A Little Gay Rights History

[Rickie in CALIF]

Hi....My name is Dick Arnold in Fresno California. I am a native of Fresno and am 71 years old. I have seen a great deal of gay history made. I have seen cops raids on the bars in Los Angeles and , yes, even in San Francisco. The City By The Bay has not always had the most liberal attitude towards gays and lesbians. In the late 1960's people were hauled out of the bars simply for being there. Young gay people are amazed when I tell them of early San Francisco gay life. I went up to The City often to take part in gay rights movements, as there certainly was none of that going on in Fresno. I have been to just about every one of the gay pride parades in The City. Gay rights were something we really had to FIGHT for. It was NOT easy. So many young gay folks I think take gay rights for granted as if they were always available. Gay life, even in Fresno, is even much better now but has a long long way to go. We have the third largest gay film festival in the state. There are at least a half dozen gay and lesbian clubs of one kind or another now in Fresno. The Central California Alliance, of which I was a co-founder, now sponsors a one hour show weekly on our local PBS TV station. CCA is a very large social and networking club for gays and lesbians. Several of our local high schools now have Gay/Straight Allaince clubs. This has all been accomplished in the most RED area of California. Soulforce West Bus just this week visited Fresno Pacific University and had an excellent reception. Read the full report on this site.I am so glad for this site, and wish I had been able to have something like this 40 years ago. I was in a loving , caring relationship for 30 years, the one and only. He died a while back due to complications of diabetis.Thank you so much for this wonderful site. Dick Arnold

[Zerbie]

Hi Rickie,

Welcome. Thank you for your perspective. I have had to read about Stonewall and the events surrounding that year, since I was not born til several years after that. It IS amazing what society and it's institutions have done, and amazing what courageous people took part in those demonstrations. I have the utmost respect for people with guts like that.

[Rick336]

Dick,

Welcome to SoulForce. It sounds like you've seen a lot of changes up to this point in your life. Gay history fasinates me. I'd love to hear more about gay life in the 40s and 50s.

I'm glad you've joined us.

Rick

[jedismama]

Iti's so good to get perspective. Thank you for your part in our story. I lived in the Bay Area for seven years ('88-95) but it was before I realized I was gay. The Dallas gay scene is pretty great.

Hope to hear from you a lot.
Julie Ann

[u-dog]

It is wonderful to have someone around with as much experience as you have. History, memory, and perspective are essential to this (and every) community. Andy, BruceChris, Kara, Pablo, and I are REALLY excited to have someone around who is even older than we are! Andy would be happy to relinquish the presidency of the "Old Farts Club" and I would happily give you the title of "Grampa" if you want it! :lol:

I always thought that the Gay equality movement started in the 60's with Stonewall until an older friend of mine helped me see that the REAL beginning of the movement was WWII. Hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians left their farms and small towns to do their patriotic duty only to discover that they were NOT actually solitary moral monsters, but part of a "people" that existed everywhere. Once that cat was out of the bag it couldn't be stuffed back in and Stonewall was only a matter of time... as are Gay marriage rights.

Dave

[tdogg]

Welcome to the forums Dick!!! So glad you found 'us'.

I'm reading Making Gay History right now, and am amazed at the efforts and experiences of those who have gone before us. Dick, please accept my thanks and gratitude for everything you have done and been through, in making progress for equality and acceptance. I truly appreciate your life and please do share more. It's fascinating to me, and we must get an appreciation for the history in order to understand how to proceed and progress.

I'm very happy, and honored, that you have found your way to Soulforce. I hope you stick around and share some more, and stay. :love: :rainbow:

Tdogg

[u-dog]

We would all like to sit around at your virtual cyberfeet and hear you tell stories about the badolddays! ("Please, please, please!! tells us the one about the evil Mayor and courageous young hairstylist!!! Come on! cuz ya gotta!!!! Just one more story and then we'll go to bed! Honest!"

[Sherrie Z]

Hi Rickie!

How great to hear from you! I'm in my early 50's ... and I am a graduate of Fresno Pacific ... I lived in Fresno only during those four years. Did you get to meet any of the Soulforce group while they were there?

