doing under moral codes and American male practices.”136 As suggested by this article, the most striking aspects of the Kinsey Reports for the general populous was what it showed about supposedly “immoral” sex acts, and how common they truly were. While some, like Kinsey himself, saw the conclusions of the reports as evidence of the need for more lenient sex crime laws, the vast majority of straight society saw the results as an indication of slipping morality in American society. Miriam G. Reumann, who has studied the impact of the Kinsey Reports, argues that the studies tapped into public anxieties about American identity and “Americanness.” Reumann notes, “The primary reason homosexuality emerged as such a crucial topic in the postwar United States, however, is that it provided an ideal site for articulating widespread fears and hopes about American character. In postwar discourse, homosexuality often served as a signifier for sexual abandon, mirroring broader concerns 135 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 33-39. Howard W. Blakeslee, “Science Research Group Finishes Study of Sex Tendencies Among U.S. Males,” The Oregonian, November 19, 1947. 136 90 about American character after World War II.”137 Combined with the visible outgrowth of queer subcultures in urban centers, the Kinsey Reports demonstrated to many Americans that the integrity of American moral standards— in the face of a growing communist threat— were dwindling. Two years after Kinsey published Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, another national panic emerged which has been referred to by historians as the “Lavender Scare.” In February 1950, the nation was plunged into a multiyear panic over the supposed presence of communists in the federal government. While the federal government had been persecuting American citizens for communist leanings since 1947, in February 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy declared that he knew of 205 Communists who were working in the State Department. This incited mass public and official panic over the supposed subversion of national security by Communists in the government. In the midst of the initial response to McCarthy’s accusations, members of the US Congress revealed that there were also homosexuals in the federal government. On February 28, 1950, Deputy Undersecretary for Administration John Peurifoy testified in front of the United States Senate that the State Department had expelled 91 homosexual employees since 1947. This testimony kicked off a series of official policies during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that purged homosexuals from the government. While historians have faced difficulty in assessing exactly how many men and women were impacted by these purges over the course of the 1950s, the total number was surely over five thousand Americans.138 137 Miriam G. Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 188. 138 David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 1-22, 166. 91 In ensuing investigations and responses, the problem of homosexuals in the government became understood through the lens of a “security risk.” American officials believed that queer men and women were threats to the United States’ standing in the Cold War, because their illicit sexual activities and need to remain hidden made them easy targets for Communist extortion and subversion. Although there is no historical evidence to suggest that queer American officials were ever targeted by the Soviets, the very idea that they could be was strong enough to propel the “Lavender Scare.” The articulation of queer Americans as “security risks” combined with parallel anxieties over McCarthy’s Communists to create a conflation of homosexuals as communists. As historian David K. Johnson argued in his foundational work on the Lavender Scare, “The constant pairing of “Communists and queers” led many to see them as indistinguishable threats. Evidence that one group had infiltrated the government was seen as confirmation of charges that the other had as well.”139 The discourses that surrounded the Lavender Scare readily reached from Washington DC to Portland. During 1950, at the height of the Scare, several articles from the Associated Press were published each week in The Oregonian that directly addressed the links between homosexuality and national security.140 Because of the ways that the US Congress and the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies understood the problem of the homosexual in American society, homosexuality became another front in the early Cold War. Gay men and lesbian women— already understood by much of American society to be threats to the family and children— now became threats to national security and the success of the nation. 139 Ibid., 31. See, for example, “Four More in State Department Declared Pro-Reds by McCarthy,” The Oregonian, March 15, 1950; “Truman to Deny Secret FBI Data to Spy Probers,” The Oregonian, March 28, 1950; “Man Called as Witness Disappears,” The Oregonian, April 26, 1950. 140 92 By the early years of the 1950s, two distinct, yet overlapping, discourses had taken shape in American society. Psychologists, physicians, and childcare experts had come to articulate homosexuality as a version of the “sexual psychopath.” This combined with broader sex crime panics during the period that centered anxieties on the threat of child molestations to create an image of gay men and women as homosexual menaces. Gay men in particular were understood to be violent sexual predators that would take advantage of innocent children if left unguarded. At the same time that these beliefs were crystallizing, the Truman administration began a policy of containment against the Soviet Union and global Communism, beginning the Cold War. While initially just an approach to geopolitics, the bipolar worldview of containment became the defining characteristic of American understandings of themselves. During an era where the family was understood as a vanguard against Communism, the homosexual menace became understood as a threat to American identity and well-being. At the same time, the federal government began highly publicized purges of gay men and lesbian women from positions in the national bureaucracy. Believing that homosexuality made one susceptible to extortion, queer Americans became “security risks” that threatened to undermine the entire project of containment. Therefore, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, discourses of national security, anti-Communism, the “sexual psychopath”, and homosexuality became entangled with one another to create overlapping anxieties about the domestic threat of queerness and the foreign threat of communism. As a manifestation of these ideologies, containment became the major strategy of Portland’s police from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s. 93 Developing a Containment Strategy The city’s strategy of containing Portland’s queer population first seems to have crystallized in the late 1940s and early 1950s, alongside the development of nationwide discourses on sexual predation and anti-Communist containment. Here, it is important to note that anti-homosexual containment was never a codified policy of the Portland Police Department or the City Council, as far as the historical record can attest. But, rather, their approaches to dealing with homosexuality and queerness in Portland were substantially shaped by the ongoing discourses over containment and homosexual predation. Containment was defined by a perception that the threat under question was expansive and could not be exterminated. While members of the Truman administration came to see the Soviet Union and Communism as an unceasingly expansionary forces, the Portland Police and the City Council came to understand queer Portlanders as similarly driven to spread past the privacy of their own homes and the few bars that catered to them. In defining that homosexual threat that needed to be contained, Portland police, reporters, and policy makers concurrently conflated sexual predation, child molestation, and homosexuality together. It is particularly difficult to assess when this strategy first developed, as it was likely a gradual process. The most that can be done is to assess early attempts at targeting homosexual Portlanders to identify the contours of early enforcement. The earliest indications of a concerted effort by the city to tackle homosexuality was in late 1940s, though deliberate targeting of homosexual Portlanders had been occurring since the 1890s. 1947 was the beginning of the first wave of mid-century sex crime panics that historians have identified, and it was during that same year that the first 94 foundations of a municipal containment strategy took shape.141 Repeatedly throughout 1947, Detective Captain James Purcell and Chief of Police Leon Jenkins issued public warnings encouraging Portlanders to report all activity and persons that they suspected of being sexual predators. Their statements emphasized the relationship between spaces outside of the home as the location of child predation and molestation. Beyond calling for greater reporting, Portland police also began to patrol school campuses and surrounding areas where reports of “Peeping Toms,” “sexual perverts,” and “sexual psychopaths” were coming from.142 Based on their fundamental belief that Portland children were at risk, and that sex crimes needed to be stopped, Portland police were guided by seemingly just principles. But, in their pursuit to protect Portland’s youth, their anti-homosexual beliefs shaped their approach and led to the targeting of queer people and spaces. The targeting of homosexual and queer Portlanders began when the police began to focus on those public areas where they believed both sexual predators and children might be. This did not just include spaces meant for kids, such as school campuses and playgrounds. Rather, it included all places in the city where children could be— street corners, parks at night, and movie theaters. Even if spots were unlikely to even have youth, like Lownsdale Square or a parked car in the middle of the night, the very premise that they might be guided Portland police in their crackdown on the imagined “sexual pervert.” Intentionally or not, this focus drew police to the areas of the city where queer men met one another for consensual sex. And, when they found such men, they responded as if they were child molesters. This attention to public spaces, even though 141 Jenkins, Moral Panic, 52 “More Reporting on Sex Offenses,” The Oregonian, May 20, 1947; “Help Asked in Fighting Sex Crimes,” The Oregonian, October 29, 1947; “Man Arrested Here Admits Molesting School Children,” The Oregonian, October 30, 1947. 142 95 most sex crimes occurred in private, persisted into the 1950s and 1960s, shaping what would become an anti-homosexual containment strategy. While some homosexual acts that led to police persecution were certainly justified based on the involvement of minors or predatory behavior, many queer men were arrested on the basis that they were having consensual sex with other adult men. On June 16, 1947, William E Topp and Phillip E Foord were arrested on the corner of Northeast 14th Ave. and Clackamas St. in Northeast Portland. Sometime during the night, a police officer came upon the two of them in a parked car and found them having oral sex. Both were arrested by the officer and charged with “oral sodomy.” The report of their arrest was cast in vague terms, using the exact same language as reports on legitimate arrests for child predation. Like the much more numerous reports on child predators, the article on Topp and Foord’s arrests described it as a “morals charge” with the suspects arrested on “charges of sodomy.” Unlike arrest reports of predators, Topp and Foord’s report did not have additional clauses such as, “involving minor youths'' or “with three young women as complainants.”143 To the untrained eye, however, the reports were virtually indistinguishable from each other, and simply conveyed that more men were being arrested for sex crimes. The broad, indiscriminate nature of morals charges, including “sodomy”, had devastating impacts on the queer people who they were levyed against. When Foord was arrested for having oral sex with Topp, he was an English teacher at Grant High School, in Northeast Portland, near where he was arrested. Foord was a wellrespected member of the teaching community, and had even been the president of the 143 On Topp and Foord’s arrests see, “Two Arrested,” The Oregonian, June 17, 1947; and “Hearing Waived,” The Oregonian, June 25, 1947. For examples of reports that covered actual incidents of child molestation, see, for example, “Sodomy Charge Faced,” The Oregonian, March 4, 1947; Morals Charge Faced,” The Oregonian, May 22, 1947; and “Morals Charge Filed,” The Oregonian, September 16, 1947. 96 Portland High School Teachers’ Association, a local teachers’ union. Upon his arrest and the numerous reports on his charge of “oral sodomy,” Foord was immediately forced to resign from his teaching position and was ostracized from his career path. Even though he did not hurt anyone and did not threaten the well-being of any of his students, Foord was treated as if he was no different from the sexual predators that alarmed Portlanders during this period.144 While the arrests of Foord and Topp exemplify the ways that queer Portlanders were targeted as part of the city’s crackdown on sex crime, they were not the only ones to fall victims to the policy. As part of their campaign against child molesters, Portland police began to patrol and surveil public spaces, like street corners, parks, and public restrooms for supposed predators. In one of his 1947 warnings, Detective Captain Purcell described the police’s strategy: “A concentrated drive against immoral characters hanging around public rest rooms, city parks and playgrounds was launched in an effort to round up sex perverts . . . .” The police believed that patrolling public spaces would help them capture the largest number of predators. But, these spaces, including restrooms and parks, were also major cruising spots for Portland’s queer male population. The same article that covered Purcell’s statement noted that, as a result of this “round up,” the police had arrested two men for “disorderly conduct involving morals'' at the corner of Southwest 3rd Avenue and Salmon Street.145 This corner was in the heart of the working-class queer bar district discussed in Chapter Two. Dinty Moore’s, one of the merchant seamen taverns that had begun to become queer after the Second World War, was located on the 144 “The People’s Own Corner,” The Oregonian, September 24, 1941; and “Parole Granted to ExInstructor,” The Oregonian, August 8, 1947. 145 “Man Arrested Here Admits Molesting School Children.” 97 same block. Moreover, it was also a corner of Lownsdale Square, the most notorious park in Portland for cruising. Because of the location of the arrest, combined with the fact that the report did not mention any specifics, the two men arrested at 3rd and Salmon were most likely arrested for homosexual behavior.146 Beyond arrests in public parks, like Lownsdale Square, Portland police also surveilled other spaces that had a reputation for cruising during the late 1940s. In 1948, police arrested Daniel Swift and Norman Lindquist in the Circle Theater for “disorderly conduct.” Like other reports involving two queer men, the news reports of their arrest did not carry the clauses that suggested child molestation, while also remaining vague enough to sound ominous. The Circle Theater was known as a cruising spot, which seems to have drawn the police to the location in the first place.147 In 1950, the city’s attitudes toward queer Portlanders began to coalesce around a strategy of containing homosexuality. In 1949, and possibly before then, vice officers from the Women’s Protection Division began to quietly surveil the Music Hall. They expected to find both homosexual men and women, and went into the bar specifically looking for them. While the reports from this surveillance mentioned other violations like underage drinking, the vast majority of the reports focus on the sexuality and gender nonnormativity of the Music Hall’s patrons and performers. On the first night that officers went to the nightclub, they reported that, “We observed several women, who were, apparently, what we were looking for [lesbians]; but no contacts were made.” Two nights later, when the vice officers returned, they “did not observe anyone who appeared to be 146 One week later, another set of two men were arrested on the same block for “disorderly conduct”. See “Police Grab Two,” The Oregonian, November 6, 1947. 147 “Morals Charges Bring 3 Arrests,” The Oregonian, June 24, 1948. 98 Lesbians in the crowd; but there were several male characters present.”148 From these reports, it is clear that police officers went to the Music Hall to look specifically for homosexuals, rather than for child molesters, as they had been doing for the previous two years. Moreover, in March 1950, when the police reports reached City Hall, the City Council decided to deny a recommendation for the Music Hall’s liquor license. While the City Council’s decision formally rested on several violations, including the nightclub’s lack of consistent available food, the city’s decision centered on the presence of homosexuals in the space. The city conditioned future approval on the grounds that Leonard Schneiderman, then the owner of the Music Hall, prohibited all future “lewd and indecent entertainment” and that “no male or female impersonators” perform at the club. The city also warned Schneiderman that, “the association of known perverts, homosexuals and lesbians on your licensed premises will . . . warrant administrative sanctions against your license.”149 The centrality of homosexuality in the police reports and the city’s response to those reports prove that the city was now consciously targeting homosexuality. While queerness and sexual predation continued to be equated with one another—suggested by the city’s reference to “perverts”—the idea that homosexuals were a distinct entity that needed to be quieted was now embraced by the Portland Police Department and the City Council. During the police’s surveillance of the Music Hall, they became particularly alarmed about their perception that homosexuality was spreading. In a letter from 148 City Auditor, City Council Documents, March 9, 1950, no. 1117, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 149 Ibid. Public interpretations of the city’s response to the Music Hall also emphasized the role that homosexuality played. See “Council Takes Rap at Impersonators,” The Oregon Journal, March 17, 1950; and “Council Raps Entertainers,” The Oregonian, March 17, 1950. 99 Elizabeth Moorad, the Captain of the Women’s Protective Division, to the Chief of Police, Moorad noted that, “information was received that women were operating at the Music Hall in the attempt to pick up women and make lovers of them.” These words voiced the concern that homosexual women could influence unassuming women into becoming lesbian themselves. This anxiety echoed prevailing ideas that homosexuality could be spread to others simply through interaction. Innocent women could be corrupted by having sex with overt lesbians, creating more lesbians in the process. In another letter from a vice officer to the Assistant Police Chief, the officer stated that, “these women [at the Music Hall] were recently ousted from San Francisco for their actions and are, apparently, confirmed Lesbians.”150 Portland police and the City Council believed that queer people were coming from outside of Portland entirely. They blamed the apparent surge on crackdowns in San Francisco that they believed had pushed queerness up the West Coast to Portland. Conceiving of homosexuality as something that could be spread from one person to another, and as something that was being physically dispersed through forced migration, Portland city officials came to believe that homosexuality was expansive. In this way, local discourses linked the national discourse over Communist expansion to the local problem of expansive homosexuality. In the rhetoric of the early Cold War, homosexuality became something that could be contained through consistent and vigilant pressure to prevent its expansion. Fueled by perceptions that homosexuals were a menace to society that would expand past their normal bounds, Portland began a policy of containment that sought to restrict the public spaces available to queer Portlanders. 150 City Auditor, City Council Documents, March 9, 1950, no. 1117, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 100 Over the course of the late 1940s, Portland’s anti-homosexual campaign took shape. In their pursuit of dealing with child molestation and predation in the city, Portland police began a public surveillance campaign in which they patrolled public spaces where they thought children, and thereby sexual predators, might be. Through this strategy, police established the foundations of public surveillance, which would continue throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Although police were mainly focused on dealing with so-called “sexual psychopaths,” their conflation of homosexuality with sexual deviancy led to the arrests of many queer men. Then, during the 1950 crackdown on the Music Hall, a middle-class queer bar, the Portland Police Department and City Council’s strategy of containment crystallized. At this point, city officials became particularly worried that homosexual behavior was spreading to new people, and that queer people were migrating from San Francisco. Fueled from anxieties about the imagined homosexual menace, Portland officials came to believe that homosexuality would spread if left unchecked—much like Communism. From 1950 onwards, the city approached the problem of homosexuality through the lens of containment. Finding the Homosexual Menace Following the closing of the Music Hall in the middle of 1950, the city retreated from its offensive against queer bars. Even though the city was fully aware of other bars, the city largely bought into the belief that the bars were where queer people should be contained to. Not until 1964 would the city try again to shut down queer bars. From 1950 until 1964, however, city officials and the police continued their anti-homosexual containment strategy in other public spaces. As during the late 1940s, these efforts to contain homosexuality in the city were heavily shaped by the parallel and overlapping 101 attempts to deal with child molestation. In most ways, Portland officials and the public continued to conflate the two together. Because of this, much of the oppression of homosexuality in the city was cast in terms that made it seem as if the city was saving children. While horrible acts of sexual violence, rape, and molestation certainly occurred between adult men and underage boys, many queer Portlanders were arrested simply because they were homosexual, rather than because they had actually harmed children or minors. In line with the city’s policy of containment, the Portland Police Department came to believe that it was better to contain homosexuals and queer people to the bars, where they could keep an eye on them. During the City Council hearings amidst the 1964 bar crackdown, Commissioner Stanley Earl addressed Police Lieutenant Crawford about the city’s stance toward queer bars: “Several years ago, Lt. Crawford, one of these places was on the calendar and I was in fact going to make a motion that their license be revoked, this happened maybe 5, 6 years ago.” He continued, “the Police Department talked to me then and asked that it be allowed to stay open for this reason; that they [homosexuals] were there and they weren’t scattered and if this place were closed, they would scatter to various places, which would compound the problem.”151 From Commissioner Earl’s statement, it becomes clear that a strategy of containment had been applied to the bars since at least the mid-1950s, but had likely existed earlier. Portland police believed that it was best to permit the existence of a limited number of queer bars, because it allowed queer Portlanders to have a place to go that was away from public eyes. By allowing them to congregate in a small number of confined spaces, it also 151 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 102 allowed the police to continually surveil the spaces. Moreover, Portland police also believed that cracking down on the few public spaces that permitted queer people would inevitably just disperse their customers into new spaces that could not be readily identified by the city. As a result of this approach, the police focused their energies on public queerness outside of the bars, rather than what was happening in the bars themselves. While this consensus would crumble in 1964, it was the guiding belief throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Initially, the main site for containing homosexuality in Portland was in the cruising spaces that had developed a reputation such activities. As briefly discussed above, Portland police patrolled areas of the city that were known to have a lot of homosexuals. Arrest reports in The Oregonian indicate that the police were very active in the Southwest portion of downtown Portland, right where the working-class queer bars were located. Though the police did not arrest people from within the bars, it seems likely that they were looking for any form of public queerness for which they could charge someone with “disorderly conduct.”152 The most common space that queer men got arrested in was in Lownsdale Square. Police widely believed that parks were a hotspot for sexual predators, but the sustained campaign against cruising at Lownsdale in the 1950s does not align with this.153 While it would have made sense to patrol parks that attracted children, Lownsdale was not one of those spaces. It was located in the heart of the downtown business district, in an area of the city that had strikingly low numbers of 152 See, for examples of this, “Morals Charge Faced,” The Oregonian, April 20, 1950; “Court Time Set,” July 27, 1956; and “Vice Officers Arrest Trio,” The Oregonian, December 3, 1962. All of these cases were arrests that were made on streets outside of working-class queer bars, and involved charges of “disorderly conduct involving morals.” 153 “Man Arrested Here Admits Molesting 2 Children”; and “Two Accused of Molesting,” The Oregonian, June 16, 1950. 103 families in it. Lownsdale also did not have a playground or anything like it— it was just a greenspace, with benches, paths, and a public restroom.154 Moreover, based on newspaper records, there were no clear cases where men were arrested at Lownsdale for molestation. For these reasons, it becomes clear that the weekly patrols of Lownsdale Square were intentionally targeting homosexual men in the pursuit of containing them to the bars. Without access to records from the Vice Division, it is impossible to assess how many men were actually arrested for cruising at Lownsdale. Based on newspaper reports, however, it appears that the Portland Police began a sustained campaign against cruising in Lownsdale in 1953, which continued until 1956. Although there were prior arrests, 1953 was when the police began to patrol Lownsdale on a weekly basis during the warmer months. Primarily through undercover surveillance, police watched the park and the surrounding streets for any conduct that appeared homosexual. Police also entrapped queer Portlanders by posing as homosexuals themselves to wait for someone to proposition them in the public restrooms.155 The actual numbers were likely much higher, but newspaper reports suggest that over 50 men were arrested for consensual behavior at Lownsdale.156 The vast majority of these men were arrested on the charge of “disorderly conduct involving morals.” Under Oregon state law, any person who was found guilty of, “any violent, 154 The 1950 Census reported that only 103 children under the age of 20 lived in the same tract as Lownsdale Square. See, “1950 United States Census of Population - Census Tracts: Portland, Oreg.” 155 Some newspaper reports of the arrests use the clause, “for indecent overture,” which suggests that some police were undercover and waited until the first sexual contact to make the arrest. See, for example, “Court Orders $50 Fine,” The Oregonian, May 28, 1955; “Morals Charge Placed,” The Oregonian, February 19, 1956; and “Man Faces Charge,” The Oregonian, October 14, 1956. 156 This data was found using keyword searches in the digitized version of The Oregonian through Newsbank. Searches included ““Lownsdale” AND arrest*”, ““Lownsdale” AND “disorderly conduct””, and ““Lownsdale” AND sodomy”. 104 riotous or disorderly conduct, or any obscene, immoral, indecent, lewd or lascivious act, or who uses any profane, abusive or obscene language” could be punished with a fine of no more than $500 and/or up to six months in jail. It was this statute that the charges of “disorderly conduct involving morals” derived from.157 As suggested by the language of the law, the types of crimes that could fall under its breadth were innumerable. The addition of “involving morals” to the common charge connoted that it involved something sexual, but even then, it was a very broad charge. It covered a range of crimes, from serious claims of molestation to public nudity and same-sex touching.158 The use of the “disorderly conduct” charge to deal with homosexuality in the city was not new in the 1950s. Peter Boag has demonstrated that the charge was also used from the 1890s to the 1920s to target working-class queer men.159 Moreover, “disorderly conduct” was also applied in non-sexual situations where police wanted to make arrests, such as when officers arrested three lesbian women outside of the Harbor Club in 1962.160 Due to its lack of specificity, this statute was the main way that police sought to contain queer Portlanders during the 1950s. Without specific statutes that prohibited homosexuality, such a broad charge allowed them to make arrests on the simple premise that any form of queerness was “disorderly” and “immoral.” A new phase of the containment strategy began when Portland police began to focus their efforts on what they called “sex rings” or “sex parties.” On the night of January 19, 1956, officers from the Juvenile Division arrested six men on charges of 157 “Riotous Indecent and Obscene Conduct or Language at Public Resort,” 167.155 1957 Oregon Revised Statutes § (n.d.), https://archives.oregonlegislature.gov/ORS_Archives/1957-Chapter-167.pdf. 158 “Musician Sentenced,” The Oregonian, February 9, 1950; “Morals Charge Faced,” The Oregonian, September 15, 1952; and “Two Men Face Morals Charge,” The Oregonian, July 1, 1956. 