Stories of Pride 2022: Part 3 (1900-1969)
- beereed13
- Jun 15, 2022
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2022
June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the United States. This month was chosen because it commemorates the Stonewall Uprisings which began on June 28, 1969, when a group of queer folks - led by Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and other members of the QTBIPOC community - fought back against the systematic police brutality and abuse they had lived with for decades.
Today, Pride is about so much more than this one moment in time. We’ve always been here, and we always will be. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most sacred ways of preserving and advancing culture. You cannot spell history without “story.” Each Wednesday of this month I’ll be rounding up stories of LGBTQIA+ people, moments, and movements throughout history and from around the world.
This is our culture. These are our stories. And this limited series is just the tip of the iceberg. May it inspire you to seek and share even more of our robust, beautiful, challenging history as a movement, community, and culture.
Jennie June [Pseudonyms: Earl Lind, Ralph Werther] (1874-19??)
Jennie June was a self-described “androgyne” whose writing was decidedly activist in its arguments for the rights and liberation of people who lived outside standard gender experiences and norms of the day. (Note: If Jennie were living today, it seems likely he would identify as nonbinary and/or transgender in today’s language, but because he used he/him pronouns when referring to himself in all of his autobiographical writing, I will be doing the same here.) From an early age, it was clear that Jennie was different from the other boys in the boarding school he went to - a school specifically geared toward boys with attitude problems. As a shy child, Jennie withdrew into himself and used school as an outlet. He graduated with the highest test scores across the board that the school had ever seen. Unfortunately in graduate school a doctor informed the university he was studying at that he was an “invert” (meaning he was born male but had expressed a desire to live as a woman at times). For this, the school expelled him. Following this blow, Jennie fell into a state of depression that nearly led to suicide.
Eventually he found a new outlet: writing. He wrote at least three full autobiographies under pseudonyms between 1918 and 1922, one of which had never been published and was only just discovered in 2010. The first, The Autobiography of an Androgyne, is the most well-known and still considered important in the fields of gender and sexuality studies today. In his second book, The Riddle of the Underworld (written in 1921 but not published until the transcript was rediscovered in 2010), he talked candidly about the many ways he worked with doctors to try and “cure” himself. Many of these are hauntingly familiar horror stories we still hear today, including electroshock therapy and conversion therapy practices. The third known autobiography, written and published in 1922, is one where we hear issues that are still very relevant today. In this book, The Female-Impersonators, Jennie talks about how he became suicidal after being expelled from school for being who he was. A quote that he wrote in all caps for extra emphasis sounds like a warning plea we are still making today:
“I BEG ALL ADULTS, PARTICULARLY SCHOOL OFFICIALS, TO BE EXTRAORDINARILY CHARITABLE AND SYMPATHETIC WITH GIRL-BOYS AND OTHERS SEXUALLY ABNORMAL BY BIRTH WHO MAY SEEM TO HAVE LOST THEIR SENSES. GUARD AGAINST DOING ANYTHING THAT WOULD LEAD THE DISGRACED TO COMMIT SUICIDE, WHICH EVENT IS FAIRLY COMMON AMONG THESE 'STEPCHILDREN OF NATURE.'”
Wendell Sayers (1904-1998)
Wendell Sayers may be one of the most important unsung heroes of the gay rights movement prior to Stonewall. It wasn’t until after his death that his work on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community was revealed. This was how he wanted it. When historian and researcher Eric Marcus was collecting interviews and stories for his book, Making Gay History, Wendell was one of the people he interviewed. However, Wendell only agreed to the interview under the condition that his name be changed in the publication. Even when he gave the interview in 1989, despite all that he’d done for the cause, he didn’t want people to know he was gay.
When Wendell was a teenager in the late 1910s, he realized he was different. Although he didn’t have a word for it, he recognized that he didn’t feel the same way about girls as his peers. When he told his parents this, his mother took him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a professional diagnosis. Because they were Black, they were unable to get a hotel room and instead slept in a tent for the entire trip. After several days in and out of the hospital, he was “diagnosed” as being homosexual. At that time in the state of Minnesota the official stance was that he should be incarcerated, but the Clinic arranged for him to return home instead.
When he told his father about the results of the trip, his dad encouraged him to bring potential sexual partners home for any kind of intimacy. His father knew it was unsafe for two men to be seen together romantically in public. Perhaps because of this early acceptance from his family, he never felt that his sexuality was anything to be personally ashamed of, although he did understand quickly that it was a dangerous thing to voice publicly.
When a friend of his invited him to a secret meeting of gay men in the early 1950s he was glad to go. This meeting, it turns out, was one of the earliest gatherings of the Mattachine Society, largely believed to be the first ever organized group of gay activists in America. Wendell was the only Black person in the group, and was treated rather coldly by many of the members. But Wendell held an important position in their group and in their city. He was a lawyer who worked for the Attorney General in the city of Denver. He was the first Black person to do so. Because of his inside knowledge of the law and connections with the legal and justice system, he was able to provide key insights to the group on legal issues.