I lived in Chicago for many years in between, but now I live in San Francisco ... home of the first modern-era LGBT riot ... the Compton Riot ... a restaurant named Compton's (in the Tenderloin area) was a regular hangout for the gay and trans community ... and following continued harrassment, they had a Stonewall-like riot there in 1966, three years prior to Stonewall. I didn't find out about this until fairly recently, when trans-activist & filmmaker Susan Stryker made a documentary about the riot.

But I do remember ... at the time ... hearing about a police raid in San Francisco ... on what used to be called the Elephant Walk ... a gay bar at "ground zero of gay mecca" (Castro and 18th) ... and this was 1979 ... following the riots after the Dan White verdict (White had gotten off after murdering the SF mayor and the first openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk) ... 200 cops in riot gear retaliated and staged a huge raid on that bar, arresting over 100 people. Chicago responded by holding a huge protest march, and the cops there looked very worried ... but our protest was very peaceful.

I also remember a raid on a gay bar in Chicago, at around that same time, where a friend of mine got his arm broken ... I remember meeting up with him at his court date where he was trying to get the charges dropped (they were, whew).

I remember ducking beer bottles thrown at us when a group of us from the Illinois Gay & Lesbian Task Force marched in the Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade in 1980.

I knew George Buse in Chicago (he passed away in 2000) -- he was featured in Studs Terkel's book "The Good War" because he survived being a gay military person during World War II.

Over several decades since UFMCC (Metropolitan Community Churches) was founded in 1968, many of their churches were firebombed, or burned by arson, with some members being killed. And currently, Soulforce Equality Riders are arrested on a regular basis.

Also, there was an active gay rights movement in Germany in the 30's too ... and probably many other movements all over that aren't well known.

I would love to hear stories from the earlier years if you'd want to share them ... thanks for your post! : )

Love & Hugs,

Sherrie Z

[andrewlittle]

Welcome to Soulforce forums. I see you have already met the ubiquitous u-dog. Please, my gentle friend, have sympathy for him - dementia being what it is. I hope you have a sense of humor, since we "more mature" Soulforcers get sardonic sometimes. I, too, would love to hear your accounts of the fight for being allowed just to "be". It is a long way from being over, but the history you can provide will be invaluable. How does that go, oh yah - a people without a history is no people at all.

Andy, BruceChris, Kara, Pablo, and I are REALLY excited to have someone around who is even older than we are! Andy would be happy to relinquish the presidency of the "Old Farts Club" and I would happily give you the title of "Grampa" if you want it! :lol:

Since you seem, at least in your writings, to be younger of spirit than u-dog and have better manners than the rest of us older gentlepeople, you may have to lower your standards if you want either of those titles.

Again, welcome, and I look forward to reading more of your words,
Andy

[HarmlessEccentric]

Thank you, for fighting a hard fight so I wouldn't have to. I may not understand what you've experienced, but I am profoundly grateful for you and other gay people of your generation, for fighting what must have seemed like an almost impossible fight so I could enjoy the relative safety of coming out now.

When I was coming out, one of the first things I did was read everything I could get my hands on about how we came to be where we are. But nothing compares to hearing stories directly from the people who lived them.

I have an old-school gay-rights activist in my church, a former member of the Mattachine Society, and I try to make sure to treat him with the respect and the gratitude he has earned.

Thank you- and your partner, may he rest peacefully until you meet again- for everything you've done for me.

[Diane Vera]

It is wonderful to have someone around with as much experience as you have. History, memory, and perspective are essential to this (and every) community.

Indeed they are.

I always thought that the Gay equality movement started in the 60's with Stonewall until an older friend of mine helped me see that the REAL beginning of the movement was WWII. Hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians left their farms and small towns to do their patriotic duty only to discover that they were NOT actually solitary moral monsters, but part of a "people" that existed everywhere. Once that cat was out of the bag it couldn't be stuffed back in and Stonewall was only a matter of time... as are Gay marriage rights.