159 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 48. 160 “Vice Officers Arrest Trio,” The Oregonian, December 3, 1962. 105 “contributing to the delinquency of minors” and “sodomy.” Police reported that they were part of a “ring of sex deviates, involving six men and eight boys.” The men were arrested following a routine traffic stop of a 16-year-old teenager in a car that was licensed to Robert Casson, one of the men involved in the “sex ring.” The police pressured the teenager to speak, and he eventually signed a statement that he had “immoral relations with [Casson] dating back about a year and a half.” The other seven teenage boys implicated in the case were between the ages of 14 and 17.161 While the degree to which the supposed sexual activities were consensual should certainly be considered, the language of the police and the newspaper reports that covered the arrests did not use typical terms like “molestation” or “fondling.” Rather, they emphasized the queer quality of the group. Using words like “homosexual activity” and “homosexual ring,” the queer qualities of the actions were rendered threatening, rather than their lack of consensuality or the potentially exploitative nature of the relationships. According to the media and the police, the teenage boys were victims of homosexuality, not victims of molestation or rape.162 Although previous so-called sex rings had been uncovered by the Portland Police before 1956, this case demonstrated to the police and the public that homosexuality was a threat behind closed doors, as well as out in the open.163 The 1956 “homosexual ring” initiated a campaign against other cases of sexual contact between adult men and teenage boys. In 1958, police arrested Robert Casson, who was also involved in the 1956 ring, and Sylvester Hodges. While the details are hard to assess, news reports of these arrests suggested that Casson and Hodges were hosting 161 “Police Juvenile Division Says Deviate Ring Broken,” The Oregonian, January 20, 1956. Ibid.; and “6th Arrested in Sex Case,” The Oregonian, January 21, 1956. 163 “Five Accused of Perversion,” The Oregonian, October 13, 1954. 162 106 house parties where teenagers and young adults were coming to drink and dance. Reports emphasized the fact that some of the teenage boys (whose ages ranged from 14 to 20) attested to the fact that they had had sexual contact with each other, and with Casson and Hodges. Hodges received a seven year prison sentence and Casson received a lifelong prison sentence for the crimes of “contributing to the delinquency of minors.”164 Five years later, in 1963, four men were arrested on similar “contribution” charges, and were also charged with “sodomy” for holding “homosexual parties” where teenagers engaged in “homosexual activities” that were photographed and filmed. Like the other sex ring cases, it is important to emphasize that coercion and a lack of consent undeniably shaped some of these “homosexual activities.” But—like the case from 1956—police and news reports did not emphasize sexual violence. Rather, they focused on queerness and “deviancy.” Moreover, the 1963 case also demonstrates how police levied charges regardless of the age disparity that actually made the sex rings problematic. Police arrested Steven Makin, an 18-year-old in conjunction with the case in November. Despite being only a year older than some of the youth who were victims of “homosexual activities,” Mankin was tried as a perpetrator, and was ultimately sentenced to three years for “sodomy.”165 While Portland police may have been guided by just principles to prevent sexual violence, the conflation of homosexuality with predation and deviancy led them to disproportionately target homosexual men. Some of the men involved in these cases were surely seeking to take advantage of younger, unexperienced queer men. But, 164 Gene Klare, “Arrests Reveal Juveniles Enmeshed in Sex, Liquor Bottles,” The Oregonian, January 26, 1958. 165 “Sex Party Films Jail 2 Men,” The Oregonian, October 24, 1963; “2 Face Morals Charge; Youth Describes Party,” The Oregonian, February 9, 1964; and “Morals Charge Nets Term,” The Oregonian, June 3, 1964. 107 this was not the focus of the police’s actions; homosexuality was. In the arrests made of adult men involved in the sex rings, Portland police issued two main charges: “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “sodomy.” Like the “disorderly conduct” charges for cruising, these charges were historically used against homosexual men in Portland since the 1890s.166 Under the definition of these charges in Oregon statutory law, they were incredibly vague and could be applied to a variety of different contexts. Statutorily, anyone who “endeavours to induce any child to perform any act or follow any course of conduct which would cause it to become a delinquent child” could be given the contribution charge. This charge covered everything from providing a minor with alcohol to molestation. Importantly, this could apply to any child under 18, whereas the age of consent for sexual acts was 16. Therefore, the “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” charges could be levied against cases involving older teenagers. The “sodomy” charge was statutorily defined as, “any person who commits sodomy or the crime against nature, or any act or practice of sexual perversity, . . . or sustains oculatory [oral] relations with the private parts of a person, or permits such relations to be sustained with his private parts.”167 The combination of the “contribution” and “sodomy” charges were used in conjunction with one another throughout the 1950s and early 1960s in the police campaign to deal with “sexual psychopaths” and child molesters. The charges brought against queer men were broad enough to deal with the wide 166 Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 49, 203-205. “Causing or Contributing to Delinquency of Child,” 167.210 Oregon Revised Statutes § (1957), https://archives.oregonlegislature.gov/ORS_Archives/1957-Chapter-167.pdf; “Sodomy; Proof Needed,” 167.040 Oregon Revised Statutes § (1957), https://archives.oregonlegislature.gov/ORS_Archives/1957Chapter-167.pdf. 167 108 variety of behaviors and crimes that the Portland police sought to suppress. As historian Stephen Robertson reminds us, however, “sodomy” is not just a codeword for gay oral and anal sex. “Sodomy” has historically been used as a legal category to deal with sexual violence that could not be dealt with by a narrow definition of “rape” (which only covered girls and women who were vaginally penetrated).168 Therefore, it is important to emphasize that these charges were also used in cases that were, in fact, non-consensual and predatory. While being a very serious set of anti-sexual violence charges, the combination of the “contribution to delinquency” and “sodomy” charges significantly impacted the lives of queer Portlanders, including those who did nothing “wrong” other than being queer. In line with this, historian of sexuality, Estelle Freedman, has argued that the laws used to deal with “sexual psychopaths” in the 1950s were intentionally broad, as they allowed law enforcement to target “a kind of personality, or identity,” like homosexuality, rather than specific criminal acts.”169 The flexibility of laws that targeted improper sexual behavior allowed police to target queer Portlanders under the guise of stopping sex crimes. While some real sex crimes seem to have been stopped in this process, the laws were so broad that many were also arrested for seemingly consensual and non-coercive sexual contact. The containment of homosexuality through the deployment of ideas about child molestation and “sexual psychopathy” prevailed from 1950 until about 1964. Initially, law enforcement targeted public spaces like parks and movie theaters that had developed 168 Stephen Robertson, “Shifting the Scene of the Crime: Sodomy and the American History of Sexual Violence,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 2 (2010): 223–42. 169 Estelle B Freedman, “‘Uncontrolled Desires’: The Responses to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960,” in Passion & Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 209. 109 reputations as cruising grounds. In these efforts, mainly between 1950 and 1956, the police arrested countless men for soliciting sexual contact in public. Then, beginning in 1956, the police slowed their patrols of public spaces and began to target “sex rings” that operated behind closed doors. While many of their investigations produced evidence that non-consensual sex acts were taking place, law enforcement and media coverage of these so-called “sex rings” emphasized their homosexual characteristics, rather than valid concerns of sexual violence. Police then levied charges like “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “sodomy” on arrested queer men, which were the same set of charges used to combat child molestation. Regardless of the specific circumstances of the cases, Portland police continued to put pressure on visible, public, and threatening queer Portlanders throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Containing the Bars: The 1964 Bar Crackdown In 1964, the Portland City Council in conjunction with law enforcement pushed to close down existing queer bars by denying them liquor licenses. Recognizing, rather accurately, that the number of night spaces that catered to queer customers had expanded in the late 1950s and 1960s, Portland’s city hall sought to shutter the bars. Although the City Council denied its recommendation for liquor license renewal to 7 out of 8 of the bars that it had identified, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) had the final say and decided to grant licenses anyway, thereby saving most of Portland’s queer bars. It was in the midst of the surveillance, hearings, and reporting on these bars that the clearest version an anti-homosexual containment ideology was articulated. However, at the same time, the perception that queerness was “expanding” suggested to Portland officials that containment had failed, thereby ultimately ending this containment policy. 110 On June 29, 1964, Doug Baker, a local radio personality, wrote about queer Portlanders in his weekly column called “Baker’s Dozen.” He called them “The Unmentionable People,” and spoke in ominous language of their threatening expansion and unbridled growth. His article began, “The Unmentionable People are virtually untouchable people and they are growing stronger each week, both in numbers and in the brazenness with which they flaunt their abnormality.” Baker continued, “When I first began work as a newspaperman in Portland— a little more than 10 years ago— there were only three known rendezvous where the Unmentionables gathered. Today, there are eight or 10 taverns and saloons in this city which cater almost exclusively to this crowd.”170 Evoking language of spatial expansion, Baker tapped into Cold War anxieties about containing communism. No longer contained to the handful of bars that were open in the mid-1950s, queer Portlanders had now pushed past their territorial boundaries to spread into the rest of Portland. As a result of this failure to contain queerness, Baker publicly urged Mayor Terry Schrunk to take “a new look at this old problem.”171 The anxieties that Baker professed, and their infusion with rhetoric of growth, expansion, and aggression were echoed throughout the city’s official response to queer bars. This perception that queerness was expanding, both spatially and in population, caused Portland police to start giving unfavorable recommendations on gay bars to the City Council, thereby ending their support of a policy that contained queer people to the bars. Portland police and the City Council also bought into the idea that homosexuals were “spreading” in the city. In the City Council hearings over the recommendation of 170 171 Doug Baker, “Baker’s Dozen,” The Oregon Journal, June 29, 1964. Ibid. 111 liquor licenses, city commissioners cited the same statistics that Baker had five months earlier. In the hearing over Derek’s Tavern, Commissioner Mark Grayson stated, “A few years ago we had three spots; now we have nine.” He continued, “our problem right here is that we were operating with one place or two, now we have nine. How many are we going to have before we get through?”172 Grayson’s concerns about the number of queer bars were echoed by Commissioner Stanley Earl during the hearing for the Milwaukee Tavern, during which he exclaimed, “We just have too many of them.”173 The city commissioners’ consternation at the numerical increase of queer bars in Portland suggests that what was most concerning for the city was the fact that the number of queer Portlanders were seemingly expanding, not that they existed at all. Another concern connected to the expansion of queer spaces was that the police did not believe that they had enough officers to patrol the working-class bar area to their satisfaction. Police Sergeant Waddell recounted during the hearing for Mama Berniece’s that there was “a heavy work load in the policing the entire area.” He continued, “We just don’t have the opportunity and time. As I have said before, there were only one or two [bars] in Portland before, and now we have 8 or 10.”174 In the face of a lack of funding and manpower to constantly surveil the expanding number of queer bars, Portland police seem to have been fearful that they would be unable to continue to contain queerness and homosexuality to the private sphere. As an attempt to reassert control over Portland’s growing queer subcultures, they encouraged the City Council to attempt to close down the bars. 172 Ibid. City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4629, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 174 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4631, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 173 112 Another anxiety that shaped the City Council’s hostility toward the downtown queer bars in 1964 was the perception that gay men and lesbian women were migrating to Portland from San Francisco. As discussed briefly above, this was not a new concern— Mayor Dorothy Lee had expressed this when the City Council was targeting the Music Hall in 1950.175 During the 1964 crackdown, however, this anxiety only intensified. In the police report on Derek’s Tavern, the writer reported that, “Rumors stemming from this outlet are that due to the laxness on the part of the authorities in this area, there has been a movement from persons of questionable moral habits to come to this area from other locales, out of state.”176 For whatever reason, the Portland Police Department became convinced that the expansion of queer subcultures in Portland was due to migration from outside of Oregon. Further research would need to be done to assess to what degree queer Californians were moving to Portland during the early 1960s, but regardless of its validity, the police and City Council bought this “rumor.” In the hearing for the Milwaukee Tavern, Sergeant Waddell claimed, “I know that Chief Cahill of San Francisco has made it a little bit warm for them there. I know that our officers have run across more of this type, . . . it’s a medical problem. But Portland is becoming a small San Francisco in that respect.”177 Sergeant Waddell was correct in his assessment of San Francisco Chief of Police Tom Cahill. Cahill was appointed Chief in 1959, and quickly developed a reputation for employing “‘Gestapo’ methods” in regard to queer spaces and 175 “Council Takes Rap at Impersonators.” City Auditor, City Council Documents, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 177 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 3, 1964, no. 4629, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 176 113 persons. The success of Cahill’s crackdown on gay bars was not as universal as Sergeant Waddell made it out to be, however. As historian Nan Alamilla Boyd has argued, the crackdown on queer subcultures under Cahill’s control of the San Francisco Police Department was met with a great deal of resistance and resilience from queer bars and their patrons. In turn, this resistance created a great deal of political organizing and momentum that allowed queer San Franciscans to push back against harassment, police raids, and forced closures.178 Despite Sergeant Waddell’s inaccurate assessment of the situation in San Francisco during the early 1960s, the belief that homosexuals, lesbians, and queers were seeking refuge in Portland was very real to the Portland Police and City Council. Such an influx of people threatened the entire project of containing homosexuality in the city. Guided by their beliefs that queerness had rapidly expanded, both in territory and in population, Portland city officials became convinced that containment had failed. When asked about the past containment policy, Lieutenant Crawford stated that it had been the policy, but that “the swing” was now swinging “the other way.” It was now the policy of the police department that, “you can’t give a little bit, you got to go all the way, either enforce or not.”179 It was for this reason that Lieutenant Crawford and Sergeant Waddell, as the representatives of the police department at the hearings, repeatedly rejected leniency proposed by city commissioners and the lawyers for the queer bars. They no longer believed that the bars could be contained. Weak enforcement had not acted to contain the bars, in their eyes, rather it had allowed queer Portlanders to become 178 Boyd, Wide-Open Town, 204-231. City Auditor, City Council Documents, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 179 114 more public and “brazen” in their behavior. Believing that the police had the best grasp of what to do with sexual immorality, the City Council deferred much of its authority to the opinions of Lieutenant Crawford and Sergeant Waddell. With this decision, the City Council and the Portland Police ultimately abandoned the policy of containment for a heavy-handed attempt to roll back the expansion of queer life. By December 11, 1964, the Portland City Council had voted to give an unfavorable recommendation for seven of the eight queer bars that it investigated. Only one, the Old Glory Tavern, was recommended to the OLCC for a license renewal. The Old Glory Tavern was given a favorable recommendation because the City Council believed that the owners were committed to rooting out immoral conduct in the bar, but it is unclear why they were convinced of this. Historically, the City Council’s recommendations carried a lot of weight for the granting of liquor licenses in Portland— the OLCC’s permitting process was mainly just a rubber stamp. With the City Council’s attempt to crackdown on queer bars, however, the OLCC pushed back. On December 17, 1964, the OLCC chose to renew the licenses of six queer bars, excluding the Transfusion Inn. It is unclear why this decision was made, but news reports suggest that it may have been due to legal arguments made by the bars’ lawyers about the constitutionality of denying licenses solely based on having homosexual customers.180 During the hearing over Derek’s Tavern, the lawyer for the bar, James Damis, argued that there were possible legal ramifications stemming from “the constitutional rights of both the 180 “2 ‘Hangouts’ Lose Permits,” The Oregonian, November 28, 1964; “Council Mulls Treatment of Bars Where Unsavory Characters Gather,” The Oregonian, December 4, 1964; “Council Vetoes Liquor Petitions,” The Oregonian, December 11, 1964; “OLCC Overrides City, Issues Licenses to 6 Portland Taverns,” The Oregonian, December 18, 1964; “Council Vetoes Liquor Permit,” The Oregonian, December 25, 1964; “Mayor Appeals Renewal of 7 Tavern Licenses,” The Oregonian, January 12, 1965. 115 homosexuals and the tavern owner, the privilege of immunity from prosecution, the right of peaceable assembly.” In regards to these rights, Damis asserted, “The court had this to say: The fact, if it be a fact, that an area is frequented by certain individuals does not justify the denial of a privilege to conduct a lawful and harmless business in the area.”181 By all indications, the OLCC bought Damis’ argument, and decided to grant the liquor licenses to avoid a legal challenge. Any momentum that the City Council and police had in trying to move away from their containment strategy toward a more aggressive policy was completely neutralized by the OLCC’s intervention. After this debacle, the city pulled back from any attempt to have a unified policy against queerness in the city. While their decisions to move away from enforcement was most dominantly shaped by shifting societal norms in the mid and late 1960s, their inability to even shutdown bars on their own terms quieted the city’s anti-homosexual stance. The 1964 crackdown interestingly served as the end to the city’s containment policy, while also being the moment when that policy was most apparent. Anxieties about the supposed growth and spread of homosexuality in the city, both from queer people themselves and from migrancy from San Francisco, prompted the Portland Police Department and the City Council to react by trying to shut down all of the downtown queer bars. Whereas the containment strategy of the 1950s was predicated on the idea that the city could contain homosexuality to the bars, the apparent growth in public homosexuality and queerness led the city to conclude that their strategy had failed. Therefore, the 1964 crackdown functioned as a heavy-handed way to try to suppress queer culture in the city. But, ultimately, the city failed to do this and the queer bars 181 City Auditor, City Council Minutes, November 27, 1964, no. 4543, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 116 remained open. Following 1964, the city’s anti-homosexual efforts were largely quieted, at least regarding the use of police enforcement. Conclusion While Portland did not have the type of police enforcement that characterized places like New York and San Francisco, it did in fact have a recognizable and coordinated anti-homosexual policing strategy. Portland’s approach to the problem of homosexuality was heavily shaped by two distinct discourses: the homosexual predator, and containment. Both discourses arose as a part of the greater Cold War and the societal changes that accompanied it. In Portland, containment ideology combined readily with anxieties about the imagined connections between homosexuality and child molestation to create a policy of containing homosexuality to bars and private spaces. This policy looked distinctly different from the more heavy handed strategies in other cities; it did not require large raids of bars or clubs, but rather relied on consistent surveillance and individual arrests to try to keep Portland’s queer subcultures hidden away. Portland’s containment strategy lasted from roughly 1950 to 1964, and it fluctuated and changed substantially throughout those years. During the early 1950s, police enforcement concentrated its efforts on patrolling, surveilling, and arresting men in cruising spaces like Lownsdale Square. Then, in about 1956, the police became much more invested in rooting out “sex rings” involving adult men and teenage boys. Although these efforts were conducted under the guise of dealing with child predation, police and news reporters emphasized the homosexual characteristic of the “sex rings.” Regardless of important circumstances like consent, age disparity, or discrete evidence, police arrested queer men on the grounds that they were threatening male teenagers and young 117 adults. While sexual violence and coercion likely occurred in some of these cases, these genuine concerns were not the focus for police—their homosexual nature was. In the 1950s, police also tolerated the existence of a handful of queer bars, as they believed that it allowed them to contain queer subcultures to known and surveillable spaces. In 1964, believing that this containment had failed, and that queerness was expanding and spreading, the Portland Police Department pushed to close down all queer bars. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission rejected the city’s attempts to revoke the liquor licenses of gay bars, however, thereby preventing the police from executing such a heavy-handed strategy. With the attempt to shut down the bars, the policy of containment came to an end and police enforcement significantly dropped off. While there may be a tendency from other historians and those who lived through it to suggest that Portland did not have strong anti-homosexual police enforcement, this is demonstrably incorrect. Police did target queerness in the city, and they had a systematic way of dealing with it. Portland’s police enforcement was distinctly different from other cities that historians have studied, however. It did not have bar raids, but it did have containment. This case study of Portland suggests that looking at queer history beyond large American cities shows that there are a wide variety of ways that discourse and antihomosexual police enforcement developed alongside one another. It also demonstrates that bar raids and sweeping arrest efforts were not the only ways that urban police departments dealt with the “problem” of homosexuality. The response to homosexuality and queerness in mid-century cities was conditioned by local and national discourses, urban geography, and localized events. 118 Chapter Four “Perhaps Tomorrow”: Finding Homophile Politics in Portland In a 1963 letter written to the staff of The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian magazine, a Portland woman named Margery wrote, “I have subscribed to the Ladder since August and loved every issue; it has been like a lighted candle in the dark forest here in Oregon where no one, nothing, no publication or organization of any kind exists to help the homophile.”182 The Ladder was published by the Daughters of Bilitis, one of the first political organizations that became part of what was known as the “homophile movement.” The homophile movement, as historians have described it, developed in the early 1950s to push for the rights of “homophiles,” the term that members of this movement used for gay men and lesbian women. The homophile movement began with the founding of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1950. In the ensuing decade, several other organizations including ONE Inc. and the Daughters of Bilitis formed, thereby expanding the breadth of homophile organizing. By the early 1960s, the homophile movement had made spaces for itself in cities across the United States. Some Americans formed their own homophile groups, like the Dorian Society in Seattle. Others began local chapters of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis in their own cities, such as the Denver Mattachine Society. Surprisingly or not, Portland was not one of these cities, and queer Portlanders never successfully formed a lasting homophile organization. This does not mean, however, that homophile thought 182 Letter from Margery to Daughters of Bilitis, December 11, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “J-M, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBM77, 68. 119 and activism was absent in the city.183 As suggested by Margery’s letter to the editors of The Ladder, Portland did not have a publicly-facing homophile organization during the 1950s and 1960s. Community historians have tended to see the Portland Gay Liberation Front, which will be discussed much more thoroughly in Chapter Six, as the first gay rights organization in the city.184 Historian Peter Boag has also found that Portland did not have a homophile organization. He holds that the Gay Liberation Front was the first gay political group in Portland, and that it was slow to takeoff due to the absence of homophile activism before 1970. Boag posits that the lack of an organized group in Portland was due to the relatively low severity of police enforcement. In his words: Gays and lesbians in the Rose City benefited by having their bars tolerated, and the police believed they benefited by being able to keep a watchful eye on homosexuals. The situation was different in San Francisco and Seattle, where the frequent attacks on bars and their homosexual patrons in the 1950s and 1960s led, in some measure, to gay and lesbian political consciousness and resistance and encouraged membership in homophile organizations.185 While Boag’s argument is a valuable starting point, recently digitized and searchable collections from the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis have revealed a more complicated picture of homophile activism in Portland. These newly accessible collections allow us to perform a more fine-grained analysis of homophile activism in the city than Boag was able to do with the collections that were available fifteen years ago. While Portland never had a homophile organization, letters from queer Portlanders to the leaders of homophile organizations, as well as internal documents from 183 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 57-107; Meeker, Contacts Desired, 31-108; Boag, “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,” 20-26. 184 George T. Nicola, “How the Oregon LGBT Movement Was Born,” Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, July 30, 2013, https://www.glapn.org/6130nicolagaymovement.html. 185 Boag, “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,” 36. 