Wendell died in 1998, and a few decades after his death Eric Marcus released this incredible story and a portion of the recorded interview on the podcast, Making Gay History, an oral history archive of the sources he interviewed for the book of the same title. You can hear Wendell tell his own story on Season 1, Episode 2 of the podcast.
First On-Screen Kiss Between Two Men: Wings (1927)
One by-product of the temptation to look at Stonewall as a starting point for LGBTQ+ progress is that it often causes important cultural moments to be buried and forgotten. Many commentators and bloggers will point at the All in the Family character, Philip Carey, from 1971 as the first gay character on screen. And while it may be the first time a character was both explicitly/openly gay and portrayed in a role other than villain, there have been countless important milestones leading up that that moment.
In fact, the first passionate on-screen kiss between two men in America happened all the way back in the days of silent films in 1927. Because the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code) wasn’t written until 1930, the content of films prior to that year were far more diverse and eclectic. Expressions of gender roles and dress, flirtatious interactions between same-sex characters, and even this historic kiss were all permitted in ways they wouldn’t be after the introduction of the Production Code.
The 1927 film, Wings, follows two World War I fighter pilots named Jack and Dave. At the top of the film the two men are competing for the affections of the same girl, but quickly come to realize that their “friendship” (as it’s labeled in the movie) is far more important and meaningful to them than either of their feelings for the girl. Their devotion to one another becomes the generator of momentum for the rest of the movie. In the climactic and tragic ending of this film, Dave steals an enemy plane after being shot down across enemy lines. Jack sees the plane, not realizing Dave is the one inside, and shoots it down in an effort to avenge his dear fallen friend. The two have a tearful final scene underscored with instrumentals typically used at the time as a trope for romantic tragedies. The heartfelt goodbye ends with a clear, undisguised passionate kiss between the two men.
Mona’s 440 Club (1936)
The recorded history of gay and lesbian bars dates to at least as the late 17th century, if not earlier. So when Mona’s opened in 1936 at its first location (moving in 1939 to the 440 Broadway location where it became famous) a bar for women who love women was nothing new. But what was new was that it wasn’t underground or hidden. In fact it advertised itself as exactly what it was, with posters and matchbooks sporting the venue’s slogan: “Where girls will be boys.”
While other gay bars existed and thrived in the same North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, this was the first one that catered specifically to lesbians. As the first venue of its kind, its entertainment headliners included some of the most sought after performers of the time, including Gladys Bentley, a wildly popular blues singing drag king who emerged during the Harlem Renaissance.
Eventually Mona’s became so popular that it became a sort of tourist attraction for curious straight patrons who would pose for pictures with the regulars, staff, and owner. Seeing the way tourism for a clientele outside their target audience was picking up, Mona Sargent - the owner at the time - found a way to both mock and capitalize on this trend by selling photo souvenir photos (just like you’d get at a theme park today) with frames reading “My Souvenir from San Francisco’s Famous Mona’s 440 Club.”
Edyth Eyde and Vice Versa Magazine (1947-1948)
In the 1940s, Edyth Eyde was working as a secretary at an office where she was told that she should “look busy,” and that she couldn’t knit or sew at her desk. She chose to keep her hands busy at her typewriter where she secretly wrote and published what is known as America’s first lesbian magazine. (Although, “magazine” may be a generous name for this DIY newsletter). Vice Versa was a bold and brave publication that was ahead of its time in many ways.
The contents of Vice Versa included a combination of fictional short stories, poetry, book reviews, and movie recaps in which Eyde speculated about possible queer undertones of characters who seem to have chemistry not directly addressed by the plot. She ended most of the editions with a section she called The Whatchama-Column “in which readers express their views and opinions.” This letter to the editor section became a place where readers would share their reactions to the articles and magazine, and Eyde would reply in kind. Here she imagines what life might be like if the magazine readership expanded, or if movies were made about gay people, and if it were safe for them to walk in public holding hands.
Working diligently at her typewriter, Eyde would type out the content for the magazines twice with four additional carbon copies each time, producing a total of 10 copies. She would distribute these copies by hand to other “gay gals” (her preferred term of the day) and instruct them to pass them on to others when they were done. In total there were nine editions of Vice Versa produced and circulated before other interests drew her away from the project. Later in life, Edyth Eyde would contribute to another gay magazine, The Ladder, produced by the pioneering lesbian rights group Daughters of Bilitis. Vice Versa was published without a name attached, but when she contributed to The Ladder Edyth took on the pen name Lisa Ben, a tongue-in-cheek anagram of “lesbian.”
*AUTHOR’S NOTE: Language around what we identify as queerness or homosexuality today has changed a lot throughout history. Nuance over labels and terms is still a hot and ever evolving topic. For the sake of telling these (hi)stories, I have utilized different terms as I saw best fit to convey the meaning and context to a general audience. If you choose to carry these stories with you to share with others (and I hope you will), please feel free to update or change these terms if and when you see fit.
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