Dave

There was an even older GLBT rights movement in Europe, primarily Germany, in the late 1800's and early 1900's. It was wiped out by the Nazis. For more information, see:

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Heinrich_Ulrichs)
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/celebration2000/)
Biography: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) (http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/factfiles/ffulrichs.htm)
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (http://www.stonewallsociety.com/famouspeople/karl.htm)

and:

Magnus Hirschfeld - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld)
Bio: Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) (http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/factfiles/ffhirschfeld.htm)
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (http://www.stonewallsociety.com/famouspeople/magnus.htm)

[Daniel]

So glad you have found your way here! Thank you for reminding us of the struggles that those in SF had to endure, and of the advance towards equal rights in the 'most Red areas of California'. Horray! And it's good to know that the West Bus was welcomed at Pacific.

You also gladden my heart with mention of your partner of 30 years. I'm in year 15 with my beloved.

God Bless You! I honor your relationship, commitment and love.

Peace to you.

[Diane Vera]

[B]Hi....My name is Dick Arnold in Fresno California. I am a native of Fresno and am 71 years old. I have seen a great deal of gay history made.

Very glad to see you in this forum. I'd love to hear more about your experiences in early gay rights movement and in the gay community back then.

I have seen cops raids on the bars in Los Angeles and , yes, even in San Francisco. The City By The Bay has not always had the most liberal attitude towards gays and lesbians. In the late 1960's people were hauled out of the bars simply for being there.

Approximately when did this sort of thing finally stop?

Young gay people are amazed when I tell them of early San Francisco gay life. I went up to The City often to take part in gay rights movements, as there certainly was none of that going on in Fresno. I have been to just about every one of the gay pride parades in The City.

What were the major gay rights groups in San Francisco at that time?

Gay rights were something we really had to FIGHT for. It was NOT easy.

I'd love to hear more about this. What were some of the setbacks you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

So many young gay folks I think take gay rights for granted as if they were always available.

Yep indeed. Furthermore, a lot of urban gay young people are completely ignorant about our still-existing enemies, and/or believe that the religious right wing has completely died, once and for all, every time it suffers an electoral defeat or scandal and/or hasn't been featured on national television for the past few months.

I hope we hear from you again soon.

[u-dog]

I've been thinking about the bad old days recently, mostly because I've been reading a book Jeb and Dash. It is the heavily edited Diaries of a Gay man from 1918 when he was 17 to 1948. It is so fascinating to read how he sees and understands himself and his sexuality, how he meets and interacts with other people like himself, how people who are not like him react to him -- what he longs for and fears and hates and loves. Often the past seems so ... opaque and so foreign. What did ordinary people know about gay people and what did they know and understand about themselves. A book like this opens a window not only onto the experience of those who lived a long time ago but also onto my own life and experience.

Ok... thats thing one.

Thing two is that I spent several days with my older brother. We met in the town where we both grew up ... about 15 years apart. He told me two stories. One I had heard before, the other I had not.

The one I had heard before was about the time when he and his buddies were making prank, harrassing phone calls to a guy who everyone in town pretty much knew was gay. Our grandmother, who was taking voice lessons from the guy (his name was Walter) found out about the phone calls and confronted my brother about his participation. he began to justify his behavior by saying "...but Grandma ! Everyone knows he's a..." My grandmother stopped him with an uncharecteristic finger in his face and a sharp retort. She said, "This isn't about what he is or is not, this is about what YOU are and what kind of man you are going to be!" My brother said that he had never been so ashamed of himself before and hasn't been since. That would have been in the mid-50's.

The story I hadn't heard before happened the year he graduated from High School (1960). he was working at the Lumber yard with a guy whose 20 year old son had been killed in what was officially called an accident but which was almost certainly a suicide. his son, "Red" was a fantastic athlete. he had played football, baseball, basketball and had been a star in each. He was also gay. For some reason Red's dad made it a point to say to my brother, "Don't you boys EVER give Walter a hard time... you leave him alone. He's a good man. He looks out for the boys who are... like that... and helps them. My brother said, that he had been aware that Walter "paid attention" to the boys in town (NOT in a predatory way). He only realized in retrospect that he was paying attention so that he would recognize when a boy was discovering that he was different.