120 said homophile organizations, demonstrate that there were many in Portland who were engaged with the movement in one way or another. These documents reveal that queer Portlanders read homophile magazines and books, contributed to the magazines, and engaged with one another over homophile thought.186 Through the exchange of letters, they also established regular correspondence, coordination, and personal relationships with national leaders of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society. Moreover, to say that Portland did not have a homophile organization does not mean that there were not efforts to establish one; several gay and lesbian Portlanders sought to either create their own homophile organization or to bring a chapter of the national organizations to the city. Without extensive support from the leading figures of the homophile movement, however, a lasting chapter of the movement never took off in the city. Portland, as a midsized city without a clear history of organizing during the 1950s and 1960s, functions as an important site for investigating how homophile activism took place in smaller cities that did not have the same political momentum that other cities had. In this way, queer Portlanders participated in what historian Martin Meeker has called the homophile “communication network,” even though they never had an organization of their own. Origins of the Homophile Movement In November 1950, Henry Hay and a group of other homosexual men in Los Angeles began to meet regularly to discuss homosexual rights and the politics that could lead to securing rights. Over the next several months, these meetings eventually led to the 186 Academic publisher Gale has led the effort to digitize collections from American and international archives that relate to the history of LGBTQ activism. Gale has published these collections in its digital Archives of Sexuality and Gender program. The documents in these collections have been scanned with Optical Character Recognition software (OCR), and are therefore searchable. While Gale has not been able to digitize all collections from the homophile organizations, the collections that have been digitized reveal a lot of interesting insights into queer life and activism in Portland. 121 creation of the Mattachine Foundation. The Mattachine Foundation was initially structured like the American Communist Party, of which Hay was a member. Its founders imagined a hierarchical system of “cells” and “orders” that would preserve secrecy and personal privacy in the face of a society that would act with hostility toward any queer person who was trying to advocate for political action. Although it was formally open to anyone, members were predominately gay men with only a few lesbian women. While the organization continued to grow from 1951 to 1953, its political strength was substantially limited due to its rigid commitment to secrecy. Because of this, new leaders emerged in the spring of 1953 who pushed for increased visibility and openness as the way to counter homophobia in American society. During this transition, the Mattachine Foundation was fundamentally restructured and was renamed the Mattachine Society.187 Despite its initial instability and quieted approach, the Mattachine Foundation (and then the Society) were the first organizations to constitute what became known as the homophile movement. Several years after the establishment of the Mattachine Society, a group of lesbian women in San Francisco founded the Daughters of Bilitis. Motivated by their desire to socialize with queer women outside of bars, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon began to seek out other women to come to a weekly social club. With only eight members at its founding, the Daughters of Bilitis became an official organization in September 1955. Although it initially began simply as a social group, their weekly meetings regularly focused on politics and the societal problems faced by lesbians. By the end of 1955, Martin and Lyon, who continued to act as the leaders of the organization, began to push 187 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 58-91; Meeker, Contacts Desired, 37-39. 122 for the Daughters of Bilitis to become a political organization, much like the Mattachine Society. In 1956, the Daughters joined with Mattachine and ONE, Inc (a splinter group that focused on research and writing on homophile issues) to host a public forum on the problems faced by homosexual Americans. While the Daughters of Bilitis never lost sight of its central focus on lesbian issues, throughout the 1950s and early 1960s they steadily cooperated with the Mattachine Society and ONE, Inc to create a unified homophile movement.188 The homophile movement was notably more conservative than later movements like women’s liberation and gay liberation in the early 1970s. Initially, with its structural foundations in the American Communist Party, the Mattachine Foundation was more radical in its outlook. Once new leadership took over in 1953, however, what then became the Mattachine Society re-oriented its approach toward “respectability” politics. Under this political strategy, the Mattachine Society—and eventually the Daughters of Bilitis—argued that homosexuals were “no different from anyone else.” They held that the best approach to improving the lives of queer Americans was to become more public and visible, all while ascribing to the normative expectations of society. Homophile activists could be open that they were gay or lesbian, but they were not supposed to come across as promiscuous, excessively feminine or masculine, or otherwise subversive in any other regard. Rather than relying on the lived experience of queer Americans, the homophile movement tended to rest their arguments in the opinions of medical and social experts, an extension of their conformist approach. Due to this elite-leaning strategy, the homophile movement tended to appeal to middle-class gay men and lesbian women, 188 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 101-107; Marcia M. Gallo, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006), 1-17. 123 rather than the working class queers.189 Although they were assimilationist in their approach, it must also be acknowledged that the homophile movements were ultimately radical in some regards. They were the first organizations to push for public visibility of queer Americans, and they truly did desire to end homophobia and the oppressions that queer Americans faced. Their emphasis on “respectability,” though limited in many ways, helped them lay down the foundations of organizing and queer political action that would emerge in full force after the Stonewall Riots in 1969.190 The most visible and public way that the homophile movement interacted with queer Americans across the United States was through newsletters and magazines produced by the organizations. Believing that one of the most important tasks for the homophile movement was to educate gay men and lesbian women about the problems they faced, the Mattachine Society began to publish a magazine known as The Mattachine Review in 1955. One year later, the Daughters of Bilitis began their own magazine, called The Ladder. These magazines were distributed both through mail-in subscriptions and through sales at newsstands and stores across the country. Although there was pressure from readers to cover topics like bars, cruising, and sex, the editors of The Mattachine Review and The Ladder consistently maintained a political vision for their work. The magazines mainly focused on the history, politics, and social dynamics behind the oppression of homosexuality. Of primary concern was to challenge prevailing public discourses that imagined homosexuality as both a psychological illness and as a threat to national security. They also offered visions for the future, and provided hope for 189 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 75-91. Martin Meeker, “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 1 (2001): 78–116. 190 124 those who sought to come out of the shadows.191 It was these magazines and the content that they made available to readers that proved to be so important to queer Portlanders in their navigation of their own identities and the oppressions they faced. Additionally, for a queer population that was intentionally being contained to the bars, their contacts with homophile activists functioned as an additional space that was largely beyond the scope of the local police department. Although the homophile organizations staged protests and pickets, much like later social movements would do during the late 1960s, the momentum in the homophile movement was in the connections that were fostered between queer Americans, across the boundaries of cities and urban environments. Martin Meeker, a historian of the homophile movement, argues that the power behind the organizations was in what he deems “sexual communication networks.” These “communication networks” were circular systems of communication that involved the exchange and diffusion of information, emotion, and ideas across space. In the case of the homophile movement, the letters, magazines, and books that circulated from the organizations to queer Americans across the nation and back again constituted the homophile “communication network.”192 While Portland did not have a lasting local homophile organization throughout the 1950s or 1960s, queer Portlanders were active participants in this “communication network.” Although Meeker’s analysis focuses on San Francisco, as the epicenter of the network, the case- study of Portland allows us to examine the peripheries of the homophile movement through the lens of “communication networks” and how the 191 Meeker, Contacts Desired, 39-59; D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 103-105; Gallo, Different Daughters, 2138; Jody Valentine, “Lesbians Are from Lesbos: Sappho and Identity Construction in The Ladder,” Helios 35, no. 2 (2008): 143–69, https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.0.0008. 192 Meeker, Contacts Desired, 1-5, 13-16. 125 “network” influenced queer life beyond the organizations. Homophile Magazines, Letters, and the Entryway to Politics For queer Portlanders, who did not have a local homophile organization, the main entry into political action was through homophile magazines like The Ladder and The Mattachine Review. It is difficult to ascertain when these magazines first gained a readership in Portland. When The Mattachine Review was first published in 1955, it was only distributed around the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area. Over the course of the rest of the 1950s, the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society slowly increased their publication numbers by reaching out to newsstands across the country. Although the first purchase of a homophile magazine in Portland cannot be identified, by 1959 the magazines appear to have had a wide readership in the city.193These magazines introduced queer Portlanders to the homophile movement, exposing them to the “communication network” that centered around homophile activism. Here, it must be emphasized that most queer Portlanders did not engage with the homophile magazines or the homophile movement. It required a certain level of connectivity or confidence to come upon and read the magazines, and even more so to subscribe or write to the editors. Additionally, by most indications, the readership for the magazines tended to be of a middle-class background. As briefly discussed above, the homophile organizations themselves were more conservative in their approach to politics, which would have appealed to a particular segment of the middle-class queer population. In a letter describing her attempts to sell issues of The Ladder in Portland lesbian bars, a 193 Ibid., 44-47; and see Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, May 5, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, 1951-1976, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 52-53. 126 woman named Barbara wrote that the manager at the Cartwheel Tavern, a working-class space, told her that “the girls just arn’t [sic] into it.”194 In the same letter, Barbara noted how Jay Scott, the notorious and charismatic bartender at the Model Inn (which was a working-class space) was able to sell all 15 of her monthly copies and was encouraging her customers to engage with the homophile movement. At the Milwaukee Tavern, which catered to a more middle-class crowd, however, more copies were sold than elsewhere.195 This does not mean that working-class Portlanders simply did not read The Ladder or The Mattachine Review, but rather that they were less likely to place as much value in the homophile movement, or at least in reading the literature, as their middle-class counterparts were. It is unclear to what degree literacy played a role in determining who read the magazines and wrote to the homophile leaders, but it surely shaped what working-class men and women picked up a copy of The Mattachine Review or The Ladder. Although engagement with homophile literature was more widespread in Portland than has previously been acknowledged, this does not indicate that most queer Portlanders even knew what the Mattachine Society or the Daughters of Bilitis were. The homophile magazines were distributed through a variety of means in Portland. As briefly discussed in Chapter Two, the most direct way to purchase copies of The Ladder and The Mattachine Review was in smoke shops that sold copies behind the 194 For the purposes of this thesis, I have decided to only use the first names of those queer Portlanders who appeared in the records of the homophile organizations. This decision was made for two reasons. First, the Gale Archives of Sexuality and Gender have decided to redact the last names and addresses of those who show up in the archival collections. Therefore, it often proved impossible to determine the last names of those who wrote the letters. Second, queer Portlanders’ letters and documents were produced under the assumption that they were communicating in confidentiality with the leaders of the homophile organization. Many of these queer Portlanders were also married and/or had families, and research into their lives has often suggested that many of them may have never lived “openly” as gay or lesbian. Out of respect for their own privacy and their family’s privacy, I will only be using their first names. 195 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, October 18, 1963. 127 counter. While there appear to have been several of these stores in downtown Portland, Rich’s Cigar Shop has the most documented evidence. What financial records were preserved, and how many of them were digitized, limits our ability to assess when these magazines were first sold. However, archival collections of the account records for The Ladder reveal that Rich’s Cigar Shop received ten copies of every issue, and that the store sold most of the copies. Moreover, an October 1964 report by the Daughters of Bilitis showed that Portland newsstands received slightly under 50 copies of each monthly issue by that time, and that four additional copies were sent to individual subscribers. The number of each issue of The Ladder that Portland received was higher than in some larger cities, like Seattle, Washington DC, or Boston.196 In Portland, copies were also sold at bars. As mentioned above, Barbara coordinated the purchase and sale of copies of The Ladder in downtown lesbian bars. While Barbara was not always successful, her efforts seem to have helped increase readership in Portland.197 Queer Portlanders also received copies of the homophile magazines by writing in to subscribe and have monthly issues directly delivered to their homes. Home deliveries had their own problems related to anonymity, however, so some Portlanders asked for issues to be delivered to post office boxes or to be wrapped in discreet packaging. It appears that most Portlanders initially bought a copy at a smoke shop or received one from someone else before subscribing themselves. Thus, the other major way that Portlanders came to read 196 Rich Cigar Store Monthly Total, 1962 and 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “Accounts The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National, August 31, 1936-May 27, 1969 and undated,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBrU8, 119-121; and Geographical Break-down of Mailing List, October 1964, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “Research Projects Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBbn7, 140-145. 197 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, October 18, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 2. 128 copies of the homophile magazines was from the passage of individual copies within a network of friends. Issues were not just read by one person; they were often passed from person to person. After reading copies this way, many were inspired to subscribe, as they saw it as a way of supporting the homophile movement’s cause.198 Letters from Portland gay men and lesbian women to the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis indicate that the magazines functioned as the entry point into homophile thought. Queer Portlander’s first point of contact, and their entry into the communication network, was often through letters written to express admiration for the work that was being done. In a 1961 letter to the Daughters of Bilitis, a Portland lesbian woman named Clara wrote, “I thought I would write an tell you how much I have enjoyed The Ladder, I think you all deserve to be congratulated for the wonderful work that goes into The Ladder.”199 A couple years later in a 1963 letter, a Portland woman named Margery wrote, “Did you have any idea when you started publishing the Ladder how very far its bright messages of hope might reach some day? The very real good—not just words—your small magazine is capable of doing? Its possibilities are staggering!”200As indicated by Clara and Margery’s letters to the staff of The Ladder, queer Portlanders who engaged with homophile magazines tended to view the magazines first as magazines, rather than as extensions of homophile organizations and activism. 198 Letter from Barbara to Cleo, January 17, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 14-15; and Letter from Sally to Del Martin, January 8, 1960, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “With Authors, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBWR9, 7-8. 199 Letter from Clara to Del Martin, February 8, 1961, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLn9, 66. 200 Letter from Margery to The Ladder, December 11, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “J-M, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBM77, 68. 129 They first wrote to profess excitement at the material and admiration for the affirmation of same-sex desires and attractions contained in the magazines. In this way, these queer Portlanders entered the national homophile communication network before they even recognized the political momentum behind said network. It was only after engaging with the articles and thought within the homophile magazines that queer Portlanders came to acknowledge a broader, national movement. After reading the magazines for some time, however, Portlanders came to realize that there was organizational strength behind the articles they were reading. In 1959, Vera, the owner of the private club Guys and Dolls, wrote a letter to Albert de Dion of the Mattachine Society. She had previously read both The Ladder and The Mattachine Review, and was well acquainted with the homophile organizations. In her letter to de Dion, she wrote about her desire to join the organizations: “Why I am writing is how I can become a member of the Daughter[s] of Bilitis. . . . Also how I can be a member of the Mattachine Society. Can you please send me . . . what I am looking for or forward this on to the Daughters of Bilitis society.”201 Upon discovering that there were organizations outside of Portland that sought to improve the lives of homosexuals, some queer Portlanders actively tried to participate in those efforts. Like Vera, many others wrote in to The Ladder and the Daughters of Bilitis to request information about joining the organization. In a 1964 letter, a woman named Trish requested an “application form” for membership in the Daughters of Bilitis.202 Some, however, believed that the organizations were more exclusive than they actually were. For example, Barbara had 201 Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, May 5, 1959. Letter from Trish to Daughters of Bilitis, n.d., 1964, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “Correspondence - A-D, Membership Files Daughters of Bilitis San Francisco Chapter, June 26, 1963-October 19, 1964 and undated,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBWe0, 12. 202 130 been writing to the editors of The Ladder for over a year before realizing that she could be accepted by the organization. In a May 1963 letter, Barbara wrote to the editors of The Ladder and stated, “I have decided to join D.O.B. [Daughters of Bilitis] and have written to San Francisco to enquire into it. I didn’t know married women could join.”203 With their introduction to homophile activism arising from the magazines, it took queer Portlanders some time to come to the realization that they themselves could be politically active. Reading the homophile magazines was also a transformative and emotional experience for many queer Portlanders. They exposed readers—often for the first time— to the notion that their sexuality was something to be proud and open about. In the letters that some lesbians in Portland wrote to the editors of The Ladder, they often expressed gratitude for the very existence of the magazines. A Portland woman named Sally wrote to the editors of The Ladder in 1960, proclaiming, “For the past eight months or so, I have enjoyed the privilege of reading a friend’s copies of The Ladder, both current and back issues. Every time I visit a friend of mine . . . , I always look forward to reading her copy.” In concluding her letter, Sally wrote, “I wish you a lot of success in the future publications of The Ladder, and am looking forward to the time when each issue can be larger.” Even if they only read the occasional issue, or only borrowed copies from their friends, queer Portlanders came to see the communication networks that surrounded the homophile magazines as an important part of their lives. These networks allowed queer Portlanders to openly share their sexuality and experiences with others like them without the anxiety that may have come with going to the bars, and without the fear that they 203 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, May 27, 1963. 131 would be arrested by Portland police. The additional connections facilitated by the homophile communication networks also opened avenues for desperate queer Portlanders to seek out support when they knew no one else to turn to. In her first letter to the Daughters of Bilitis in 1961, Barbara opened: I have hesitated to write to any one and bother them with my problems, but have been so very incouraged [sic] by reading your magazine the last year or so. And quite often I have read articles about the lesbians own fear causing most of her problems. Well, my fear is costing my children the very essentials for a healthy and happy life, because I am being blackmailed by their father into depriving them and myself of necessary medical attention.204 Later on in her letter, Barbara asked the Daughters of Bilitis if they knew any lawyers or lesbian connections in the Portland area. While additional letters did not add any additional information on the problem that Barbara was referring to, it seems to have been related to her marriage, but it is unclear if it is related to her same-sex desires. There is a possibility that she wanted to talk to a psychiatrist or to seek another form of “medical attention” about her sexual inclinations. Two years later, when Barbara wrote most of her letters, she was still married.205 Barbara’s plea for assistance from the Daughters of Bilitis demonstrates that some queer Portlanders viewed the leaders of the homophile movement as critical lifelines in their lives. There was a perception that their sexual identities, and the difficulties that arose from that, gave rise to an inherent connection that transcended distance and a lack of face-to-face interaction. For Barbara, 204 Letter from Barbara to Del Martin, March 29, 1961, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLn9, 70. 205 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, May 27, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 6. 132 and likely many others, the homophile communication network functioned as the foundations of a community support system. The most direct way that politically motivated queer Portlanders sought to support the homophile movement was by contributing to the magazines. One of the ways that they did this was by sending information, newspaper clippings, and opinions about local issues to the editors of the magazines. One event that created a lot of discussion between Portland lesbian women and the leaders of the Daughters of Bilitis was the imprisonment and death sentence of Jeannace Freeman. In 1961, Freeman was found guilty of the murder of two children, whose bodies she dumped in the Crooked River Gorge in central Oregon. Prosecutors in Freeman’s case argued that the murders were motivated by a “homosexual relationship” between Freeman and the children’s’ mother, Gertrude Nunez Jackson. During the trial, District Attorney Warren H. Albright held that, “Mrs. Jackson and Freeman entered into a lesbian and homosexual arrangement. . . . Miss Freeman put up to Mrs. Jackson the idea of doing away with the children.” In this way, the prosecutorial team applied to discourse of the homosexual menace to Freeman, tying her sexuality to the atrocious acts she committed. Unlike the anxieties of child predation that were discussed in the previous chapter, the concerns around Freeman were less about sexual acts with minors, and were more about the corporeal violence she committed. On September 15, Freeman was convicted of first-degree murder without leniency, which automatically resulted in the death penalty. With the jury’s decision, Freeman became the first woman in the state of Oregon to be sentenced to death. Freeman’s case inspired a great deal of debate in the state over the death sentence, eventually leading to the 133 suspension of the death penalty in 1964.206 While queer Portlanders did not sympathize with Freeman, and universally denounced her crimes, they also came to believe that the reason she was given the death sentence was due to her sexuality. Between Freeman’s sentencing and the end of the death penalty, Portland readers of the homophile magazines sent newspaper clippings to the editors of The Ladder to keep them abreast of what was going on in Oregon. In 1963, both Barbara and another woman named Roberta independently worked to conduct research Freeman’s case for The Ladder. Barbara contacted Ann Sullivan, the head reporter for the case at The Oregonian, to try to gather more information. And, Roberta combed through microfilm reels of the original reports from 1961 to provide information to The Ladder. Their efforts resulted in two articles that were published in the August 1963 issue of The Ladder, presumably written by both of them, though the articles were signed with pseudonyms.207 Their articles decried the emphasis that Freeman’s trial and the ensuing public discussions placed on her homosexuality. “Mrs. B” (most likely Barbara) argued that Freeman’s crimes were the result of societal homophobia. “Countless numbers of Lesbians have ended as prisoners, drunks, or suicides,” Mrs. B began, “How, then, can the thinking homosexual also lightly write off one of his own number, even though she is a perfect example of this sub-group?” The second article, likely written by Roberta, criticized the death penalty and urged The Ladder’s readers to 206 Ann Sullivan, “Prosecutor Outlines Alleged Motive in Madras Death Trial,” The Oregonian, September 8, 1961; Ann Sullivan, “Freeman Gets Death Verdict,” The Oregonian, September 16, 1961; and Lauren Jae Gutterman, “Saving Jeannace June Freeman: Capital Punishment and the Lesbian as Victim in Oregon, 1961–1964,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 1 (January 20, 2018): 134–73. 207 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, May 6, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 9; Letter from Roberta to Barbara Gittings, June 16, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “N-S, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBM55, 38. 134 send letters of protest to Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield.208 Because it was such a sensational case, Portland readers of The Ladder finally recognized a local event that had national relevance. Invigorated by the ideas that they had been exposed to from reading homophile literature, they took the opportunity to make their mark on the homophile movement and to consider themselves as part of this national movement. Seeking a Local Organization The consumption of homophile literature and participation in the homophile “communication network” prompted queer Portlanders to consider the possibilities of starting their own local organization or chapter. Many cities beyond San Francisco and New York had municipal-level chapters of either the Daughters of Bilitis or the Mattachine Society. In letters from across the country, readers of the homophile magazines voiced their interest in forming local organizations. And, many of these readers were successful. In 1957, local homophile activists in Denver, Colorado formed their own local Mattachine chapter. By 1959, they were large enough to host the annual national conference for the Mattachine Society. During the 1960s, local chapters of the Daughters of Bilitis in Dallas, Phoenix, Cleveland, and elsewhere established important presences. These municipal chapters tended to focus on local issues, and provided a voice for each city’s queer population. Moreover, some localized homophile activists decided to create their own, separate homophile organization. For example, in Seattle, activists formed the Dorian Society, which focused on providing mental health care for queer 208 Rosa Connor, “Jeannace Freeman - Eradication of a Misfit??,” The Ladder, August 1963,; and Mrs. B, “An Open Letter to Homosexuals,” The Ladder, August 1963. 