Several things that catch my attention in these remembrances:

1. Small communties in the past had people who were known to be gay

2. Such people were not ALWAYS pariahs

3. Not everyone in a small community was necessarily small minded

4. Small communities had (and perhaps still have) ways of dealing with difficult realities in quiet and informal ways


Please understand that I am not trying to draw a naive and romantic view of small town life in the past. But it is profoundly interesting that Red's dad who was not well educated, or liberal, upper class ... could ... in 1960, still love his gay son and appreciate (and not fear or blame) the gay man who befriended him. It is profoundly interesting to me that my grandmother thought that my brother's behavior and character in dealing with a gay man was more relevant morally than the sexuality of the gay man himself.

anyway... just some random thoughts about the past and human beings. I would be interested in any insights you all have... especially Ricki in Calif.

[Diane Vera]

Several things that catch my attention in these remembrances:

1. Small communties in the past had people who were known to be gay

2. Such people were not ALWAYS pariahs

3. Not everyone in a small community was necessarily small minded

4. Small communities had (and perhaps still have) ways of dealing with difficult realities in quiet and informal ways

My guess is that all of the above would have varied quite a bit from one small town to another, depending on the people.

[Zerbie]

I've been thinking about the bad old days recently, mostly because I've been reading a book Jeb and Dash. It is the heavily edited Diaries of a Gay man from 1918 when he was 17 to 1948. It is so fascinating to read how he sees and understands himself and his sexuality, how he meets and interacts with other people like himself, how people who are not like him react to him -- what he longs for and fears and hates and loves. Often the past seems so ... opaque and so foreign. What did ordinary people know about gay people and what did they know and understand about themselves. A book like this opens a window not only onto the experience of those who lived a long time ago but also onto my own life and experience.

Ok... thats thing one.

Thing two is that I spent several days with my older brother. We met in the town where we both grew up ... about 15 years apart. He told me two stories. One I had heard before, the other I had not.

The one I had heard before was about the time when he and his buddies were making prank, harrassing phone calls to a guy who everyone in town pretty much knew was gay. Our grandmother, who was taking voice lessons from the guy (his name was Walter) found out about the phone calls and confronted my brother about his participation. he began to justify his behavior by saying "...but Grandma ! Everyone knows he's a..." My grandmother stopped him with an uncharecteristic finger in his face and a sharp retort. She said, "This isn't about what he is or is not, this is about what YOU are and what kind of man you are going to be!" My brother said that he had never been so ashamed of himself before and hasn't been since. That would have been in the mid-50's.

The story I hadn't heard before happened the year he graduated from High School (1960). he was working at the Lumber yard with a guy whose 20 year old son had been killed in what was officially called an accident but which was almost certainly a suicide. his son, "Red" was a fantastic athlete. he had played football, baseball, basketball and had been a star in each. He was also gay. For some reason Red's dad made it a point to say to my brother, "Don't you boys EVER give Walter a hard time... you leave him alone. He's a good man. He looks out for the boys who are... like that... and helps them. My brother said, that he had been aware that Walter "paid attention" to the boys in town (NOT in a predatory way). He only realized in retrospect that he was paying attention so that he would recognize when a boy was discovering that he was different.

Several things that catch my attention in these remembrances:

1. Small communties in the past had people who were known to be gay

2. Such people were not ALWAYS pariahs

3. Not everyone in a small community was necessarily small minded

4. Small communities had (and perhaps still have) ways of dealing with difficult realities in quiet and informal ways


Please understand that I am not trying to draw a naive and romantic view of small town life in the past. But it is profoundly interesting that Red's dad who was not well educated, or liberal, upper class ... could ... in 1960, still love his gay son and appreciate (and not fear or blame) the gay man who befriended him. It is profoundly interesting to me that my grandmother thought that my brother's behavior and character in dealing with a gay man was more relevant morally than the sexuality of the gay man himself.

anyway... just some random thoughts about the past and human beings. I would be interested in any insights you all have... especially Ricki in Calif.