135 Seattlites.209 Although Portland did not have a lasting or historically-evidenced homophile organization on par with those in other American cities, this does not mean that Portlanders were disinterested or complacent.210 By looking at letters from Portlanders to the leaders of the homophile organizations, a more complex narrative emerges. There were many queer people in Portland that sought to create local homophile groups, and some even succeeded on a small and limited scale. The earliest group of homophile activists that is evident in Portland was a group that grew out of the Guys and Dolls private club, owned by a queer woman named Vera.211 In her initial letters to Albert de Dion, Vera described this group: “Our group which is over 160 [people] is a mixed group. But it seems like everytime we meet, we never decide on a name, so at this time we are un-named. I have a bar in Portland which is called Guys + Dolls. . . . We meet there once a month then we have dances. . . . During the month we meet in our homes.”212 While her letters make it difficult to decipher when she is talking about this “group” and when she is talking about the bar, it is clear that Vera understood them to be distinct entities. There was her private club, Guys and Dolls, which was open nightly. And, then there was the “group,” which met once a month in Guys and Dolls and then met regularly in their own homes. While the specifics of what Vera’s group did was never explicitly delineated in her letters, it seems to have been a social and discussion group focused on homosexual issues. In her first letter, Vera compared her group to the Mattachine Society by saying, 209 Gallo, Different Daughters, 41-44, 129-130, 192-193; D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 199-201; Boag, “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,” 23-26. 210 Boag, “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,” 26, 35-36. 211 For more on Guys and Dolls, see Chapter Two. 212 Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, June 1, 1959. 136 “We here in the state of Oregon don’t have a chapter. But we do have a meeting in Portland once a month.” While there was not a Mattachine chapter in Portland as of 1959, Vera likened her “group” to such a chapter.213 Moreover, the “group” seems to have invited professionals to come to their meetings to discuss issues related to homosexuality. In a letter from July 1959, Vera wrote, “Our next meeting is the last Sunday in July. Our meeting will be about the Homosexual Law. The gentleman who will talk on this subject is from a local college in Oregon. This is also for the mixed group.”214 The invitation of local professionals into the meetings aligned with the broader strategy of the homophile movement to educate gay and lesbian Americans, as well as society as a whole, through the voices of medical and legal experts. What “Homosexual Law” Vera was referring to is unclear, as there was no law in Oregon that was known by that title. She was most likely referring to the state’s sodomy laws, but that is not certain. While Vera’s “group” did not have a name and seems to have lacked the momentum to become an affiliate of the movement, its goals and ideology appear to have aligned closely with the national homophile movement. In the letters she wrote to the leaders of the homophile organizations, Vera tried her best to foster a connection between her “group” and the broader, national movement. In her first letter to Albert de Dion, Vera simply asked how she could become a member of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society. After receiving personal and interested replies from Albert de Dion—then the secretary of the Mattachine Society— 213 Letter from Vera to Mattachine Society, May 5, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 52-53. 214 Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, July 7, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, 19511976, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 46-48. 137 she came to realize that she might be able to foster a stronger connection with the homophile movement. Vera voiced interest in visiting de Dion in New York, then the largest chapter of the Mattachine Society. This interest quickly evolved into a plan to roadtrip to New York with others from her “group” in September 1959: “We plan on going to California then . . . on over to New York. I don’t know what day of the month we will be in New York but will write to you before we land in New York. . . . We didn’t take one [vacation] last year. It was all work and no play. There will be 2 of the boys and 4 of us girls, plan on taking 2 cars.”215 Vera and her friends were ultimately unable to make the trek to New York, however, because Vera’s mother got sick at the end of August.216 Several months later, she sent a letter to Del Martin and professed that she, her “group” and others wanted to form a Portland chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. “Hopefully we can get the ball rolling cause it’s no use just forming a group and doing nothing about it,” Vera continued, “Even some of the kids from Salem about 60 miles from Portland come to here and ask questions about forming a DOB quarter in Portland.” Beyond simply starting a chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, Vera stated that the “group” had even thought about having “the President from this group from New York [Mattachine] come out expenses paid just to get us started.”217 Unfortunately, this letter to Del Martin was the last letter that has survived in archival collections. It is unclear if 215 Ibid.; and Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, August 10, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, 1951-1976, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 39-43. 216 Letter from Vera to Albert de Dion, September 8, 1959, The Mattachine Society of New York Records, 1951-1976, “Gay Organizations, Daughters of Bilitis, 1958-1964,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBsm1, 33-36. 217 Letter from Vera to Del Martin, February 24, 1960, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “San Francisco - Housing and Transportation National Convention Files,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/BkB5T0, 2-5. 138 Vera sent any more letters, or how long her “group” managed to stay organized. But, even considering its short life and uncertain lifespan, Vera’s “group” of over 160 Portlanders establishes that there were, in fact, glimmers of homophile organizing in Portland. Although it was not officially affiliated with the movement and it lacked the momentum to create lasting change, it was still a group guided by homophile ideology nonetheless. Vera’s “group” and the homophile politics that they engaged in were not the only attempt by Portlanders to create a homophile organization in the city. When people first wrote to the Daughters of Bilitis or the Mattachine Society, they often inquired about whether or not there was an organization in Portland. In her first letter to the Daughters of Bilitis, Margery concluded, “Please inform me as soon as possible . . . if there is an active branch of your organization here in Portland.” The answer was consistently met with a “no,” despite knowledge of Vera’s “group”. Once they found out that there was not a homophile organization in the city, some Portland homophile activists sought to establish a local chapter. In 1958, a man named Frank wrote to the Mattachine Society and informed them that he had formed an organization called “Anthemion,” though a “lack of time, direction, and money” had prevented it from taking off. Frank pushed for more information from Mattachine about how to start a local chapter, and how to support such a group. Although he was sent a response, neither Anthemion or a Portland chapter of Mattachine ever took off. When Portland homophiles tried to gain enough momentum within the bars to form an organization, they were typically met with a great deal of difficulty. In recounting her attempts to found a chapter while distributing copies of The Ladder, Barbara wrote, “It is very discouraging and so far no interest in a chapter here. 139 We are making progress however and every little bit makes it worthwhile. Perhaps tomorrow.” The letters written from queer Portlanders to the leaders of the homophile organizations reveal that there was a desire to form a local chapter. While they struggled to organize, those in Portland who engaged with the homophile movement were motivated to become active participants in the political movement.218 Queer Portlander’s attempts to establish a local chapter only momentarily succeeded in 1969, when a chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis purportedly began. But the only evidence of this chapter comes from the October 1969 issue of The Ladder, and the chapter appears to have disappeared by March 1970, when the Portland Gay Liberation Front was founded.219 Even though there was not a lasting or historically evidenced homophile chapter in Portland, this did not mean that there was a total lack of political action in Portland during the 1950s and 1960s. For one, the simple act of participating in the homophile communication network, with its exchange of literature, letters, and newspaper clippings, was a form of resistant political action itself. In a society where being gay or lesbian was subversive itself, the possession of copies of The Ladder or letters from other queer people was both socially and legally verboten.220 But, beyond the innate resistance in reading homophile magazines and writing to 218 Letter from Frank to Mattachine Society, April 15, 1958, The Homophile Movement: Papers of Donald Stewart Lucas, “Homophile Organizations Mattachine Society Correspondence,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBBa0, 64; Letter from Margery to Daughters of Bilitis, August 8, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “J-M, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG, http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBM77, 78; and Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, October 18, 1963. 219 Gene Damon, “Three Ways to Serve,” The Ladder, October/November 1969. 220 The Supreme Court ruled in the 1958 case ONE, Inc. v. Oleson that homophile magazines did not fall under existing obscenity laws and that homosexuality was not inherently “obscene.” Before then, the US Postal Service could confiscate all homophile materials that they came across. See, Susan Gluck Mezey, “One, Inc v Olesen,” The First Amendment Encyclopedia, n.d., https://www.mtsu.edu/firstamendment/article/406/one-inc-v-olesen-9th-cir. 140 editors, some queer Portlanders were also inspired to engage in direct political action. In the autumn of 1963, Barbara sent over fifty letters to different groups across Portland to “interest those capable of helping this group, and show them that the decent homosexual is ready to meet society more than half way.” These letters made it to psychiatric clinics, college professors, and to Mayor Terry Schrunk’s office.221 It did not take long for the city to take notice of these letters. On November 7, 1963, The Oregonian published an article on Mayor Schrunk’s “anti-smut drive” to root out “obscene literature” in Portland.222 The article, and Mayor Schrunk, focused on homosexual material as the foundation of the obscenity. The news reporter responsible for the article wrote, “Purveyors of this type of literature have become so bold they even sent it through the mail to the mayor’s office with signed letters openly advocating recognition and legal status for homosexuals.”223 Barbara immediately realized that this section of the report was referring to her letters, and she sent a bold letter to Mayor Schrunk’s assistant. In the letter, she wrote, “If I am correct in assuming that I have been classified as a “Purveyor of Smut,” then I challenge your committee to meet me. I am proud of my record as a Mother and a citizen of Portland the past 10 years.” She continued, “I am bold? Yes! When it comes to standing up for what I believe to be right, with the proper people and at the proper time. I firmly believe the decent homosexual (AND THERE ARE SUCH!), not only has a right to work . . ., but also has a responsibility.”224 Through these letters, both in the ones she sent to Portland institutions and in her response to the article, 221 Letter from Barbara to Mary Curry, November 8, 1963, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis Collection, “H, Correspondence - The Ladder Daughters of Bilitis National,” GASG http://tinyurl.gale.com/tinyurl/CGBLz2, 60-61. 222 For more on “obscenity” in Portland, see Chapter Five. 223 “‘Anti-Smut’ Drive Asked,” The Oregonian, November 7, 1963. 224 Letter from Barbara to Mary Curry, November 8, 1963. 141 Barbara echoed the main strategy of the homophile movement: to seek improvement through appealing to professionals and experts in American society. Moreover, she also appealed to the fundamental premises of respectability politics that homosexual Americans needed to act boldly and openly, while also constraining their behavior to be as normative as possible. Barbara’s political efforts in Portland demonstrate that her political ideology, and the actions that arose from that, were substantially shaped by and resonant with homophile ideas. Although actions like Barbara’s appear to have been very far and few between each other, their impetus was still connected to the homophile movement. Even without a local organization to belong to, Barbara independently brought homophile action to Portland. So, despite the efforts of people like Barbara, Frank, and even Vera, why do we not find any lasting homophile organizations in Portland? Without a whole swath of new evidence, we can only really speculate. Without the digitized and searchable archival collections that were available to me, Boag suggested that the main reason that a homophile organization did not form was due to the relative absence of police enforcement in the city. As discussed in Chapter Three, however, there was in fact systematic enforcement in the city— and it certainly impacted the lives of those Portlanders who were writing to the homophile organizations. In one of her letters, Barbara wrote, “Last week, one of our school teachers, 36, was charged with sodomy and committed suicide a couple of days ago.” Believing that these conditions could foster political action, she continued, “It seems that if ever Oregon was ripe for the homosexual problem to be aired and something constructive done, then it is now.”225 While the lack 225 Letter from Barbara to Barbara Gittings, May 27, 1963. 142 of bar-based harassment and raiding meant that there was not a need for the bar-centered activism of San Francisco during this period, it does not fully explain why a local chapter of the homophile movement never took off in Portland. One possible reason for the lack of a lasting organization in Portland, though surely not the only one, is that the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society did not support the creation of a chapter in Portland. They did offer words of encouragement, but beyond that, they were distant and did not provide material resources or guidance to Portlanders. This contrasts sharply with the treatment of Seattle homophiles during the 1960s, for example. Before the Dorian Society was founded, the Mattachine Society actively urged people in Seattle to form a chapter. In 1965, the Mattachine Society promoted a meeting and conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown Seattle. They reached out to all of their magazine subscribers in the Seattle metropolitan area to invite them to attend. This conference ultimately led to the development of a homophile organization in Seattle, which eventually became the Dorian Society.226 Portland did not have this level of support, from either the Mattachine Society or the Daughters of Bilitis. Evidence from letters written during the late 1950s and early 1960s suggest that there were numerous people in Portland who would have become actively involved in a local chapter, if only there was some way for them to all come together. The national homophile organizations had the capacity to bring these people together— as evidenced by the case of Seattle— but Portland was not a priority, likely because of its size. Without external support, Portland homophile activists were at an incredible disadvantage from the outset. In some ways, this exemplifies a potential weakness in the ability of the 226 Boag, “Does Portland Need a Homophile Society?,” 24. 143 homophile communication network to promote political activism. While a handful of queer Portlanders had extensive contacts in the homophile organization, they did not necessarily have contact with other local homophiles looking to organize. Only after the rise of the counterculture and liberation politics in the late 1960s would queer Portlanders be able to come together to establish political organizations that could affect lasting change. Conclusion Despite never having a lasting and publicly known homophile organization, it would be incorrect to say that queer Portlanders were wholly removed from mid-century gay and lesbian political organizing. Once homophile literature had made its way into Portland smoke shops, some of Portland’s queer population actively sought out the magazines and read them with fervor. Some decided to subscribe to receive every issue in the mail; others relied on their friends and lovers to pass copies of the magazines on to them. Once they read the magazines, many inserted themselves into the national homophile communication network by writing letters to the leaders of the homophile movement. Through this communication network, some queer Portlanders came to develop a political ideology closely aligned to the homophile movement. They also established relationships and connections with homophile leaders beyond the bounds of Portland or the Pacific Northwest. Even without a local organization to guide them, they then contributed articles, stories, and ideas to the homophile organizations. Moreover, the lack of a local homophile organization or subsidiary chapter of the Mattachine Society or the Daughters of Bilitis does not mean that there was a total lack of interest in the city. As the letters of Vera demonstrated, there was in fact a group that organized around 144 homophile principles in the late 1950s, even if it failed to gain notoriety beyond the walls of the Guys and Dolls club. Other queer Portlanders also expressed extensive interest in beginning their own organizations, and a short-lived chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis briefly coalesced at the end of this period. Without the direct support of the national organizations, however, those with the same goal of starting an organization were never able to identify one another. This chapter has demonstrated that historians interested in queer political action and organization before the rise of gay liberation must consider the role of smaller cities in those movements. It is not enough to describe the actions of the leaders of the homophile organizations in San Francisco and New York. As the case of Portland shows, even cities without their own organizations had active and passionate members of the homophile movement. Moreover, smaller cities like Portland exemplify how the homophile movement had a truly national reach. However small and poorly funded the central organizations were, their efforts impacted queer lives across the United States (and beyond), even if those central organizations chose not to focus on small cities. The lack of an official and recognizable organization does not mean that there was no political action in a city, and Portland is an outstanding example of this point. 145 Chapter Five Moving Along: The Sixties and the Shifting Nature of Queerness in Portland, 1963-1970 The 1960s have typically been defined in popular historical memory as a period of dramatic change, defined by such events as the progression of the civil rights movement, the development of second-wave feminism, and the outgrowth of the Vietnam War. In the realm of queer history, the decade—and especially the latter half—is understood as the foundry of modern queer culture and politics. The decade is bookended by perhaps the most notorious moment in American queer history—the Stonewall Riots. In popular imagination, the 1969 Stonewall Riots often symbolize the supposed “coming out” experience of queer Americans such that queer history is often divided into the “preStonewall” period and the “post-Stonewall” period. Although academic historians from D’Emilio onwards have actively sought to deconstruct the notion that Stonewall represents a so-called “turning point” in the history of queer Americans, the notion that the riots that occurred outside the Stonewall Inn suddenly brought on gay liberation continues to be a major theme in contemporary queer activisms. Beyond the Stonewall Riots, however, queer historians have continued to focus on the mid to late 1960s as a period of liberal and radical political action. Queer cultural studies have tended to end in the early 1960s, while studies focused on political organizing and action have spent a much greater amount of time on the years between 1965 and 1969. As a result, attention has extensively been paid to the outgrowth of national liberationist ideologies and the evolution of the homophile movement, with little attention paid to broader social and 146 cultural transformations during the same part of the decade.227 Between the city’s unsuccessful attempt to close down the queer bars at the end of 1964 and the outgrowth of liberation politics in early 1970, the contours of queer life in Portland subtly, but significantly, changed. The discourses and geographies that had determined how queer Portlanders were treated and where they had congregated since the end of the Second World War were transformed over the course of the latter half of the 1960s. In this way, Portland reflected nationwide trends of increasing openness and publicity regarding homosexuality. Unlike the large cities that have been at the center of historical analyses of the late 1960s, however, Portland’s queer subcultures did not begin to organize politically until 1970. As discussed in the previous chapter, Portland’s lack of a homophile organization made it relatively unusual compared to the cities that historians have studied thus far. The simple fact regarding Portland is that radical queer politics did not manifest themselves in the city until the 1970s. For this reason, Portland provides an opportunity to examine how local discourses and geographies changed over time, regardless of increasing political action elsewhere in the nation. Shaky Discourses Over the course of the 1960s, national discourses over homosexuality dramatically shifted as gay and lesbian media increasingly gained a foothold in American culture. In large part, the changing nature of discourse regarding queerness and 227 Cultural and community approaches like Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather and Boyd, Wide-Open Town have tended to end in the first half of the decade. Works like D’Emilio, Sexual Politics; Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves; Faderman and Timmons, Gay LA; and Beemyn, A Queer Capital have tended to only focus on the political and activist side of queer culture and communities during the second half of the 1960s. While the history of political organizing surely moves us closer to an understanding of how liberation politics emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it cannot be the only way that we can explain the rise of radical queer politics and openness. Greater consideration of the social and cultural dynamics in pre-liberation communities and spaces is needed. 147 homosexuality should be attributed to the political actions of the national homophile movement and the insistence of queer Americans that they should be treated seriously and equitably. As media historian Fred Fejes argues, “challenges in the area of the medical sciences and the law, together with the increasing activism of homophile activists” led “the journalistic ‘web of facticity’ defining the homosexual” to “unravel” in the latter half of the decade. Fejes notes that as a result of this “unraveling” of the 1950s consensus on homosexuality, “media reports and images of homosexuality became less harsh and condemning.” Although the popular media discourse over queerness began to become more sympathetic, the vast majority of American media outlets continued to refuse to identify homosexuals as a “minority” deserving of legitimacy and legal protections.228 Portland was hardly a center of homophile activism, but the city’s local discourses largely followed the national trend. Between 1964 and 1970, Portland’s media, city officials, and general populace stopped defining homosexuals as sexual predators and threats to children and began to slowly understand them through a lens that was generally less condemnatory. No single example better illuminates the beginnings of the shift in the discourse over homosexuality during the mid-1960s than the treatment of Jeannace Freeman in local media. As discussed in the previous chapter, Freeman was a lesbian woman who was convicted in 1961 for murdering two children in central Oregon. For her crimes, she was sentenced to death, making her the first woman in Oregon’s history to receive the death penalty. Historian Lauren Jae Gutterman has argued that the treatment of Freeman’s case shifted greatly between her 1961 conviction and the repeal of the death 228 Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality, (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 30-31. 148 penalty in 1964. Initially, in the midst of her trial and sentencing, Freeman’s masculine dress and mannerisms, coupled with her sexual relationship with the mother of the children she murdered, were emphasized in news reports. Her status as a lesbian was used to undermine her credibility and to call her morals into question. In this way, the treatment of Freeman by the media in 1961 reflected prevailing attitudes that saw working-class lesbianism as a threat to women and the family. Following Freeman’s conviction and sentencing in September, there was very little public opposition to the results of the trial. For a year following her trial, local media was silent over her case. But then, at the end of 1962, Freeman’s pending death became the center of a statewide debate over the death penalty. At the beginning of 1963, newspaper reporters, political leaders, and everyday Portlanders began to discuss Freeman’s case as that of a woman victimized by childhood sexual abuse and juvenile delinquency. While the discourse that linked child predation to the cause of homosexuality was still present, Gutterman holds that, “it was not despite but in part because of [Freeman’s] unconventional gender presentation and her homosexuality that Freeman came to be seen as a victim undeserving of execution and capable of reformation.”229 Although the foundations of the imagined “homosexual menace” were still very much present in the 1963 and 1964 discussions of Freeman, the simple fact that Portlanders adopted a sympathetic attitude toward her queerness suggests that “straight” understandings of homosexuality were shifting. It is important to note that the sympathetic portrayal of Freeman was largely motivated by political goals of repealing the state’s death penalty. But, even with this in mind, it would have been 229 Gutterman, “Saving Jeannace June Freeman,” 137. 149 unthinkable just five years earlier for the media to discuss queerness in a sympathetic way, especially involving crimes against minors. Regardless of the political motives behind the treatment of Freeman, the fact remains that by 1964, Portlanders were becoming more and more exposed to a sympathetic version of homosexuality. 1964 also notably marked the end of the Portland Police Department’s containment strategy, and the beginning of the discursive shift that followed. While the first years of the 1960s were the highwater mark of police harassment in Portland, the Police Department and City Council’s attempt to force the closure of the downtown queer bars in 1964 marked the end of their anti-homosexual containment strategy. No bars were shut down directly due to the 1964 crackdown, and no bar owners seem to have been intimidated to the point where they stopped catering to queer people. Once its authority to shutdown bars simply for having a queer clientele was challenged by the Oregon Liquour Control Commission in 1964, the City Council and Police Department largely pulled back from their efforts to quiet and contain the supposed “spread” of queer culture in downtown Portland. While their inability to control queer Portlanders through their authority over bars likely limited future police enforcement, the significant drop off in enforcement is most likely due to more gradual shifts in society. Since the latter years of the 1950s, individually-targeted police surveillance and harassment had generally been in decline in Portland. By 1964, police were not patrolling cruising spaces with the same rigor that they previously had. Furthermore, the breaking of the 1963 “sex parties” with explicit sex videos involving minors was the last of the major homosexual “sex rings” that were busted by the Portland Police during the decade. This general decline, followed by the fruitless attempt by the police and City Council to shut down the bars, led to the 150 collapse of the containment policy by the mid-1960s.230 Although the police continued to arrest men for public sex in Lownsdale Square, and the City Council continued to put pressure on the bars, the intensity of these efforts was much lighter than it had been in the first part of the decade.231 As a result of the Police Department’s movement away from an organized antihomosexual strategy, the media coverage of homosexuality in Portland largely dropped off. As addressed in Chapter Three, the vast majority of the discourse around homosexuality and queerness in the city revolved around regular arrest reports and sensationalized scandals over the breaking of supposed “sex rings.” Once police stopped surveilling downtown queer spaces and seeking out “sexual psychopaths,” there was no longer a reason for the media to report on the threat of homosexuality in the city. Although local newspapers like The Oregonian continued to discuss homosexuality, they tended to only do so in the context of national syndicated columns from sources like the Associated Press and the New York Times.232 Importantly, homosexuality itself was no longer cast as an existential threat to Portlanders and their well-being. When it was reported on, homosexuality was discussed in the abstract, rather than as an individualized 230 See Chapter Three for more details on these cases. During the 1960s, the only arrest at Lownsdale Square that I was able to find was in 1968, see “Offense Brings Probation Term,” The Oregonian, August 7, 1969. 