Magnificent stories u-dog!!! :)

One of my favorite saying when it comes to this is, "there's nothing new under the sun." Some people are afraid mention gay people will shock grandma - I tell them, grandma's heard of gays before. ;)

It can be amazing to gain a broader historical perspective on these issues. I recently stumbled across excerpts from the diary of August von Platen. Fairly important German Romantic poet. To modernize and paraphrase from what I remember of his diary, it was roughly akin to:
1823 and von Platen is about 24 or 25 years old. The diary says basically, Oh gee, I saw *him* today, the room was crowded and he didn't even say hello to me. He doesn't love me, I feel like dying. I've finally realized I'm never going to love a woman the way other men do. Why did God make me this way? There's a prison sentence attached to what I want, and that makes me feel disgusting and repulsed by my own longings.

Poor von Platen - dealing with this shit in 1823. And how many others?

That was almost 200 years ago, but it could have been written by any one of a number of members of this forum.

Then in 1928 Radclyffe Hall wrote The Well of Loneliness in which she imagined the spirits of all the gay and lesbian people in history crying, and asking how much longer all this cruelty will go on.

Here it is 2007, I look back on those words from nearly 100, nearly 200 years ago and I have to echo that question: how much longer is this going to go on?

But yes Dave, you're also correct that there have been "allies" for as long as there have been queerfolk too. I once heard a story that Alban Berg had a gay in-law, and after his death they found "gay-friendly" books (as gay-friendly as existed in the 1930s, but heck, if we had The Well Of Loneliness in 1928 we could have had plenty of others too) hidden in the back of his bookshelf.

[andrewlittle]

Often the past seems so ... opaque and so foreign. What did ordinary people know about gay people and what did they know and understand about themselves. A book like this opens a window not only onto the experience of those who lived a long time ago but also onto my own life and experience.
"A people with no history is no people at all" sometimes seems such a ridiculous thing to say or write. Everyone, and every group of people, has a past - it's inescapable. A history, however, is a compilation of narratives that awakens the past, alive and relevant, in a way that facts about the past cannot. The absense of narratives, or ignorance of them, is what prevents a living kinship with those who have worn our shoes before us.

Everyone, every community, every church, every social unit - needs to know and appreciate its history to be able to continue to walk into the future. Absent history, experience is isolated and specific to a single place and time, and cannot be understood as an episode on a continuum - an ongoing journey travelled both with saints who have gone before and with those who are yet to take their first step.

History narrates about community, and continues to build community at the same time.

Several things that catch my attention in these remembrances:

1. Small communties in the past had people who were known to be gay

2. Such people were not ALWAYS pariahs

3. Not everyone in a small community was necessarily small minded

4. Small communities had (and perhaps still have) ways of dealing with difficult realities in quiet and informal ways


Please understand that I am not trying to draw a naive and romantic view of small town life in the past. But it is profoundly interesting that Red's dad who was not well educated, or liberal, upper class ... could ... in 1960, still love his gay son and appreciate (and not fear or blame) the gay man who befriended him. It is profoundly interesting to me that my grandmother thought that my brother's behavior and character in dealing with a gay man was more relevant morally than the sexuality of the gay man himself.

It is, as Vera pointed out, dangerous to overgeneralize about communities, as it is for just about anything. There is, though, a pattern associated with "knowing and being known" in small communities that can be both protective and dangerous.

If Red had not known of the immense cruelty that his son could experience at the hands of other youth - and I dare say older citizens, as well - he would have had no need to say what he did. Had Walter not experienced both the inclusion and exclusion - the love and the hate - of community, he would not have been inclined towards watching the youth to see where his intervention was necessary. Both were serving to educate and affirm, while protecting the "other" from the prejudice and violence that exists in their own community.

In one small town in Iowa in which we lived, we met a man I'll call John. John was older and was quite effeminate in voice, speech patterns and mannerisms. He was the manager of an expensive restaurant and, being a resort area, the bulk of his summer business was "out-of-towners". He also, however, had a decent business off season, because he ran a scaled down version that appealed to the half of the population that was not poor.

John was not "out" as such, although it was commonly known that he was gay and had a long-term partner, Jay. They were never seen in public together - ever. Because of my involvement in starting a PFLAG group with another local minister, he became aware that I was an ally, and he invited me and my wife to his home for dinner. We were disappointed that Jay was not there. As the conversation progressed, and we said a few times that we had been looking forward to meeting Jay, he made a short phone call and Jay walked across the street from his neighbors house.

John and Jay were playing by the cultural rules of the community. They were gay, and virtually everyone knew it. But they were not allowed to be publicly gay. Even in the event of an evening meal at their home, Jay had to be invited by the guests that were in his own home. During the conversation, John spoke about the time that he and Jay had dared to go to the lake together just prior to the summer season starting. John had owned his own restaurant at the time, which was very busy and popular.

They had been seen at the beach, and word spread like wildfire. Theyb had been there together, but thay had made sure they were in no way affectionate or intimate with each other. His summer season was just as busy as usual, but after the three months of summer was over business dropped to almost nothing. No-one would tell him why - actually no-one would even look at him at all when he was around town. His restaurant failed over the winter. It was five years before he could find a job closer than 60 miles away. During that five years, John and Jay played by the "rules", and finally the reward of a local job was given. John was forgiven, and everyone pretended nothing had ever happened. But John and Jay also knew damn well what the "rules" were, and never, ever stepped outside of them again.

John was a hometown boy, while Jay was an "outsider". Jay even commuted 50 miles one way to his job. Jay was one of the invisible population of that town, along with many more that included immigrants and people or color. Nine months of the year, this town was in a time warp. According to most people, it was as it had been for decades. And in this town, acceptance was tenuous at best, and granted by the dominant culture. Inclusion, a trait claimed by many of the people, was a charade - a living and ongoing corporate lie.

The most telling moment was when John cried. He had told us that some of their friends who lived in Des Moines were openly accepted within a small community, but several had been beaten up for being openly gay. As he cried, he said that he wished he could trade places with them - the pain of a beating would fade faster than the pain of living in his hometown. He was also too afraid to leave, despite repeated (although long past) appeals by Jay. The price he paid for the community's acceptance was tremendous psychic trauma that imprisoned him in fear. In his words, he was "a prisoner serving a life sentence." He also acknowledged that he was his own jailer.

That night my wife and I became members of a very small group of accepting and loving friends - a very small group. While only a guess, I would venture, Dave (u-dog), that your brother had the privilege of being guided and educated by members of that town's very small group of loving friends. There were reasons, however, that they saw the need to run intervention and look out for this young man in a close community. Those reasons, I have no real doubt, were involved in the young man's eventual suicide.

[Zerbie]

God, Andy!

My heart breaks for that couple.

It reminds me - something similar from my teens. I still think back on this incident often, with great sadness. Truncated version, so I can get to sleep soon: I was invited to the home of a fellow professional musician to rehearse there early one saturday morning. He had a partner. I have no idea what the agreement was that they had before I arrived, if any, but my mentor/friend was ignoring his partner's presence in the apartment. We were rehearsing in the living room, which adjoined to the kitchen, and his partner, who had just gotten out of the shower, was preparing some breakfast and coffee in the kitchen. For some reason, my mentor/friend forbade me to greet him. I thought that would be too rude, as a guest in that man's home to ignore him, so I just walked over and held out my hand, introducing myself.

His partner beamed when I came over to say hello. :) But my mentor/friend stiffened and sat still as a statue across the room, actually looking quiet angry (I only saw him angry twice: then, and at another time when I acknowledged that he was gay.). The two of us sat at the table for a while talking amiably, mostly about how great "Bob" was. We talked for a pretty long time. Every now and then I glanced over and "Bob" was still frozen in place like a statue. When I finally came back to rehearse, he was still stiff, but he never said a word to me about what I had done. I left that apartment later feeling guilty, like I had done something terribly wrong and offended my friend somehow. I'll never forget driving home and wondering how I could learn the "rules" for what I was and was not allowed to acknowledge.