231 In 1969, a man named Tony Allmendinger was convicted of sodomy for “committing a sexual offence with another man” in Lownsdale Square. This is only one of few examples of arrests for queer sex after 1964. See, “Offense Brings Probation Term,” The Oregonian, August 17, 1969. Additionally, in 1967, the City Council stalled on recommending a liquor license renewal for The Happy Hare, because there were “allegations of . . . homosexual behavior” in the tavern. Although they were unable to close it down, the City Council’s actions forced the bar to close for a couple months before reopening. See, “City Against Inn License,” The Oregonian, January 5, 1967. 232 See, for example, “Court Decides Morals No Ground for Firing,” The Oregonian, June 20, 1965; Seymour Korman, “California University Students Get Instruction In Draft Dodging,” The Oregonian, October 24, 1965; and Stephen M Aug, “Crime Commission Advises Sweeping Revision of Nation’s Laws,” The Oregonian, May 1, 1967. 151 problem. For example, in a 1966 article on sex education in Portland schools, the report stated, “Oregon is among the nation’s leaders in illegitimate births, abortions, homosexuality, divorces, and other areas related to poor sexual guidance.”233 While Portland officials and elites continued to be concerned about sexual liberalism and the breaking down of proper sexuality, they did not solely express the problem as an issue of homosexuality run rampant, preferring to focus on the supposed problems of women’s reproduction and sexual autonomy. Although the overall discourse over homosexuality in Portland was on the decline in the mid-1960s, the topic continued to be brought up regarding obscenity. While queer Portlanders were no longer construed as sexual predators, homosexual magazines and books, as well as pornography more broadly, became a major point of concern for conservative city leaders. During the second half of the decade, the Portland City Council under the leadership of Mayor Terry Schrunk focused their anti-vice efforts on the distribution of obscene material in city bookstores and newspaper stands. While homosexuality was not exclusively the target of these anti-obscenity efforts, the presence of queer sexuality and gender expression in magazines and literature became a major demarcator of what was “obscene.” The first attempt to eliminate obscene materials was in 1963, when the city asked Portlanders to report and collect any “smut,” or pornography that they came across.234 In 1965, police launched raids on downtown smoke shops, where much of the “obscene materials” were being distributed. They arrested five men for selling such 233 “Portland Doctor Says Sex Education In City Schools Mostly Ineffective,” The Oregonian, March 16, 1966. 234 “‘Anti-Smut’ Drive Asked,” The Oregonian, November 7, 1963; and “Jury Links Sex Crimes With Lewd Magazines,” The Oregonian, March 1, 1964. 152 materials to the public. While the arrests and charges were for “disseminating” obscenities, the five stores were targeted explicitly because they sold magazines and novels that dealt with “lesbianism.” These arrests created a huge amount of debate in Portland over whether lesbianism was inherently “obscene.” The jury that heard the case was unable to come to a unanimous decision for four of the five men who were arrested but voted to convict Harold G. Childs for selling the book Lesbian Roommates. Over the course of the rest of the decade, Childs appealed his case up the court system to the Oregon State Supreme Court, where it was ultimately rejected.235 Interestingly enough, the city’s insistence that it could arrest and convict on obscenity charges for the distribution of queer materials violated the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in the 1954 case One, Inc. v. Oleson and the 1962 case Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, which respectively held that pro-homosexual material was not inherently obscene and that photos of naked men in physique magazines were not obscene.236 As a result of this, the US District Court in Portland held in 1970 that the Oregon laws and Portland city practices that sought to censor obscenity were unconstitutional under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, thereby putting an end to the antiobscenity campaigns.237 From 1965 through the early 1970s, the city of Portland continued to pressure magazine stores to stop selling pornography and other obscenities. The city’s enforcement in this problem, however, did not directly target queer Portlanders 235 “Books Branded ‘Obscene’ in ‘Dissemination’ Trial,” The Oregonian, November 5, 1965; “Books Lack Appeal for Normal Say Experts,” November 10, 1965; “1 Convicted, 4 Freed in Obscenity Trial,” The Oregonian, November 20, 1965; “Supreme Court Backs Obscenity Conviction,” The Oregonian, November 21, 1968; “High Court Rule Sought,” The Oregonian, February 11, 1969. 236 Carlos A Ball, “Obscenity, Morality, and the First Amendment: The First LGBT Rights Cases Before the Supreme Court,” Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 28 (2015). 237 “U.S. Court Overturns State, City Obscenity Laws, Licensing Use as Censorship Ruled Illegal,” The Oregonian, November 20, 1970. 153 for possessing such magazines. Only those who sold such magazines and books fell under the city’s enforcement of its anti-obscenity goals. In fact, by 1969, reports on the antiobscenity campaigns no longer emphasized homosexuality or “lesbianism,” suggesting that queerness stopped being a focus for such campaigns sometime over the course of the decade.238 Although homosexuality in literature and magazines was one of the main targets for the city’s anti-obscenity campaigns during the latter half of the 1960s, representations of queerness in films that were shown in local movie theaters gradually increased. In 1961, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) revised the Motion Picture Production Code to allow the depiction of homosexuality on film screens but continued to prohibit the explicit mention of the term “homosexual.” Due to this, homosexuality became an understated theme in many films during the 1960s. Directors began to test the bounds of the revised Production Code, and increasingly made films that had overtly queer characters. In 1968, the MPAA decided to fully eliminate the Production Code, which had shaped American film since 1934. This opened up cinema to more direct engagement with queer themes, leading to an outpouring of films in the late 1960s that openly discussed homosexuality.239 These queer films were eventually shown in independent and underground movie theaters in Portland, with reviews showing up in The Oregonian. Such films included The Killing of Sister George, Therese and Isabelle, and The Detective. While, to modern eyes, the representations of queerness in these film were clearly rooted in homophobic stereotypes of gay, lesbian, and transgender people, 238 See, for example, John Painter, Jr., “County Indicts 16 on Charges of Smut Sales,” The Oregonian, November 29, 1969. 239 Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, Revised ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 126-163. 154 the fact remains that the characters were much more complicated and realistic than earlier depictions of queerness in film had been.240 Compared to the discussions of homosexuality from just five years earlier, during the queer bar crackdown, Portland’s film critics were strikingly tolerant of the new films. While some bemoaned the “obscenity” of such films, long-time Drama Editor for The Oregonian, Ted Mahar, took a sympathetic stance toward these new, “homosexual” films. While he regularly criticized these films for their poor quality, he did not have an issue with the depiction of homosexuality in the movies. In his review of The Queen, a 1968 documentary on a New York City drag pageant, Mahar concluded, “To some people this film would seem repugnant and perverted, despite its taste and honesty. However, a good quotation to bear in mind would be one by George Bernard Shaw (who had a quote for everything). He said, “Nothing human is alien to me.””241 With these films, and Mahar’s reviews, as one of the main ways that Portlanders would have been exposed to homosexuality as a topic in the late 1960s, the narrative of homosexuality had notably shifted since the 1950s. Homosexuals were no longer a menace to children and society; they were a maligned group of people who may be “queer” and “odd”, but were not a threat. Dynamic Geographies The latter half of the 1960s also saw a gradual shift in the geography of where queer bars opened, and thereby where queer culture followed. As discussed in Chapter 240 Ted Mahar, “Metzger’s Movie Not Good, Not Bad,” The Oregonian, September 23, 1968; Ted Mahar, “Current Movie Genre of Homosexuality Deemed Reflection of Public Tolerance,” The Oregonian, January 26, 1969; and Ted Mahar, “‘Sister George’ Said Slow Bell Film,” The Oregonian, March 11, 1969. 241 Ted Mahar, “‘Queen’ Good Show of Impersonators,” The Oregonian, August 18, 1969. See also, Ibid. 155 Two, there were two distinct districts in downtown Portland where queer bars congregated. There was a working-class district in the southeast portion of downtown in the central business district; and, there was a middle-class bar district deeper into downtown alongside Burnside Street. In the years following the city’s attempts to shut down the queer bars in 1964, however, these boundaries gradually began to shift and contract. Largely as a result of urban renewal development that targeted the southern area of downtown during the mid-1960s, many of the southern bars were forced to close their doors shortly after the city had tried to accomplish the same thing. While some of these southeastern bars like the Other Inn and the Half Moon Tavern successfully navigated the changing urbanscape, the bulk of Portland’s downtown queer culture shifted toward what was originally the middle-class bar district along Burnside. Moreover, some bars that opened during the late 1960s decided to open north of Burnside Street in the area that had been known as the North End during the first half of the century. Thus, by the end of the 1960s, the geography of Portland’s queer cultures had grown and transformed significantly since the beginning of the decade. In many ways, this new constellation of bars, taverns, and socialization spaces established the foundations for the city’s contemporary queer geography. In the mid-1960s, urban renewal projects in south downtown pushed up against the working-class queer bar district, threatening the dynamics of queer culture in that part of the city. In 1958, Portland voters approved the formation of the Portland Development Commission (PDC), setting the stage for a wave of urban renewal projects over the course of the following decade. While much of the city’s urban renewal projects focused on neighborhoods beyond the downtown core, shrinking retail sales in the central 156 business district during the 1950s pushed city planners to focus on the southernmost part of downtown— just blocks away from the southern edge of the working-class queer bar district. Building off of a plan that had been recommended by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee in 1955, the PDC established the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project, which sought to clear the “blight” of the downtown area bounded by Market, Front, Arthur, and Fourth Streets. The plans were motivated by the area’s high crime and deteriorating infrastructure, and they overlooked the homes and lives of the elderly Jewish and Italian communities that lived in the area. The South Auditorium project set out to clear most of the area of its local businesses and residential neighborhoods in order to replace it with office buildings, parking lots, and warehouses. Initially, the South Auditorium project did not impact the queer spaces that existed nearby. But then, in 1966, the PDC extended the northern boundary of the project from Market Street to Jefferson Street. By doing this, the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project now included the southernmost portion of the working-class queer bar district and bordered the edge of Lownsdale Square. Furthermore, the PDC authorized an additional renewal project to extend the Portland State College campus just to the north of the South Auditorium extension. According to historian Carl Abbott, this was done to clear out what the city saw as its “worst vice district,” suggesting that this decision may have been partially based on the existence of queer bars and nightlife in and nearby the extension.242 In this way, the urban renewal projects in downtown Portland mirror patterns of so-called renewal elsewhere. Because “gay neighborhoods” tended to overlap with vice districts, 242 Abbott, Portland, 207-214; and Carl Abbott, “South Portland/South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project,” in The Oregon Encyclopedia (Portland, OR: Oregon Historical Society, 2018), https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/south_portland_south_auditorium_urban_renewal_project/#.XqdV N2hKjZs. 157 and were often rooted in nighttime vices themselves, it was not uncommon for queer areas in a city to be swept up in urban renewal during the 1960s. For example, around the same time that the South Auditorium project was starting in Portland, the Tenderloin district of San Francisco was also facing pressure from surrounding urban renewal projects.243 The clearest example of the impact that urban renewal had on Portland’s queer spaces was the closing of the Model Inn in February 1967. The Model Inn was the southernmost bar in the working-class district, located on the corner of Southwest First and Market Street. It was targeted during the 1964 crackdown due to its predominately lesbian and queer female clientele. But, like the other bars involved, the Model Inn was ultimately granted a license and could continue to operate.244 By all indications, the Model Inn thrived between 1964 and 1967. Once the PDC set its sights on the city blocks that the bar sat in, however, there was only so much its owner, Nicholas Polechrones, could do. On February 13, 1967, the development commission voted to acquire the Model Inn by condemnation. The fact that the commission was unable to purchase the property suggests that Polechrones was unwilling to give up his property for the price that the commission had set. Therefore, the commission had to rely on the city’s authority of eminent domain, rather than relying on a purchase agreement, as it did with businesses in the same area.245 The case of the Model Inn demonstrates that the South Auditorium extension presented a substantial pressure on the working-class district, even leading to 243 Christina B. Hanhardt, Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Perverse Modernities Series (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 38-46. 244 See Chapter Two; and City Auditor, City Council Minutes, December 10, 1964, no. 4739, City of Portland Archives and Records Center. 245 “PSC Urban Renewal Urban Renewal Project Gets Tentative Approval,” The Oregonian, February 14, 1967. 158 the erasure of queer spaces from Portland’s urbanscape. By “renewing” the southern part of downtown, the city’s actions gradually shrank the working-class bar district. By the time that the Model Inn was shut down by condemnation in 1967, many of the nearby working-class bars had already closed their doors, largely due to rising rental rates. Bars in the southern portion of the working-class district like Mama Bernice’s, Dinty Moore’s, and the Transfusion Inn closed following the beginning of the South Auditorium project. Unlike the Model Inn, these bars were not closed by condemnation. Rather, it seems that the bar owners were simply unable to pay rent or otherwise chose to close their business. Bar turnover was not unheard of throughout the 1950s and 1960s—bars would often be sold to new owners and then reopened with a new name while the clientele would stay the same. Following the extension of the South Auditorium project into the working-class bar district, however, these bars simply shutdown and were never replaced with new queer spaces. The fact that no business owner tried to reopen these spots that had once been so successful suggests that the urban renewal projects had rendered it unprofitable to operate a working-class bar in the area. Meanwhile, the bars in the northern half of the working-class district tended to have a longer longevity, with several succeeding throughout the 1970s. For example, the Other Inn and Dahl and Penne’s, which lay 10 blocks north of the Model Inn, remained a central part of Portland’s queer culture into the early 1980s.246 Therefore, while urban renewal by no means erased the southeastern working-class district, it did put pressure on the bar community and ultimately shrank the bounds of the district. While the working-class queer bar district shrank substantially during the mid- 246 “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” 159 1960s, the number of bars along Burnside grew, doubling the number of bars in the area in just six years. In 1965, following the closure of the Harbor Club in the working-class district, bar owner Johnnie Honegger decided to open up a bar on Southwest Stark Street called Riptide. Riptide was opened just a couple blocks away from Derek’s Tavern, which would change its name to The Annex later in 1965. Riptide seems to have oriented itself toward a different clientele than Honegger’s Harbor Club had. First, the bar advertised weekly dance shows, musical performances, and dining in The Oregonian, which suggests that it was more expensive and tried to cater to wealthier patrons. Additionally, Riptide purportedly prohibited women from wearing pants into the club, further suggesting a conservative middle-class clientele that wanted to avoid scrutiny.247 Three years later, another bar opened up nearby called The Pied Piper. Much like Riptide, The Pied Piper advertised nightly performances to attract a middle-class crowd. It is unclear to when The Pied Piper became a queer space, but by 1969, it was advertising in The Oregonian for male go-go dancers.248 Also, in 1969, a man named Roman Wydra opened a queer space called Roman’s Tavern, several blocks to the south of the other queer bars. A year later, yet another bar called Zorba the Greek’s opened next door to Roman’s Tavern.249 Thus, by the end of 1970, the Burnside bar district had undergone a great deal of expansion and the center of Portland’s queer nightlife had largely shifted deeper into downtown. Alongside the expansion of the middle-class bar district in the late 1960s, a new bar district began to develop in the northeast section of downtown, in what is now called 247 Ibid.; “Riptide Ad,” The Oregonian, January 7, 1966; “Riptide Ad,” The Oregonian, May 27, 1966; and “Riptide Ad,” The Oregonian, May 23, 1969; “The Annex Ad,” The Fountain, April 1971. 248 “Pied Piper Classified Ad,” The Oregonian, November 12, 1969. 249 “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour”; and “Portland Map,” The Fountain, May 1971. 160 Old Town, near the Willamette River and on the northern side of Burnside Street. The first queer bar to open in this area was Club Northwest in 1968. The details of Club Northwest are unclear at best, but it seems to have become a venue for drag shows by the early 1970s, before becoming a lesbian bar called The Magic Garden in 1974.250 Furthermore, in 1968, a man named Walter Cole purchased Dema’s Tavern on Northwest Third Avenue. Shortly after purchasing the tavern, Cole came to realize that he was gay, and separated from his wife. In turning to embrace his sexual identity, Cole turned Dema’s Tavern into a lesbian bar where he and others began hosting drag shows. Cole performed as a drag queen named Darcelle. Since the late 1960s, Cole has continued to perform out of the Dema’s Tavern bar space, which is now called the Darcelle XV Showcase.251 Alongside these bars and drag venues, another bar called Embers Avenue (or simply “Embers”) was opened in 1969 on Northwest Broadway Street, and remained open until its closure in 2017.252 Although it was never on the scale that the older working-class and middle-class bar districts had been, this new collection of queer nightspots in Old Town demonstrates that Portland’s queer culture was expanding during the late 1960s, both in the number of spaces available and in geography. Of particular note, this “new” bar district was actually located in what had once been known as the North End— where working-class homosexual men had congregated fifty years earlier.253 250 Ibid,; and “Club Northwest Ad,” The Fountain, September 1971. Ibid.; Lizzy Acker, “Darcelle Is Finally Having Her Portland Moment,” The Oregonian, September 10, 2019, https://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/2019/09/darcelle-xv-is-finally-having-her-portlandmoment.html; Sarah Hansell, “What Became of Portland’s Queer Hub,” Street Roots, January 11, 2019, https://news.streetroots.org/2019/01/11/what-became-portlands-queer-hub. 252 “1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour.” 253 See Chapter One; and Boag, Same-Sex Affairs, 46. 251 161 The general improvement in the nature of Portland’s discourses around homosexuality and queerness during the second half of the 1960s surely contributed to the growth in queer spaces during that same time. Simply put, if people were more likely to talk about homosexuality in a sympathetic light, then more people were going to be willing to openly accept their own non-normative sexuality and gender expression. It is also no coincidence that most of the queer bars that arose during this period were middleclass spots. As discussed briefly in Chapter Two, middle-class Americans were less likely to live openly as gay, lesbian, or queer during the 1950s and early 1960s. Concerns that their professional and personal reputation would be damaged by going to queer bars, most middle-class queer people chose to hide their sexuality away, or only socialized in private parties and events.254 Once the discourse changed, and homosexuals were no longer “national security risks” and “sexual psychopaths” in the American imagination, middle-class queer Portlanders likely began to feel more comfortable in public queer spaces. Further research would surely need to be done to confirm this relationship, but the correlation is compelling to say the least. With this said, however, it is important to emphasize that queer Portlanders could hardly live openly outside of the handful of spaces that were their own. As Walter Cole/Darcelle reminds us from our twenty-first century vantage point, “you’re talking about ’67, my dear. We [drag queens] didn’t walk out the door in drag. We stayed inside. We got ready inside and walked out in Levis.”255 Conclusion The latter half of the 1960s was marked by a series of gradual, but significant, 254 See Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather, 43-44, 62-64, 134; Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 27; and Thorpe, “The Changing Face of Lesbian Bars,” 173-178. 255 Quoted in Hansell, “What Became of Portland’s Queer Hub.” 162 transformations in both the discourse and geography of queerness in Portland. The city’s attempt to close the queer bars in 1964 signaled an end to the mid-century consensus that queer Portlanders were a threat to the wellbeing of the family, the city and the nation. Although city officials continued to target queerness through their anti-obscenity campaigns, the reporting no longer emphasized the harm that individual queer people could supposedly pose. While the discourse was shifting, the geography of where queer Portlanders gathered and socialized also began to change and expand. Urban renewal projects that began during the middle of the decade forced the closure of the southernmost queer bars in downtown, thereby shrinking the working-class queer bar district. While the working-class district lost territory, the middle-class bar district grew and a new queer nightlife district emerged in Old Town, to the north of Burnside Street. This movement and growth was likely spurred on by changes in local and national discourses that created an environment where more Portlanders could express their sexuality in public life. Unlike the most notorious cities such as San Francisco and New York, the history of Portland’s queer population during the 1960s was not marked by increasing radicalism and political action. There were no riots outside of The Other Inn or Riptide as there were at the Black Cat or the Stonewall Inn. There also were no political organizations to push for a radical break from the conservative politics of the homophile movement, as there were in Philadelphia and New York.256 Therefore, the connection between the oppression and generalized silence of the 1950s and the liberatory politics that would sweep across the city’s queer culture after 1970 can seem much more sudden than it did in large 256 Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 259-286; D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, 196-219. 163 American cities. Yet, queer Portlanders and the city’s treatment of them certainly faced a transitionary period between 1964 and 1970. It just looked a whole lot different from the late 1960s histories that are accounted for in the prevailing scholarship. 164 Chapter Six “It’s Up to Us, Now”: Gay Liberation and the Remaking of Portland’s Queer Community, 1970-1974 In February 1970, an anonymous man submitted a classified ad to The Willamette Bridge, which had become Portland’s central underground newspaper for the city’s thriving counterculture.257 The ad read, “Gay longhair, young, lonely, seeks meaningful relationship with same. Answer with ad in the Bridge.”258 Unbeknownst by the man who wrote it, this ad served as the catalyst for the formation of Portland’s Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the city’s first organized queer political group. The Portland GLF was inspired by different “gay liberation” groups across the country, which first crystallized in the summer of 1969 following the Stonewall riots in New York City. The political goals of gay liberation differed from the earlier homophile movement in that they rejected respectability politics and assimilation in favor of political goals that sought to make space in society for existing queerness and self-expression. Gay liberation built on the ideals of the burgeoning counterculture to reject heterosexism, the gender binary, and the prevailing silence of queer persons in society. On top of these guiding ideals, gay liberation politics also tended to reject capitalism, racism, and militarism as part of their 257 Throughout this chapter I use “counterculture” and the “New Left” in distinct, yet overlapping, ways. While both terms are highly contested and do not stand for a cohesive entity, they represent important intellectual and cultural developments during the mid-late 1960s. I use “counterculture” to broadly refer to the anti-establishment cultural and political milieu of the late 1960s, while I use “New Left” to refer to the organized political actions that paralleled the counterculture, including the anti-war movement and the Black Power movement. Neither of these terms is mutually exclusive, and there is a substantial amount of overlap between them. 258 John Wilkinson, “Dear Gay, Young, & Lonely,” The Willamette Bridge, February 6, 1970. 165 greater alignment with the counterculture and the politics of the New Left.259 The political goals of gay liberation differed from the earlier homophile movement in that they rejected respectability politics and assimilation in favor of political goals that sought to make space in society for existing queerness and self-expression. By early 1970, gay liberation had arrived in Portland, beginning a period of cultural and political transformation that reconfigured the dynamics of Portland’s queer culture. The Portland Gay Liberation Front arose out of the city’s thriving countercultural milieu, rather than out of existing queer spaces. The GLF was short-lived and soon splintered due to conflicting ideologies between gay men and lesbian women. From this separation, queer Portlanders began to organize and socialize more exclusively along gendered lines. Queer women started to coalesce in East Portland, while men continued to gather in downtown. While the city’s queer culture fractured along gendered lines, the class-based divisions that had predominated in the 1950s and 1960s became less defined. By 1974, the landscape of queer life in the city had become virtually unrecognizable compared to just a decade earlier— queer men and women were less likely to interact in the same spaces, numerous organizations had grown to try to improve the lives of queer Portlanders, and the leaders of these organizations encouraged the development of a shared community identity. For these reasons, the arrival, growth, and maturation of gay liberation politics in the city ultimately refounded the bounds of queer life in Portland. The Beginnings of Liberation Politics Although small politically-oriented groups of queer Portlanders had fleetingly 259 Craig A. Rimmerman, The Lesbian and Gay Movements: Assimilation or Liberation?, 2nd ed., Dilemmas in American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), 22-24. 166 existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Portland Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the first queer organization in the city to outwardly advertise itself and engage in direct political action. The Portland GLF was founded in March 1970, nine months after the first Gay Liberation Front in New York City was established. Although it only thrived for a year, the Portland GLF served as the foundation, however shaky it may have been, for queer organizing in the city. Moreover, the rise of the GLF signified a turn away from the homophile politics that had defined the glimmers of activism in the previous decade. No longer interested in respectability politics that insisted on assimilation, the GLF and subsequent organizations in the early 1970s channeled countercultural ideals that emphasized the unique gay and lesbian experience and the problems of societal homophobia. Gay liberationist ideology had its roots in what has widely been called the “Sixties Counterculture.” The “counterculture” is such an expansive term that it encompassed everything from Beatlemania to the hippie movement to the Black Panther Party. Many of those movements which historians have considered part of the “Sixties Counterculture” were also part of the New Left, which has been used to describe the political activism that accompanied such countercultural resistance.260 Importantly, the counterculture was not a distinct movement, nor did it have a distinct beginning. According to historians Peter Braunstein and Michael Doyle, “The Sixties counterculture in the United States didn’t come out of nowhere; it appeared gradually as a ripening of popular discontent over America’s shrill postwar triumphalism.” The counterculture of 260 See Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, “Historicizing the American Counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s,” in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & ’70s (New York: Routledge, 2002), 5-14. 167 the late 1960s grew out of a longer process of resistance that pushed back against societal oppressions and the cultural and political consensus of the postwar world. Those involved in countercultural activities sought to create radical change in American society by confronting issues like sexism, anti-Black racism, and American imperialism. While historians (including myself) refer to “the counterculture” as a unified whole out of simplicity, in reality, it was really a loose collection of movements and political organizations that often conflicted and only truly shared the fact that they were opposed to “establishment” conservatism.261 The gay liberation movement was fundamentally an extension of counterculture politics and culture. As discussed briefly in the previous chapter, the gay liberation movement grew out of a long process of increasing radical queer political action during the late 1960s. Much of this radical political action departed from the respectability politics of the homophile movement, instead turning to form political coalitions and networks with the developing Black Power and feminist movements. In this way, the earliest roots of gay liberation were entwined with the developing counterculture. Then, following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, gay liberationist ideology was introduced into the countercultural milieu of American cities. Within a month of the riots, a group of radical queer activists in New York decided to found the first Gay Liberation Front. By deciding on “Gay Liberation Front” as the name for their organization and the movement, these activists evoked the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, thereby tying their movement to broader countercultural resistance to the Vietnam War. Within several months, numerous Gay Liberation Fronts had emerged across the United States, propelled on by a 261 Ibid. 168 network of underground counterculture newspapers and queer communications.262 While Portland was not its epicenter, the cultural resistance that defined what has been amorphously described as the “Sixties Counterculture” certainly shaped the lives of Portlanders, particularly those who were younger. A start date for the counterculture in Portland is impossible to ascertain, as there was no set point when the counterculture “arrived.” By 1968, however, a collective identity of being “liberal” and “antiestablishment” had developed among many young Portlanders. In June 1968, a group of students, New Left activists, and local countercultural leaders established The Willamette Bridge (The Bridge), a newspaper to “provide a means by which Portland’s various liberal groups can learn of each other’s activities.”263 While individuals were mostly invested in their own portion of the counterculture, whatever that may have been, The Bridge served to connect all of these individuals via a newspaper. Ads, a bi-weekly calendar, and a relatively liberal publishing policy allowed Portlanders to foster connections across countercultural organizations and movements. However progressive it was, The Bridge did not discuss homosexuality at all for the first two years of its lifespan. But, this was most likely due to the absence of queer organizing in the city, rather than because of overt homophobia. In 1970, The Bridge would serve to be a critical asset in the formation of Portland’s first queer political organization, the Gay Liberation Front. Inspired directly by the actions of the Berkeley Gay Liberation Front, as well as others that had cropped up across the country, young queer Portlanders sought to create their own organization in March 1970, following the publication of a classified ad by a 262 Emily K Hobson, Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 20-26. 263 “Welcome,” The Willamette Bridge, June 7, 1968. 169 man who identified as, “Gay longhair, young, [and] lonely,” who was looking for other gay men to reach out to him. While the ad was most likely intended to foster sexual and romantic connections, young queer Portlanders involved in The Bridge and New Left activism took the ad to mean that there was a need for queer organizing in the city. In response to the ad, John Wilkinson, who was a photographer for The Bridge, wrote, “What’s important is that gay life in Portland stinks, and so does gay life in Seattle, and New York, and San Francisco.” Wilkinson continued, “So finally, it’s our own caution which you and I must overcome. The Gay Liberation Front in other cities is one vehicle by which homosexuals can become free . . . But there is not Gay Liberation Front in Portland. It’s up to us, now, to gain the courage to live our lives as we are.” Wilkinson concluded his response to the ad with a plea to queer readers to contact him if they wanted to begin organizing.264 Within a month, the Portland GLF had been formed under the leadership of Wilkinson, a gay Portland State student named Larry Dow, and Holly Hart, a lesbian woman who had been writing articles on Women’s Liberation for The Bridge. The Portland GLF, much like other Gay Liberation Fronts across the country, was fundamentally shaped by the national youth and student movements that were the foundation for New Left political activism in the United States. During the late 1960s, groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized college students and recent graduates around platforms that opposed the Vietnam War, supported Women’s Liberation, and mobilized thousands of young Americans in support of New Left activism. The founders of the Portland GLF, and its most active members, were all 264 Wilkinson, “Dear Gay, Young, & Lonely.” 170 involved in the youth and student movements before they founded the GLF. John Wilkinson had first become involved in student activism while studying at the University of Washington, before he dropped out and migrated to Portland in 1969 to start living his life openly as a gay man. He then became a photographer for The Bridge, which tied him to the city’s counterculture and its New Left politics. Holly Hart, another one of the GLF’s founders, had been a student at Reed College in Southeast Portland during the mid-late 1960s. In 1968, she took a year off of school and became an organizer with an SDS chapter in Chicago, before returning and graduating in 1969.265 Therefore, upon its founding, the Portland GLF was substantially influenced by the political goals of the New Left and student movements, as well as the broader counterculture. The Portland GLF was also significantly shaped by the women’s liberation movement, which had started to take off in Portland right around the same time that the GLF began. The national women’s liberation movement grew out of the revitalization and reconfiguration of feminist thought that took place in the mid-1960s. Initially, these new Sixties feminists adopted a civil rights model, pushing for the direct equality of women under the law. But over the course of the decade, a more radical feminist movement developed alongside the radicalization of the civil rights movement. By 1967, distinct women’s liberation organizations were cropping up across the United States. These new women’s liberationists shared the anti-imperialist and anti-establishment ideals of the New Left’s student movement and believed in comprehensive social and cultural change. For those in the women’s liberation movement, it was critical that their 265 Interview with David Davenport and John Wilkinson, interview by Larry Knopp and Rogers Winters, July 23, 2003, GLAPN.org, https://www.glapn.org/6047WilkinsonInterview.html; “Souvenir of Portland,” The Willamette Bridge, October 24, 1969; and Oral history interview with Holly Hart, interview by James Loos and Winter Drews, November 14, 2000, SR 4145, Oregon Historical Society Research Library 171 actions were directed at deconstructing the predominance of patriarchy and sexual hierarchies in American society. And notably, unlike the more conservative civil rights feminists, women’s liberationists were much more likely to support lesbians and female homosexuality.266 Much like the gay liberation movement, women’s liberation was slow to arrive in Portland. Based on articles in The Bridge, women’s liberationists appear to have first begun to come together and organize in the city in 1969. In a January 1970 article, a woman named Sandy Kosokoff declared, “Women’s Liberation is alive and growing all over the U.S. and Canada and now in Portland too.”267 Among the women who were the earliest members of the Portland GLF, the vast majority of them were also involved in the city’s women’s liberation movement. For example, Holly Hart was one of the primary organizers for Portland’s women’s liberation groups before acknowledging her own sexuality and joining with Wilkinson to form the Portland GLF.268 Due to its ideological foundations in the New Left and the women’s liberation movement, the Portland GLF’s approach to the problem of queer life in the city was fundamentally cultural in its approach. While the New Left’s youth and student movements fought for official government action, like ending the draft and the war in Vietnam, most of their politics focused on changing cultural norms that reinforced hierarchies in American society. As Doug Rossinow, a historian of the New Left has put it, “In the second half of the 1960s, New Left radicals came to believe that cultural activism was their most certain path to creating significant political change in the United States. Two convictions were planted deep in their consciousness: that culture mattered 266 Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 23-65. 267 Sandy Kosokoff, “Women’s Liberation,” The Willamette Bridge, January 16, 1970. 268 Oral history interview with Holly Hart. 172 politically . . .; and that they could shape the culture.”269 For those that considered themselves a part of the New Left, including the leaders of the Portland GLF, changing culture was necessarily a political act. For these activists, politics was not limited to voting or even protesting. Political action included everyday acts like forming discussion groups, holding social gatherings, and encouraging community development. Because of this, the GLF took a cultural approach to organizing and political action, rather than immediately pushing for laws to be changed. Of greatest concern for members of the Portland GLF was a lack of community space where queer men and women could come together to talk about what it was like to be gay. While it had other political goals, the GLF founding concern was to foster supportive community between queer Portlanders. The leaders sought to make the weekly meetings of the GLF the site for that community formation, and then encouraged further action based on the goals of the community.270 In their pursuit of creating supportive and inclusive spaces for queer Portlanders, the GLF rejected the predominance of the downtown bars in the city’s queer social scene. In his initial article calling for the formation of a Portland Gay Liberation Front, Wilkinson argued that, “There are the bars and the baths and the streets. That’s it: that’s the ‘gay’ life.” He continued, “The guile that we let ourselves get pulled into in the bars is so stifling, so overwhelming, that it takes an actual physical effort to try to overcome it. The effort is rarely rewarded: the effort becomes pointless, and finally trivial.”271 This anti-bar attitude was not limited to Wilkinson. In July 1970, once the GLF had been 269 Doug Rossinow, “‘The Revolution Is About Our Lives’: The New Left’s Counterculture,” in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & ’70s, ed. Michael William Doyle and Peter Braunstein (New York: Routledge, 2002), 101. 270 Wilkinson, “Dear Gay, Young, & Lonely”; and John Wilkinson, “Gay Liberation in Portland,” The Willamette Bridge, March 13, 1970. 271 Wilkinson, “Dear Gay, Young, & Lonely.” 173 meeting regularly for several months, Hart and other women involved in the GLF wrote an article in The Bridge to encourage more women to come to the meetings. In that article, they wrote, “So we are scared of gay bars because we are afraid of each other— ‘we’re all sick, aren’t we?’ ‘What will it be like— to go home with someone?’” For Hart, this problem was created, “because the atmosphere of the bars perpetuate[s] our bad feelings.”272 The Portland GLF rejected the bars, because—they believed—bars forced queer people to socialize in a space that facilitated anonymity and emotional distancing. In the downtown bars, men and women could meet others like them without any outward acknowledgement of a shared experience that they were “gay” or “lesbian.” In the minds of the GLF leaders, the existing spaces foreclosed the possibility of community and political action because they facilitated anonymous sexual connections, rather than interpersonal relationships founded on emotionality. Moreover, as the GLF leaders were mostly in their early twenties, the fact that bars were limited to queer Portlanders over the age of 21 was another motivating factor.273 By all indications, the GLF failed to draw in queer Portlanders who had been involved in the bars and the homophile activism of the previous decade. Although the GLF had valid reasons to question the predominance of bars in Portland’s queer social scene, their aversion to the bars limited their ability to reach out to the queer population in the bar districts. Partially due to its reticence to connect themselves to the bar-based community, the Portland GLF was ultimately an organization by and for young, middle-class, white queer people. For the GLF, the solution to the lack of spaces (other than bars) was to make their 272 Holly Hart, “We’re Coming Out!!! Portland Gay Liberation,” The Willamette Bridge, July 17, 1970. John Wilkinson, “Gay Liberation,” The Willamette Bridge, March 27, 1970; and Jayden Dirk, “‘There Is No Place in the City:’ Queer Youth, the Counterculture, and Portland’s Early Gay Rights Movement, 19681974,” GLAPN.org, December 2019, http://glapn.org/6067EarlyLGBTQYouth.html. 273 174 weekly meetings into a new social space for queer Portlanders. The GLF’s gatherings, from its very first meeting onward, were held at the Ninth Street Exit, a coffeehouse that was sponsored by the Centenary-Wilbur Church in Southeast Portland. The first few meetings were devoted to figuring out what the organization wanted to do, and how to do it. During these inaugural meetings, approximately 50 men and women showed up to join the group.274 For the first few months that the GLF was active, meetings were held on Tuesday nights and were a mix of organizational business and socialization. The political intent of the meetings was largely to engage in “consciousness raising,” a practice derived from the feminist and women’s liberation movements. Consciousness raising was the term given to the idea that individuals should regularly come together in small groups to discuss their experiences. The belief was that through regular discussion groups, one could come out of the isolation caused by societal oppression. The practice originated among radical feminists to increase women’s awareness of the impact of sexism and patriarchy on their lives, but it extended to gay liberation groups across the country.275 In July 1970, the leadership decided to host two different meetings: one for men on Monday nights, and one for women on Tuesday nights. In deciding to split the socializing portion of the group into two, the GLF leadership recognized that gay men and lesbian women faced different hardships arising from societal homophobia and heterosexism. This decision was likely encouraged by the queer women in the GLF, most of whom were also 274 Wilkinson, “Gay Liberation in Portland”; and Wilkinson, “Gay Liberation.” Articles written by the men in the GLF rarely called their meetings “consciousness raising,” but the ideals of the practice were expressed. See, Ibid.; Oral history interview with Holly Hart; “Small Groups (Again!),” The Willamette Bridge, June 9, 1970; Hart, “We’re Coming Out!!!.” On consciousness raising during the late 1960s, see, Debra Michals, “From ‘Consciousness Expansion’ to ‘Consciousness Raising’: Feminism and the Countercultural Politics of the Self,” in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s & ’70s, ed. Michael William Doyle and Peter Braunstein (New York: Routledge, 2002), 41-68; and Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 83-84. 275 175 involved in the growing women’s liberation movement in Portland. This structure, of two weekly meetings separated by gender, continued throughout 1970 until the group began to splinter at the end of the year.276 While the weekly meetings and consciousness raising were a substantial part of the GLF’s political mission, the organization also engaged in direct political action in Portland. The first issue that the GLF pushed to address was the ongoing draft for the Vietnam War and the homosexual’s relationship to the draft. This issue was pushed to the forefront by some of the early men in the organization, who had learned how to avoid the draft by declaring that they were homosexual, and thereby uneligible for military service under American law.277 Motivated by their general anti-war stance and desire to support gay men in any way possible, the GLF coordinated with the Koinonia House, a peaceactivist Christian ministry on the Portland State University campus, to establish draft counseling specifically for Portland gay men.278 In this way, the Portland GLF reflected the activism of the San Francisco Gay Liberation Front, which also oriented its politics around the problem of the Vietnam War and the draft.279 Another form of political action that the Portland GLF engaged with was protesting and picketing. In the summer of 1970, Mart Crowley’s film The Boys in the Band arrived in Portland theaters. The film was significant for its open depiction of a group of gay men and their relationships to one another. To the members of the Portland 276 John Wilkinson, “A Place to Go,” The Willamette Bridge, July 17, 1970. John Wilkinson’s partner, David Davenport, who was involved in the GLF from the first meeting onward had used this strategy earlier in 1969 when his name had been called for the draft. See, Interview with David Davenport and John Wilkinson, https://www.glapn.org/6047WilkinsonInterview.html. 278 “Draft Counseling,” The Willamette Bridge, April 24, 1970; and “Come N’ Get It!,” The Willamette Bridge, June 12, 1970. 279 Hobson, Lavender and Red, 28. 277 176 GLF, however, the depiction of homosexuality in the film relied too heavily on stereotypes of gay men as “bitchy” and “sociopathic.” So, when it began showing in Portland theaters, members of the GLF picketed outside and passed out pamphlets that announced their presence and criticized the film.280 Of perhaps greatest significance, the GLF also worked to increase the amount of information about homosexuality in the city’s public media. Both queer men and women published articles in The Bridge that explored the social conditions of homosexual Americans, spreading that information throughout the city’s broader countercultural community. But, this did not actually mean that more “straight” Portlanders were learning about homosexuality. To reach a broader audience, the GLF began to reach out to television and radio stations, as well as local progressive church groups to talk about who they were and what they were doing. Through this process, both men and women in the GLF were able to interject gay liberation ideas into mainstream facets of Portland society.281 However much momentum it may have had in the summer of 1970, the Portland GLF soon lost its organizational strength due to infighting between men and women in the organization. As suggested by the decision to create separate meetings for men and women, gender had been an important identity for members of the GLF to consider. Many of the women who became members of the GLF were first involved with women’s 280 “Bull!,” The Willamette Bridge, July 3, 1970; and Interview with David Davenport and John Wilkinson, https://www.glapn.org/6047WilkinsonInterview.html. 281 For articles in The Bridge, see, for example, Ellen Breiter, “In Ancient Greece You Were ‘Queer’ If You Weren’t Homosexual,” The Willamette Bridge, May 29, 1970; David Davenport, “I Was a Teenage Homosexual,” The Willamette Bridge, July 17, 1970; and Ken Allison, “Questions and Answers,” The Willamette Bridge, October 16, 1970. On radio, television, and public presentations, see Interview with David Davenport and John Wilkinson; and Oral history interview with Holly Hart. 177 liberation groups in Portland. Women’s liberation fundamentally relied on the premise that women were limited by social and structural inequalities that rested on gender and sexual hierarchies. Believing that women would never be able to reach an equal footing in society without overcoming the inherent power difference between men and women, women’s liberationists believed that it was necessary to separate from men, at least in many facets of their life.282 Thus, with this belief in their minds, queer women in the GLF were prone to supporting distinct spaces and meetings for themselves, without men present. At first, this did not prevent them from organizing with the men—queer women and men worked together to establish the GLF and frame political action. By October 1970, however, the tone had shifted and queer women began to push for greater involvement in the women’s liberation movement and separation from their maleidentifying counterparts. On October 27, at the weekly Tuesday night meeting for GLF women in the Ninth Street Exit, a verbal argument between gay men and lesbian women broke out. Male members of the GLF had been showing up to the Tuesday night meetings, rendering those meetings no longer a female-exclusive space. The women who were present insisted that the space was theirs for the night, and they asked the men to promptly leave. The men refused, and insisted that they be allowed to stay, as the GLF was for all homosexual people. Eventually the men left, but the scenario forced the women in the GLF to contemplate how to move forward. In the November 6 issue of The Willamette Bridge, numerous queer women wrote articles expressing their desire to separate from the 282 While full on lesbian separatism had not really developed as of 1970, the foundations of feminist separatism had been articulated by national groups like Cell 16. See, Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 158-164, 228-241. 178 GLF to form their own group for lesbian women. In one of these articles, a woman named Vivian Estellachild wrote, “You [gay men] are trying to fool gay women into believing that our oppression comes only from straight people. That gay women and men are oppressed in the same ways. Gay women will only be liberated when all women are liberated. . . . I believe that we as gay women must separate ourselves from the gay men.”283 The sentiments expressed by Estellachild were shared by many of the other GLF women. With separation now seen as an imperative for queer women in Portland, the women of the GLF soon distanced themselves from the GLF and formed a new group called Gay Women’s Liberation. At first, not much changed. The GLF, now constituted wholly of men, continued to meet on Monday nights; Gay Women’s Liberation continued to meet on Tuesday nights. Over the course of 1971, however, both groups became distinct from one another. At the beginning of 1971, the GLF hosted a series of reorganization meetings to figure out how to proceed. While the details of this “reorganization” are not apparent, it seems that the organization decided to continue holding weekly meetings at the Ninth Street Exit. They also decided to continue focusing on gay draft counseling, and soon started a phoneline called Gay Switch, through which queer Portlanders could find someone to talk to, receive both draft and psychological counseling, and could seek out information about gay-friendly housing and employment.284 Despite these activities, the loss of women from the GLF substantially hindered their organizational momentum. Over the course of the first half of 1971, reporting about the GLF in The Willamette Bridge 283 Vivian Estellachild, “Sugar and Spice...and Anger,” The Willamette Bridge, November 6, 1970. Gay Liberation Front ad, The Willamette Bridge, January 7, 1971; “Gay Draft,” The Willamette Bridge, February 18, 1971; and “Gay Switch,” The Willamette Bridge, April 1, 1971. 284 179 gradually decreased. The GLF stopped advertising meetings and writing articles for the newspaper. The splintering of the group along gender lines in October 1970, combined with the rise of other gay male organizations like the Second Foundation and a Portland State University Gay Liberation Front, pushed the original GLF into the background and out of the spotlight. Although the GLF survived in some incarnation until 1978, it never regained its prominence in Portland’s queer community.285 Much like the GLF, the women in Gay Women’s Liberation needed to reorganize and establish new priorities. They continued to meet on Tuesday nights at the Ninth Street Exit for an at-large gathering for the whole organization. But, they also began meeting on Monday and Wednesday nights. On Mondays, small groups of queer women got together to discuss lesbian identity, functionally an extension of consciousness raising practices that were widespread within the local women’s liberation movement. On Wednesdays, an organizational business meeting was held, followed by further socializing. Through the increased attention to consciousness raising and community formation, Gay Women’s Liberation fostered stronger connections with the city’s larger feminist movements. In January 1971, the organization opened the Gay Women’s Center in Northeast Portland. The center was intended to be a place where “Portland women, both straight and gay, can put a lot of creative energies to work.” Plans for the center included a feminist library, a counseling center, and meeting rooms.286 Similar to the GLF, Gay Women’s Liberation seems to have had a lot of momentum right after their 285 As of the June 10, 1971 issue of The Willamette Bridge, the GLF had stopped advertising its meetings in the weekly calendar. For information on the GLF after 1971, see Roger Troen Gay Liberation Collection, Box 1, MS 2988-2, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, which contains documents produced by the GLF from 1972 to 1978. 286 “Gay Women’s Liberation,” The Willamette Bridge, January 21, 1971. 180 separation from gay men, but by June 1971, they disappeared from the historical record. Cindy Cumfer, who had been involved in women’s liberation and the GLF before the split, came back to Portland from graduating college in June 1971 and found that, “a lot of the gay stuff had seemed to have vanished” since she had left.287 While queer women surely did not “vanish,” they largely ingrained themselves in the feminist and women’s liberation movements, rather than returning to gay organizing. The Portland Gay Liberation Front, however shortlived it may have been, dramatically transformed the landscape of queer political organizing in Portland. Before Wilkinson started to push for the creation of a gay liberation group in March 1970, the city had not had an organization that challenged the prevailing homophobia in local and national society. While individual homophile activists had tried their best to get something going, it was not until the first meeting of the GLF in 1970 that a formal organization was able to make its stand for the rights and equal treatment of queer Portlanders. The GLF signified a break from the queer subcultures of the 1950s and 1960s, however. They rejected the preeminence of the bars, hoped to live openly and proudly, and were young, college-educated activists. Although the reach of the GLF was limited to those Portlanders who were engaged in New Left politics, it brought the city’s queer culture out of the shadows and promoted the development of community institutions and support networks. The split between gay men and women that led to the crumbling of the GLF inadvertently created a gendered division in the development of queer community during the following three years. Lesbian women tended to put their weight behind the women’s liberation movement and the growing women’s community 287 Oral history interview with Cindy Cumfer, interview by Erik Funkhouser and Tim Aguirre, 2009, SR 11289, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. 