It's absurd that anyone should feel they need to live this way. :mad:
If "John" and "Jay" are still around, please give them a great big hug next time you see them.:love:

[u-dog]

Thank you for sharing that story Andy! You are exactly right that there is a powerful undercurrent of violence even in communities where some kind of tolerance is exercised. I guess my point is not that small communities are somehow idyllic or can be but rather that there is an undercurrent of decency and tolerance even in communities where violence is being exercised.

A couple more things that I discovered recently about my family and things that I learned from my family that I didn't remember or know that I had learned.

My Mom was a Sunday school teacher most of her adult life. Her favorite Sunday school song was "red, and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight" the thing about my Mom was that conservative and Republican though she was (until Reagan ran a second time -- she finally admitted that she voted against him and made no secret of the fact that she would stick her hand in the blender before she would vote for a Bush) she REALLY BELIEVED THAT SONG. It was like a creed for her. The only time I was ever grounded growing up was when she passed by the living room window just as I said "Eeny-meeny miney moe, catch a N_____ by the toe" She was out on the porch in less than 3 seconds. My friends were sent home and I was inside for three days (I was maybe ...8? The year would have been around 1964 or 65).

My brother remembers a time when they were at the beach in our small Lake Erie town and a black family came and began swimming (this would have been early 50's -- well before I was born) My mom picked up their blanket and moved it over next to the Black family and struck up a conversation with the Mom of that family, shared food from the picnic basket, etc, sent my brother off to play with their little boy. It wasn't until years later that my brother realized that our Mom had done that in order to protect them against any kind of unpleasantness. (My Mom was kind of a well-known and influencial person in our little town and no one would have been openly hostile to someone who was with her). I just heard this story from my bro this week.

It was only a couple of years ago that my brother and sister told me that our grandfather (my dad's dad -- different small town) had had a cross burned in his front yard in the 30's because he was a justice of the peace and was willing to do business with and be helpful to "colored people". The week after my grandfather's funeral (in 1948) Black people came by the house and came up onto the front porch just to tell my grandmother what a friend her husband had been to the "negro community"

My sister attended my Dad's retirement party at the post office where he worked the last 10 years of his career and one black woman after another took her aside to whisper "Your Daddy is a good man! He don't know no color"

When I was ten we moved to a different town, a suburb of Cleveland. We had a couple of older ladies living down the street. One of them was terminally ill with emphazema. My Mom took them under her wing. Did errands for them. Stayed with the ill one so her partner could get out and get a rest, brought them meals etc. She took me along and I sat and chatted with them. It wasn't until I was in College and we were talking about gay rights that my Mom said "Well, you know that Miss B and Miss K were Lesbians didn't you?" I was flabergasted. I had no idea (thats how naive I was) I realize now that my mom was doing for them what she had done for the Black family at the beach. She was spreading the apron of her own privelege to cover them.

Add to this my maternal grandmother's and Red's father's defense of Walter.

I don't say these things so that you will all OOO and AHHHH over what an enlightened family I had. Or to suggest that there wasn't terrible oppression in times past. I simply put them out there as examples of a kind of "conspiracy of decency" that certain people have always engaged in. a kind of subversive resistance to mean-spiritedness that I believe is always going on. All of these stories are and always have been a part of the "DNA" of my family even though I have only heard the stories recently. They are NOT a function of education since my sibs and I are the first generation to go to college. They are not a function of class since we have always been lower middle to middle middle class. They are not a function of "liberal" since my sibs and I are the first generation to vote Democrat. They are a function of ... decency

[Daniel]

This thread is turning into a rich tapestry of stories that reach out across time and space. The suffering is heartbreaking as is the compassion in evidence here. Thank you Zerbie, David and Andy for all that you have shared here. And many thanks to Rickie for his post which provided the impetus.

[BrentRichards]

A non-profound addition: Has anyone seen "Big Eden" ... the idea of small town affirmation figures prominently. I found myself wishing I'd known such people in my small town upbringing. If I'd been "out" in my little home town growing up, I'm not sure I would have survived till graduation.