181 in Southeast Portland. And gay men, on the other hand, became involved in The Second Foundation, a more moderate and reform-oriented organization that fostered connections with the existing downtown bar-based subcultures. Unexpectedly, the rise of gay political organizing in Portland inadvertently served to exacerbate divisions between queer men and women, while weakening the segregation created by class dynamics during the 1950s and 1960s. Women’s Liberation and the Making of a (Queer) Women’s Community During the late 1960s, Southeast Portland—across the Willamette River from downtown— became the center of the city’s burgeoning women’s liberation movement and the community formation that accompanied it. By 1970, the West Coast was perceived by many young Americans to be the best place to go to engage in New Left activism. Barbara Bernstein, a queer rights activist in Portland from 1970 onwards, recounted in an oral interview about her activism that, “I was going to college in New York at Barnard College, in the late 60’s, early 70’s, and it was time to get out of New York, and everybody on the east coast, it seemed, was headed west.”288 While Portland did not have the same degree of notoriety among young female students like other Western cities such as San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., many of these college-aged women ended up settling in the Rose City. These women, most of whom identified as feminists and liberationists, tended to find housing in southeast Portland, a center for much of the New Left and countercultural activities going on in the city. Following the breakdown of the Gay Liberation Front in October 1970, the queer women who had 288 Oral history interview with Barbara Bernstein, interview by Catherine Meyers and Sheana Corbridge, February 28, 2013, SR 11361, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. 182 belonged to the organization shifted their activities to align with the feminist and women’s liberation movements, thereby pulling the center of lesbian culture in the city from downtown to southeast Portland. As mentioned briefly above, younger queer women in Portland were significantly motivated by the city’s burgeoning feminist movement. Committed to the fundamental principles of women’s liberation, queer women believed that it was essential that all Portland women come together to support one another through community spaces and events. Historian Anne Enke argues that public geography and the availability of public spaces to women was a primary concern for second-wave feminists during the late 1960s and early 1970s.289 This held true in Portland, where local feminists—including queer women—were especially focused on founding spaces that could promote community between women. The quick establishment of the Gay Women’s Center following the fracturing of the GLF suggests that securing community space was a primary concern for those women who left the GLF. Over the course of the following years, and throughout the 1970s, many Portland queer women integrated themselves into the city’s feminist movement and women’s community while concurrently insuring that there were spaces where they could openly express their sexuality with other women. Not all women in Portland’s feminist community identified as lesbian, but a disproportionate segment of the community certainly did. Many queer women did not realize that they were lesbian (or bisexual) until after they were introduced to the women’s liberation movement. Although there were some men involved in feminist activities at the time, for the most part, the women’s liberation movement created 289 Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 8-22. 183 homosocial spaces where women predominately interacted with other women. Intimate discussions and emotionality were central to the ideals of women’s liberation, so women often found themselves fostering close relationships with other women in ways that they had not before. Portland women who came to realize that they were lesbian through their experiences with 1970s feminism were not a historical anomaly. Lillian Faderman, a historian of lesbian culture, holds that, “Many lesbian-feminists had discovered lesbianism through the radical feminist movement. They were often women in their twenties who had grown up in the era of the flower child and had learned to approach life with passion and idealism.” Within the greater feminist movement of the early 1970s, Faderman argues, “not only was love between women . . . destigmatized among [feminist activists]: it was ‘aristocraticized.’”290 As part of a subculture that idealized relationships between women, queer women who were a part of Portland’s feminist movement found themselves in a supportive, welcoming community.291 With historically unprecedented communal support behind them, these queer women were able to acknowledge their sexuality and live their lives openly. Many of the queer women who became involved in the women’s community in Southeast Portland were first introduced through communalist housing situations. When young women decided to come to Portland for its New Left activism, they often decided to live in houses with other women. For those who shared housing during this period, the decision to do so was not simply made out of necessity or convenience. There was a large degree of intentionality behind the arrangement. Portland women involved in the feminist 290 Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, 216. Oral history interview with Ann Mussey, interview by Justine Larson and Brooke Welch, November 13, 2000, SR 4148, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. 291 184 movement believed that living together and sharing resources was essential to liberating women in society. Ann Mussey, a lesbian feminist who was involved in women’s liberation recounted how, for those involved, “This was really important time in our lives and we were doing something that was politically conscious. You know, we were making this conscious choice to live as a collective group of people.”292 Within these communal homes, women shared all money that they made, shared clothing, and refused to claim individual rooms as “their own.” These communalist houses tended to adopt names that communicated their political and/or geographic location. For example, Mussey’s house was called “Red Emma,” after Emma Goldman, an early twentieth-century anarchist and feminist.293 Although many of the women who lived in the communal houses did not identify as lesbian, for those who were queer, it was an important site for the development of their identity. Within Southeast Portland, there was an extensive network of communal houses that interacted with one another, yielding greater connections between queer women in the community.294 Beginning a year after the GLF splintered, women involved in Portland’s women’s liberation community sought to establish critical services for other women in the city. While these resources were not specifically meant for lesbian women, many of the women who established them identified as lesbian and sought to make those spaces available to queer women. In 1971, the Women’s Health Clinic was founded by several members of the southeast Portland women’s community. The Women’s Health Clinic opened on Southeast Hawthorne Street, just several blocks away from the “Red Emma” 292 Ibid. Ibid. For more on communal housing within the feminist community see, Oral history interview with Barbara Bernstein; Oral history interview with Cindy Cumfer; and Oral history interview with Holly Hart. 294 Oral history interview with Ann Mussey. 293 185 house and many of the other feminist communal houses. Initially, the clinic’s main service was providing pregnancy tests. During its first year of service, the clinic was responsible for conducting half of the city’s pregnancy tests, outpacing all of the hospitals in the region.295 In 1972, Anne Mussey and other members of “Red Emma” founded the Prescott House in Northeast Portland. The Prescott House was established as a “halfway house for women who were leaving prison and transitioning to society.” Mussey and her fellow liberationists gathered the funds to rent the house, set it up with furniture and decorations, and coordinated the operations and fundraising of the organization. The Prescott House survived for a couple years, before closing down due to a lack of funding and support for the program. While the Prescott House did not last, members of “Red Emma” later established the Bradley-Angle House in 1975 to provide a shelter for women facing domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence.296 The Women’s Health Clinic and the Prescott House exemplify how community services and resources were integral to the formation and foundation of the local women’s liberation community. While the resources were not explicitly for lesbian women, Bernstein (who worked at the Women’s Health Clinc) remembers how lesbian Portlanders were extensively involved in these early service organizations: “I was a lesbian, and the last thing on my mind was getting pregnant . . . . So that was kind of interesting, that a lot of lesbians were involved with women’s rights that had nothing to do with lesbian issues.”297 Queer women who were involved in the feminist and women’s 295 Ibid.; Oral history interview with Barbara Bernstein; and Milly Wohler, “Women’s Clinic Provides Non-Medical Service, Chance to Talk,” The Oregonian, July 3, 1972 296 Oral history interview with Ann Mussey; Pat Young et al., “Oregon LGBTQ Timeline Starting in 1970,” GLAPN.org, May 11, 2016, https://www.glapn.org/6022TimelineSince1970.html; “The Women at Prescott House,” The Fountain, July 1972. 297 Oral history interview with Barbara Bernstein. 186 liberation community were not necessarily focused on improving the status of homosexuality in society. For them, it was much more important to address the treatment of women, regardless of any other identities. While the service organizations that took root in the early 1970s were not directly intended to be community spaces, their very existence served to draw women into the community while concurrently advancing the fight against heterosexism.298 Portland women also actively established businesses that allowed for the creation of additional spaces outside of communal homes and resources. In 1973, members of the women’s liberation community established a bookstore called A Woman’s Place on Southeast Grand Avenue. Initially, there was a goal of establishing a separate resource center, but due to funding, the women decided to establish A Woman’s Place— which doubled as both a bookstore and resource center. Although the bookstore was not primarily meant for lesbian women, they quickly became a major customer base and several queer women worked there. Cindy Cumfer remembers how A Woman’s Place “was really quite a success”, and was even “making money,” which was unusual for businesses that arose out of New Left activism. While outwardly just a shop, A Woman’s Place hosted a number of different events, such as readings, speakers, and workshops that drew more women together.299 Beyond retail, women’s liberationists also established other commercial spaces where community could develop. Of particular prominence in the historical memory of Portlanders was the Mountain Moving Café—a coffeehouse in Southeast Portland. It 298 See Chapter Five in Enke, Finding the Movement, 177-216 for more on how service-based spaces were integral to the formation of women’s communities in St. Paul and Detroit. 299 Oral history interview with Cindy Cumfer. 187 opened in 1974 under the collective ownership and management of several different people with connections to New Left activism and the women’s liberation community. Mountain Moving served food and coffee drinks throughout the day, functioning as a social space for those in the women’s liberation community. The café also had a stage at the front of the building where performers, speakers, and musicians would entertain customers and community members nightly. While the Mountain Moving Café was not a queer space, it did provide a welcoming space for queer Portlanders with connections to women’s liberation. Many of the founders, as well as customers, identified as gay or lesbian and used the space to support queer organizations throughout the second half of the 1970s.300 Commercial venues like A Woman’s Place and the Mountain Moving Café served to help foster community by establishing public social spaces where Portland’s feminist population, including many lesbians and some gay men, could gather. It is important to emphasize that the women’s liberation community was not suddenly the center of life for all queer women in Portland. The vast majority of women who participated in women’s liberation in Southeast Portland were in their twenties, and were white and of a middle-class background. As with the GLF, the core members of the women’s community in Portland were college students or recent graduates, so the community was also highly educated. Many women came to Portland from out-of-state colleges, but some, including Holly Hart, were students at Reed College or Portland State 300 Oral history interview with Ellen Goldberg, interview by Annica Eagle and Spencer Trueax, February 24, 2011, SR 11235, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; Mountain Moving Café Calendar, February 1976, Personal Collection of Kristan Knapp. For memory of Mountain Moving Café see, Oral history interview with Ann Mussey; and Oral history interview with Sally Cohn, interview by Jade Davis and Erin Babcock Musick, February 8, 2011, SR 11237, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. 188 University.301 This contrasted sharply with the city’s existing lesbian culture—which tended to be working-class. Ann Mussey, who came to Portland in 1971 from Grinnell College in Iowa, recounted in an interview how, “Most of us [lesbian feminists] were educated. Most of us were middle-class or even more privileged than that.” Over time, however, more queer women who were older and working-class became involved in the women’s liberation community. Mussey remembers how she introduced some workingclass women to the goals of women’s liberation when she and her friends worked in various jobs to pay the bills for the Red Emma house. While working as a bed maker at a local hospital, Mussey “ended up meeting a woman making beds” who was named Cecilia, who she subsequently brought into the women’s liberation community. Mussey recounted how Cecilia “was different . . . in the sense that she was working class.”302 While feminist activism in the early 1970s centered on middle-class college graduates, the bounds of Portland’s feminist community gradually expanded. For the most part, the feminist community that developed in Southeast Portland continued to maintain a degree of distance from the bars. House parties were much more popular among feminists, largely because bars had traditionally been male-dominated spaces. For lesbian women involved in the feminist movement, however, bars continued to play an important role in queer socialization. Some lesbian and feminist bars continued to operate in downtown, even though the center of the community was across the Willamette River in Southeast Portland. In 1972, Cindy Cumfer and others sought to revitalize organizing for queer women by establishing the Gay Women’s Caucus. They 301 Oral history interview with Holly Hart; Teresa Hogan, “Women’s Lib,” The Willamette Bridge, February 6, 1969. 302 Oral history interview with Ann Mussey. 189 did this through engagement with the existing bar community. The founders put up posters advertising the group in all the downtown bars that were occupied by lesbian women. In an oral interview, Cumfer recounted how this advertising effort created an organization with interactions between socioeconomic classes: 60 women came, I’d say. And it was interesting, ‘cause it sort of split, I’d say, about half and half, between people like me who had been kind of college educated and were here from sort of that stream, and then women who came in through the bars who were probably more working class and just in a different set of, sort of the older set of norms about butch/femme, and just sort of a different set of rules.303 Although the Gay Women’s Caucus only survived for about six months, the efforts of lesbian feminists to enter into existing bar-based queer spaces helped bring more working-class lesbians into the women’s community. This was not restricted to political organizing, either. Ann Mussey remembers how, as she moved out of the “Red Emma” house and “started socializing in the bars,” she met other women who “became a part of the community.” She specifically remembers a woman nicknamed “Charlie Brown” who was a “working-class butch woman whose identity had really been formed in the bar communities.”304 Through direct friendships created within the bars, more and more working-class women became involved in the Southeast Portland lesbian and feminist communities. As this happened, the class divisions between queer women in Portland became less distinct. While queer men and women were no longer interacting in the same spaces— as had happened during the 1950s and 1960s—class became less of a deciding factor in what queer spaces one went to and who one interacted with. Over the course of the early 1970s, women’s liberationists—both queer and 303 304 Oral history interview with Cindy Cumfer. Oral history interview with Ann Mussey. 190 straight—fostered and promoted the creation of a distinct women’s community in southeast Portland. Through communal housing, service organizations, and retail spaces, these radical feminist women sought to create a culture and community where they could promote cooperation and support between women, while also working toward creating change that undermined the dominance of patriarchy. Importantly, lesbian women in Portland found welcoming spaces within the women’s liberation movement and the women’s community. By prioritizing the goals of women’s liberation, queer women in Portland pulled the center of lesbian socialization away from downtown to the southeast portion of the city. Although some gay men were present in these feminist spaces, for the most part queer women were no longer interacting with queer men to the same degree that they had been in the two decades prior. With this said, however, the women’s community in southeast Portland was able to breakdown the class divisions that had defined queer culture in the city during the 1950s and 1960s. The Second Foundation and the Development of a Gay Male Community In October 1970, several men who were involved in the Portland GLF, including George Oberg, Neil Hutchins, and Dennis Kennedy met to discuss their ideas for a new gay organization. They worried that the GLF was not doing enough, both politically and socially, to improve the lives of queer Portlanders and Oregonians. While the GLF had succeeded in bringing queer people out of the bars and into conversation with one another, the men believed that an organization with more structure and intentionality was essential. Seeking to create “something more organized,” these men (and others) decided to establish an organization called the Second Foundation at the end of 1970. The name for the organization came from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, although the reason 191 for this is not wholly apparent. The Second Foundation was established around the same time that the women in the GLF decided to separate to form Gay Women’s Liberation, but there is no indication that the two events were related to one another. By March 1971, the Second Foundation was formally registered as a non-profit, had a formal constitution, and had begun to publish a monthly newsletter called The Fountain.305 Between 1971 and 1974, the Second Foundation was the central organization for queer political activity in Portland. Its actions paralleled the activities of lesbian feminists in Southeast Portland, but unlike the women’s liberation community, the Second Foundation defined itself outwardly as a queer and homosexual organization. From the outset, the Second Foundation was ideologically more conservative than the GLF or the women’s liberation community. As described by George Nicola, a leading member of the Second Foundation, the organization was founded to create “a more structured, less radical, and more specifically goal-oriented group.”306 While it was certainly infused with a liberationist attitude, the Second Foundation also adopted the more hierarchical and organized approach of its homophile predecessors. Rather than emphasizing the need for consciousness raising and countercultural unity, members believed that direct political action through lobbying, policy work, and public education were essential to changing the treatment of queer people in local and national culture. As the members of the GLF and women’s liberationists had done, the Second Foundation also continued to seek out new spaces for queer socialization and community 305 Interview with George Nicola, interview by Michael Bell and Lisa Donnelly, February 14, 2009, GLAPN.org, https://glapn.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/glapn_oralhistory_georgenicola.pdf; Oral history interview with George Oberg, interview by Brian Aune and Heather Burmeister, February 18, 2009, SR 11293, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; and “In the Beginning…,” The Fountain, March 1971. 306 George Nichols [Nicola], “Gay Organizers Seek Social Change,” Portland Scribe, March 14, 1972. 192 development. Guided less by the ideals of New Left activism and the youth movement, the Second Foundation was able to separate itself from the city’s countercultural milieu to establish an organization expressly meant to improve both the legal and social status of homosexuals, while concurrently providing resources and spaces to queer Portlanders. Much like the women’s liberation community, the Second Foundation did not have a lot of mixing between queer men and women. The vast majority of its leaders and members, as well as The Fountain’s readership, were gay men. Although there was some participation by the opposite sex, similar to the women’s liberation community, the Second Foundation was consistently male-dominated. In December 1971, The Fountain published a survey asking for readers to report their demographic information and the topics that they wanted to see discussed in the newsletter. Of those who responded to the survey, 89% were men and only 11% were women. Moreover, of the list of potential topics, gay male-exclusive topics like a “cruising guide to Portland” and “homosexual sex techniques” were much more popular than topics like “lesbians and women’s rights” and “gay girl centerfold.” While the most common responses to the survey reflected political and social goals that would have been relevant to all queer Portlanders, responses that reflected the interests of a gay male readership were also much more common than those that were relevant to female readers.307 The gendered nature of the Second Foundation was not due to intentional exclusion by the organization or its members. The organization regularly encouraged women to participate, and even expressed frustration at the lack of women who wanted to become involved. In November 1971, the editors of The Fountain wrote an article on the 307 “Survey Insert,” The Fountain, December 1971; “Fountain Survey Results,” The Fountain, February 1972; and “Survey,” The Fountain, February 1972. 193 election of a woman named Sandra to the Second Foundation’s Board of Directors. In the article, they blamed queer women for their unwillingness to join the organization: “[Sandra]’s election to the board points up the fact that the organization not only feels that gay women are a part of our community but have something to offer to the organization if they will get involved.”308 For the gay men who constituted the Second Foundation, the lack of women in the organization was due to queer women’s own reluctance, rather than anything that the Second Foundation was doing. This was certainly not the most accurate explanation, however. Some women definitely held true to the ideals of women’s liberation and feminist separatism, which would have prevented them from joining an organization entirely run by men. Hence, the men’s perception that the women were simply disinterested. But, at the same time, the Second Foundation did little to court queer women. While not necessarily discriminatory, the Second Foundation was also not driven to engage with lesbian and women’s issues, preferring to maintain its focus on “gay rights”. For example, The Fountain rarely covered lesbian-specific issues. Only in May 1973, over two years after its first issue, did the newsletter have an issue directly devoted to the “lesbian experience.”309 The vast majority of the articles in The Fountain reflected a male perspective or spoke of homosexuality as a collective identity that did not differ based on gender. Moreover, the newsletter widely published advertising and photographs that appealed to the gay male gaze. Ads for bathhouses, adult bookstores, and other products regularly depicted nude and hypersexualized men.310 The Fountain also 308 Emphasis mine. “Second Foundation Happenings,” The Fountain, November 1971. The Fountain, May 1973. 310 “Fight Sex Pollution” ad, The Fountain, August 1971; “Workout Baths Ad,” The Fountain, October 1971; “A Taste of Leather Ad,” The Fountain, February 1972. 309 194 published photographs by artist Walter Rinder, a local photographer and poet who had been involved in the GLF and the Second Foundation. Rinder’s photos widely depicted naked men, which seems to have dissuaded many women from supporting the newsletter.311 While some women likely avoided the Second Foundation out of separatist inclinations, most queer women also did not see a space for themselves within the organization. Without having interacted with the organization or the newsletter extensively, the Second Foundation and The Fountain both would have been seen as the products of gay male activism with little consideration for the experiences of women. For this reason, the Second Foundation failed to draw in substantial numbers of women beyond the few (like Sandra) who became involved in the organization. Unlike the GLF and most of the women’s liberation community, the Second Foundation actively connected itself to the existing bar-based community in downtown Portland from the very beginning. Although the first meetings of the organization were held in private homes, bars quickly became a major meeting space for the Second Foundation. While the GLF and the women’s liberation community were predominately made of young students and college graduates, the Second Foundation tended to have older members (as well as some who were younger) with varying degrees of education.312 These members had pre-existing connections to Portland’s queer community before the rise of liberation politics in 1970. For example, George Oberg, the first president of the Second Foundation, had previously worked as a bartender at the Half Moon Tavern in the 311 For Rinder’s photos, see “Ad for Roman’s and The Riptide,” The Fountain, May 1971; “The Sound of Nature,” The Fountain, July 1971; and “To Freely Express,” The Fountain, September 1971. For criticism of The Fountain’s depiction of male nudity, see, “Should We Let it All Hang Out?,” The Fountain, November 1971. 312 The results of the December 1971 survey in The Fountain showed that 47% of readers were over 30 years old. The survey also showed that about 25% only had a high school education. 195 downtown working-class bar district.313 The April 1971 issue of The Fountain listed 25 separate community events for the month, and 16 of those events took place in downtown bars. Notably, the Second Foundation and the editors of The Fountain sought to reach out to both the working-class and middle-class bars. They held events at bars like Zorba the Greek’s and The Annex, which were in the middle-class bar district. But, they also published advertisements and promoted events at long standing working-class bars like The Other Inn and The Half Moon Tavern.314 Moreover, when the Second Foundation established the Gay Community Center in May 1972, they opened it on the floor above The Other Inn, in the middle of the working-class bar district.315 The active engagement with the bar community helped bring many more men of different backgrounds into the organization. While the GLF did not expand beyond the existing divisions of class and age in Portland, the Second Foundation was largely successful in creating something of a “gay community.” Before the rise of the GLF and the Second Foundation, it is difficult to identify a space and time where queer Portlanders believed that they were part of a singular community. Before 1970, the class and gender divisions in the bars kept queer people apart as much as they brought them together. Some of the homophile activists of the 1960s seem to have believed in some form of “community,” but this was largely created by their engagement with homophile literature, rather than their own experience in Portland. In contrast to this, the Second Foundation actively promoted the idea of a “gay community.” Editorials and articles in The Fountain widely evoked a shared 313 Oral history interview with George Oberg. “April Calendar”, The Fountain, April 1971; “Map of Bars”, The Fountain, April 1971; and “Advertisements,” The Fountain, June 1971. 315 “Portland’s Gay Community Center Opens,” The Fountain, May 1972. 314 196 identity of being gay between the reader and the writer.316 Moreover, The Fountain, as an extension of the Second Foundation, declared itself to be the “voice of the gay northwest,” promoting the idea that there was even a community of the “gay northwest” to speak of. Because the Second Foundation promoted connections between and beyond the bars, it was able to foster a sense of community among gay men in the city. Items in The Fountain like monthly calendars and maps served to create an impression that the different queer spaces and events in downtown Portland constituted a unified whole. The disparate bars, performances, and public spaces that made up gay life in Portland were now all connected to one another under the guise of “community.”317 Exclusions certainly prevailed, however. As discussed above, most queer women did not feel like they were a part of this community; they identified much more closely with the women’s liberation community. Because of this, we can only speak of a gay male community, not a unified “queer community,” in Portland during the early 1970s. In its pursuit to foster a local gay community, the Second Foundation was intently focused on establishing a community center for Portland’s gay population. From the outset, the organization envisioned a center “that would be large enough to hold meetings, plays, social events, dances along with offices and meeting rooms.”318 For the members of the Second Foundation, a center was essential to creating a sense of community among queer Portlanders. They recognized that the bars, however central they were to gay life, were not always the most conducive to creating community. An alternative space that could support both the social and political lives of queer Portlanders 316 See, for example, Neil Hutchins, “Editorial,” The Fountain, May 1971. “April Calendar”; “Map of Bars”; “Guide to the Portland Area Gay Scene,” The Fountain, July 1972; and “August Calendar,” The Fountain, August 1972. 318 “In the Beginning….” 317 197 was necessary to creating a collective identity. The community center was not just imagined as a space for the Second Foundation. It was intended to be the cornerstone of gay community in Portland. One member of the Second Foundation wrote, “Let me point out that the [community] center is not for Second Foundation members only. This will be for the entire gay community.”319 In May 1972, the Gay Community Center finally opened up on Southwest Alder Street, in a space above The Other Inn that had been an Italian restaurant for many years. The Second Foundation remodeled the space so that it would be an effective community center. There were three distinct areas: offices, meeting rooms, and a large community space with game tables and furniture. Upon its opening, the Gay Community Center became the heart of the Second Foundation and the various activities it promoted. The organization began to hold dances at the Center on weekend nights; it became the central space for the Second Foundation’s meetings; and it gradually became a space where any queer Portlander could come anytime of the day to find others in the community. Unlike the bars, where many felt uncomfortable and underage queer youth were unable to enter, the Center functioned as a space that was more accessible and open to queer Portlanders. By 1973, the Center had become a major gathering space for the city’s youth population, many of whom were living on the streets. Although the Gay Community Center continuously operated on a shoestring budget supported solely from individual donations and small fundraisers, the Second Foundation successfully created a community space unlike any other queer space in Portland’s history. The use of the Community Center reflected the organization’s desire to foster a “gay community,” creating unity from the 319 Dick Rodgers, “Gay Community Center Comes Out,” The Fountain, May 1972. 198 shared experience of being queer.320 The Second Foundation did not just focus on community formation, however. Compared to the GLF and the women’s liberation movement, the Second Foundation was much more intently focused on trying to change local and state laws regarding homosexuality. The GLF and women’s liberation had both believed that change needed to happen culturally; the Second Foundation agreed with this, but also held that direct political action could yield meaningful change. The first political issue that members of the Second Foundation became involved in was a revision to the Oregon criminal code. The Oregon state legislature was already planning on revising the criminal code to update it, and one major planned revision was to remove the existing section on sodomy. In February 1971, Neil Hutchins and John Wilkinson met with State Senator John Burns to discuss the criminal code revisions. Although they supported the removal of sodomy from Oregon law, they believed that the revised code still allowed for arrests based on public cruising, which they worried could be used to suppress Portland’s bars. Over the course of 1971, The Fountain widely reported on the criminal code revisions, focusing on how it would impact gay men. Although Hutchins and Wilkinson failed to change the clauses related to cruising, the Second Foundation ultimately lauded the passage of the revised code for its removal of sodomy.321 Direct political action by members of the Second Foundation really began to take off in 1972. In early 1972, a Portland city commission drew up an ordinance to prohibit 320 “Community Center,” The Fountain, June 1972; Daniel Wagner, “Our Community Center,” The Fountain, August 1972; “Come to the Community Center Oh Chum,” The Fountain, November 1972; Dirk, “There is No Place”; and Oral history interview with George Oberg. 321 John Wilkenson [sic], “Proposed Criminal Code,” The Fountain, April 1971; “Senate Bill 40,” The Fountain, April 1971; “Senate Bill #40 Nears Passage,” The Fountain, June 1971; and Lanny Bud, “Editorial,” The Fountain, September 1971. 199 discrimination in city employment, but did not include sexuality as a protected class. The Second Foundation’s Board of Directors reacted quickly and sent a resolution to the commission and the City Council demanding “the inclusion of the phrase ‘sexual orientation’” in the ordinance. In March, when the resolution was up for debate in the City Council, several members of the Second Foundation demanded that they be allowed to testify in the debate. The Council reluctantly allowed them to do so, and Duayne Downing gave a lengthy speech on the ways that local homophobia impacted the lives of queer Portlanders. Although the City Council remained unconvinced and did not choose to revise the ordinance, the efforts of the Second Foundation ultimately resulted in a different ordinance in 1974 that prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexuality.322 Motivated by their engagement with the City Council, some members of the Second Foundation sought to continue their direct political action on the state level. In April 1972, George Nicola, who had been part of the group that went to the City Council, travelled down to the town of Klamath Falls in Southern Oregon, where the Oregon Democratic Party was holding its annual convention. Nicola wrote up a draft of a gay rights platform. and pressured Democratic party members to add gay rights provisions to the party’s official platform. The goal was ultimately to promote legislative changes, which Nicola and the Second Foundation believed could be affected by changing the party’s official stance on homosexuality. Due to Nicola’s efforts, the Oregon Democratic Party voted to adopt the proposed gay rights platform, which focused on anti- 322 “City Council to Act on Non-Discrimination Ordinance,” The Fountain, March 1972; “City Council Meets Gays: Equal Employment Opportunities is Goal,” The Fountain, April 1972; and “Oregon LGBTQ Timeline Starting in 1970.” 200 discrimination statutes.323 Building off of this success, the Second Foundation began to work on two gay rights bills that prohibited discrimination in employment and housing. Nicola successfully courted the support of Vera Katz, a state representative, and learned how to lobby from Gretchen Kafoury, who was a lobbyist with the National Organization of Women (NOW). With bills drawn and legislative support, the Second Foundation then began to build a statewide coalition to pressure the state legislature. In January 1973, nine different queer organizations from across the state met at the Gay Community Center to form the Gay Political Caucus in order to throw momentum behind the two antidiscrimination bills.324 From there, Nicola went to Salem and began to lobby Oregon legislators to pass the gay rights bills. With coordination by Nicola and the Second Foundation, the bills eventually made their way to the floor of the Oregon House of Representatives. Despite the organizational momentum behind the bills, the vote fell short by two votes and never made it to the Oregon Senate. From 1973 onward, similar bills were proposed every year, and only in 2007 did one get successfully passed.325 Despite their initial failures, the political goals and actions of the Second Foundation and its members should not be dismissed. They were the first group in Portland and Oregon’s history to push for substantive legal and political changes to benefit the lives of queer people. They echoed the ideals of liberation politics insofar as they promoted community 323 Interview with George Nicola; “Oregon Democrats Pass Gay Rights Platform,” The Fountain, May 1972. 324 “Interview with George Nicola; “Gay Involvement in the Political Community,” The Fountain, November 1972; “Gay Rights Bill Drafted,” The Fountain, February 1973; and “Oregon Gay Political Caucus Maps Strategy,” The Fountain, February 1973. 325 “Gay Rights Bill Wins Committee Approval,” The Fountain, June 1973; “Gay Rights Bill in Limbo,” The Fountain, July 1973; “Gay Rights Bill Fails in House,” The Fountain, August 1973; and George T. Nicola, “Early Attempts at Oregon Gay Civil Rights,” GLAPN.org, October 2010, http://glapn.org/6110earlyattempts.html. 201 formation and supportive resources, but they also channeled traditional civil rights politics by advocating for anti-discrimination statutes and legislative solutions. Beginning in the second half of 1973, the organizational strength and momentum of the Second Foundation began to wane. Although this was the same time that the gay rights bills were being shepherded through the Oregon legislature, the Second Foundation began to struggle with a lack of funding. In July 1973, a Portland Fire Marshal declared that the Gay Community Center needed another fire exit, which would have cost thousands of dollars to install. Without the money to make these modifications, the Second Foundation began to search for a new location for the Center. Moreover, around the same time, $3000 disappeared from the organization’s treasury, putting them into a great deal of financial hardship. The financial burdens forced the organization to reorganize, which led to a great deal of infighting among the leadership. As a result of this, George Nicola, Neil Hutchins, and Lanny Swerdlow— all of whom had been integral to the Second Foundation and The Fountain—left the organization. The Gay Community Center was forced to close down in September 1973 and was put on an indefinite hiatus. In November, the Second Foundation moved to the Pythian Building, where it hoped to establish a bigger community center with office spaces for other gay organizations in Portland. But, due to its lack of funding, they were unable to pay rent for more than a couple months. By the beginning of 1974, the Second Foundation had declined to the point that they were forced to discuss disbanding the organization. Although members decided to continue, the organization never regained its footing and 202 quickly disappeared from the historical record.326 Although it only survived for a brief two years, the Second Foundation forged new paths in community formation and organizing in the city. They accomplished far more than the GLF had, and successfully brought multiple facets of Portland’s queer male subcultures together to create a “gay community” in the city. The Second Foundation directly reached out to the queer bars, both working-class and middle-class, to try to create a shared community identity. With this said, however, The Second Foundation did not bridge the gap between gay men and lesbian women that had formed due to the divergent interests of queer men and women during this period. In fact, by only covering male issues in The Fountain and overlooking the arguments of women’s liberationists, The Second Foundation may have even exacerbated this divide. Despite the creation of new boundaries between queer Portlanders during the early 1970s, the organization was the first to push for legal and political solutions to the problems that homosexuals in Oregon faced. However unsuccessful those efforts initially were, the members of the Second Foundation ultimately laid down the foundations for queer organizing and community in Portland that have been built on by successive generations of queer Portlanders. Conclusion The growth of liberation politics in Portland in the late 1960s and early 1970s radically transformed the dynamics of queer life in the Rose City. Beginning with the establishment of the Gay Liberation Front in March 1971, there were now publicly-facing 326 “Community Center Seeks New Location,” The Fountain, July 1973; “Foundation Reorganizes,” The Fountain, August 1973; Lanny Swerdlow and Neil Hutchins, “Fountain Editor Resigns,” The Fountain, September 1973; and “Deep Six for Six Under,” The Northwest Gay Review, September 1974. 203 queer organizations that proclaimed their sexual identity in the face of societal oppression. While some small homophile groups briefly existed in the 1950s and 1960s, the GLF was significant because it was the first to do so in a public fashion. Lesbian feminists in the women’s liberation movement and gay men in the Second Foundation continued this publicity. These liberation organizations also sought to establish resources and social spaces for queer Portlanders that had not existed in the previous two decades. The GLF led the charge in establishing draft counseling services for gay men; lesbians in the women’s liberation community helped found the Women’s Health Clinic and the Prescott House; and members of the Second Foundation created a newspaper and community center to benefit Portland’s “gay community.” Before 1970, these resources would have been inconceivable to queer Portlanders. As of 1969, the only public spaces available were bars and cruising places, but within a few years, a vast variety of different spaces had been created for the benefit of the city’s queer population. On top of the resources and spaces created by liberation organizations, the GLF, Women’s Liberation, and the Second Foundation all engaged politically. The GLF and the Women’s Liberation movement pushed for cultural changes that emphasized the shared experience of heterosexist oppression. They also engaged in protests and other campaigns to change public opinion. Then, the Second Foundation took the goals of liberation politics and applied a more traditional civil rights framework in order to push for legislative protections in the realms of employment and housing. In just a matter of three years, the characteristics of queer life in Portland had dramatically changed. Beyond expanding the spaces, resources, and politics available to queer Portlanders, liberation politics also reconfigured the divisions that had existed between 204 queer people in the city. During the 1950s and into the 1960s, class was the major determinant in whom one interacted with and where that interaction took place. As addressed in Chapter Two, most queer socializing took place in the downtown bars. These bars were geographically segregated, with working-class bars in the central business district and middle-class bars lying near the Goose Hollow neighborhood. Some interaction between the two bar districts took place but, for the most part, they were distinct. During this period, many of the bars were mixed, such that they catered to both gay men and lesbian women. And, for those that were exclusively for male or female customers, they tended to be just next door from a bar for the other sex. The growth of liberation politics and queer organizing in the early 1970s greatly changed these conditions, however. While the GLF was very much a middle-class organization, the women’s liberation community and the Second Foundation reached beyond the middle class to engage with more working-class queer Portlanders. Lesbian feminists openly reached out to their working-class sisters to bring more women into the feminist movement. And, the Second Foundation actively participated in the downtown bar culture, and held events across the downtown bar districts. While liberation politics served to lessen the class-based segregation in Portland’s queer subcultures, they also exacerbated divisions and geographic separation based on gender. Whereas queer men and women had largely occupied the same public spaces (downtown bar districts) during the 1950s and 1960s, liberation politics drew queer women across the Willamette River to the eastside of Portland. The women’s liberation movement’s emphasis on female solidarity and community, combined with gay men’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of that solidarity, created new gender-based divisions in the city’s queer population. 205 While socioeconomic class played less of a role in the city’s queer community following the growth of liberation politics, gender became a much more important signifier in what groups one belonged to and what spaces one occupied. In this way, the Portland GLF, the women’s liberation community, and The Second Foundation served to redraw the bounds of Portland’s queer culture, all while concurrently fomenting the development of queer community in the city. 206 Conclusion On June 14, 2018, the Portland City Council unanimously voted to change the name of the southwest portion of Stark Street to Harvey Milk Street. This section of Stark Street had run through the area of downtown that became known as the “Burnside Triangle” during the 1970s, and had been a main avenue through the mid-century’s middle-class bar district. Driven by local activists and supportive city officials, the renaming of Stark Street to Harvey Milk Street was meant to “commemorate and celebrate the LGBTQ community,” while also publicly acknowledging “the struggles and contributions” of Portland’s LGBTQ community. The decision to commemorate the “queer area” of downtown by naming it after a politician and activist from San Francisco who never considered Portland to be his home or community stands as deeply revelatory about the ways we think about queer history. Rather than commemorating a local community through local history, the act of naming the street after Harvey Milk served to equate local queer Portlanders and their experiences with those of San Franciscans or any other queer person in the United States. Although the decision to change the street name was constrained by city policies that limits street names to deceased people with national recognition, the very fact that there is now a Harvey Milk Street running through the heart of downtown Portland suggests a conflation of San Francisco’s history (or New York’s, or Washington DC’s…) with Portland’s own history. Existing narratives of queer history, constructed from the arguments made by queer academic historians, tend to broadly generalize historical queer experiences from the unique experiences of those queer Americans in the largest and most notorious cities. As this project has demonstrated, however, smaller and distantly connected cities (like Portland) have their 207 own stories to tell, revealing greater complexity to existing narratives of queer history. The Second World War dramatically transformed the nature of queer life in Portland, much like it did in other cities across the United States. Wartime conditions promoted the development of homosocial relationships between men and between women and the growth of urban vice districts, creating an environment where queer nightlife could develop. Unlike other cities (like San Francisco or New York) with a major growth of queer culture during the war due to the movement of American soldiers on leave, Portland’s queer culture largely grew as a result of the shipbuilding industry and the accompanying demographic shift. By the end of the war, the foundations for postwar queer subcultures that centered on bars had been laid down. Despite its auxiliary role in the homefront, the war transformed conditions in Portland such that visible queer life could emerge in the city during the postwar years. Beginning with the wartime bars, the spaces that queer Portlanders took up became geographically segregated along class lines. Working-class queer Portlanders met in bars that were in the central business district. These bars grew out of a working-class bar culture that had already existed in the area, but specific bars gradually developed a reputation for being queer. Half a mile away to the northwest, a number of middle-class queer bars developed along Burnside Street. As numerous queer historians have identified, class significantly impacted queer lives during the 1950s and 1960s, because it shaped one’s concerns about being “found out.” Moreover, class significantly structured the performance of queerness, yielding normative behavior among middle-class queer Portlanders and more subversive behavior among the working-class bargoers. While class was a major dividing line in Portland’s queer subcultures, gender proved to be less 208 significant in the city than in other cities that have been studied thus far. The majority of queer bars in both the working-class and middle-class bar districts catered to both gay men and lesbian women. There appear to have been more men in the bar scene, which is to be expected given that bars were traditionally a masculine space, but women still played a major role in those spaces. Other queer spaces such as public parks, movie theaters, and bathhouses tended to only be occupied by queer men, while softball teams were a major meeting place for queer women. Overall, the history of Portland’s queer bars is similar to the history of bars elsewhere, but there tended to be a greater degree of mixed gender spaces, and bars were more geographically consolidated. Portland’s history of anti-homosexual policies and police enforcement differed greatly from that of other cities. Most historians of queer life during the mid-century hold that urban police departments targeted bars, engaging in sweeping raids that led to mass arrests. But, this did not happen in Portland. While some small-scale raids may have happened, the vast majority of Portland law enforcement’s efforts went to containing queer Portlanders to the bars and to other private spaces. Discourses around the imagined links between child predation and homosexuality were particularly strong in Portland during the early 1950s. These local discourses readily combined with national discourses of anti-communist containment and the supposed “national security risk” of homosexuals to create a policy where Portland police and the City Council sought to contain queer Portlanders so as to prevent them from preying on children. This policy manifested in a consistent low-grade pressure that involved extensive surveillance of public spaces like bars and parks, accompanied with arrests for “disorderly conduct” or “sodomy” charges. The containment strategy ended in the mid-1960s following the city’s failed attempt to 209 shut down all known queer bars in 1964. This case study of Portland revealed that there may be a wider variety of police enforcement during the 1950s and 1960s than historians have identified thus far, and that the conflation of homosexuality with communism and sexual predation directly impacted city policies. By focusing on the history of the largest cities with the most visible queer population during the mid-century, queer historians have tended to focus on those cities that were also the center of homophile organizing. This is no coincidence, as the visibility and openness of both queer subcultures and anti-homosexual policies in those cities contributed to the outgrowth of groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. But, Portland did not have any of these organizations. As historian Peter Boag has argued, the city never had a group that was able to openly call itself a “homophile organization.” Portland was on the distant edges of the communication network that made up the homophile movement. As recently digitized collections from various homophile organizations have shown, however, there were many Portlanders who actively engaged with homophile literature and were motivated by homophile ideals. Queer Portlanders, and particularly queer women, tried to participate in the homophile movement as much as they could. They tried to establish their own groups; they wrote letters and articles for the leaders of the homophile organizations; and they even tried to directly engage in activism in Portland. Although their voices are not nearly as loud as those of national figures like Del Martin or Frank Kameny, these individual Portland homophiles were very much a part of this national movement. By attending to homophile activism in a city that was as separated from the homophile organizations as any urban center could have been, this study demonstrates that homophile activism was not just 210 limited to those large cities where the organizations were located, but that homophile magazines and letters successfully reached many quiet corners of the United States. Additionally, the case of Portland demonstrates that notable homophile activism could emerge outside of the largest urban centers, regardless of the presence of homophile organizations. Because of its relative distance from the centers of queer organizing during the mid-century, Portland provides an interesting opportunity to examine how local queer cultures and politics changed over the course of the 1960s. Whereas queer historians have tended to see the 1960s as a period of increasing radicalization, Portland’s lack of queer political organizations before 1970 meant that it did not have the riots, protests, or internal squabbles that queer people elsewhere were involved with during the decade. By attending to the years between the end of Portland’s most aggressive anti-homosexual strategy and the outgrowth of liberation politics, this thesis found that local discourses and geographies were in a state of flux in the latter portion of the decade. Whereas local media and officials had emphasized the existential threat that homosexuality posed to American families and children during the 1950s and early 1960s, by 1969, the discourse had changed such that it treated homosexuality in a sympathetic light, even if it still cast it as aberrant. While the discourse on homosexuality was changing, the boundaries of queer nightlife in Portland also began to change. Urban renewal projects pushed up against the working-class bar district, forcing some queer bars out of business; the middle-class bar district doubled in size; and a new nightlife district developed in Old Town, which had once been the center of working-class queer life during the early twentieth century. Therefore, the relationship of queer Portlanders to the city underwent a 211 substantial amount of change during the late 1960s, even though Portland never had an event like the Black Cat protests or the Stonewall Riots. The outgrowth of liberation politics in 1970 greatly transformed the dynamics of Portland’s queer subcultures. The development of liberation organizations in Portland during the 1970s was not atypical but, through the lens of a single-city urban study, the impact that these organizations had on the nature of queer culture in the city became apparent. The first liberation organization, the Portland Gay Liberation Front, was made up of young New Left activists and distinguished itself from the existing bar community. By the end of 1970, a split along gendered lines had taken place in the GLF. The queer women joined the growing women’s liberation community, while some queer men went on to form another organization called The Second Foundation. A women’s community made up disproportionately of queer women developed in Southeast Portland, pulling many away from downtown across the Willamette River. The Second Foundation, on the other hand, promoted the idea of a “gay community,” made up mostly of queer men. Both the women’s liberation community and The Second Foundation brought queer people together and weakened the cultural lines that had been drawn based on class identity. Moreover, they expanded the bounds of community space by creating resources and social spaces outside of the bars and cruising grounds. Politics were an important point of consideration, but it was the cultural approach of liberation organizations that served to totally recast the nature of queer community in Portland. This project’s close examination of Portland’s queer history from the Second World War to the growth of liberation politics and queer organizing in the early 1970s suggests that there is much more to learn from localized urban studies of queer culture 212 that engage with central historiographic issues. For broad questions about the history of queer life in the United States, such as “How do queer bars play a role in the growth of queer subcultures?” and “How have queer Americans engaged politically?”, most of the answers have come from urban studies that focus on one city. Due to a variety of factors from accessibility of sources to cultural notoriety, historians have tended to only do research on the most populous cities with historical significance from events like the “earliest” gay rights organization or the “first” pride parade. But histories of these large and notorious cities do not (and cannot) capture the actual historical experience of most queer Americans. This is not only because they are urban, and most queer Americans have statistically lived in suburban and rural regions, but it is also because cities like New York and San Francisco are anomalous from a national view. Just because these cities had the largest and most publicly visible queer subcultures and communities does not mean that their history can be generalized beyond the bounds of those cities. Some trends certainly occurred across American urbanscapes, but many others may only have occurred in the largest and “queerest” of cities. 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