Introduction to the Paper

I'm posting the introduction that I've written for my paper as this blog post. I think it turned out really well.

 Introduction: Draft

 The study of the history of the queer community is a relatively new one . The histories of minority communities are often lost to time, not resurfacing until decades later, until either the issues surrounding their oppression become relevant to the social consciousness because of a liberation movement, or until the dust of said revolution has settled. The difficulty lies within those who hid their histories: those people who are now gone have the evidence of their experiences buried with them. The queer population of Chicago were forced to hide their experiences for a variety of reasons, and whether it was to save their own lives, their family stability, their jobs, their social standing, or their freedom, evidence of the struggles of Chicago’s gay community is now mostly gone or “buried in police reports, medical logs, or sensational newspaper accounts of previous generations. ” This area of history is still, effectively, lost. It does not have a concrete place established in the canon of American history. The history itself is a story of placeless-ness: Chicago’s gay population bounced from place to place for nearly seventy years. Clubs and bars were reopened and shut again and again, neighbors complained and thus people were pushed from their homes, police relentlessly harassed and regularly arrested gays, and newspapers saw fit to publish the names and addresses of those found in gay bars that were raided by police. This social and legal persecution pushed the queer community continually north: the diaspora from their original hub in the Gold Coast and Near North neighborhood to eventually land in Boystown and Andersonville reflects the treatment of the queer population and how they in turn responded to it. They launched a liberation movement so they didn’t have to run anymore, so they would have a place—both in society and in the city. The study of queer history aims to do something similar: to carve out a place in American history for the stories of gays, lesbians, transgendered people, and anyone else who identifies or identified as queer to finally be heard, to have a place.

 The history of the migration of Chicago’s queer community can be codified into three periods of time. From 1925, at the foundation of the Society for Human Rights, America’s first organization to champion specifically for homosexual rights, until 1935, when the city began shutting down clubs, raiding gay events, and attempting to reform nightlife , Chicago saw what was referred to as the “Pansy Craze,” a Golden Age of sorts for the gay community, where being queer was not necessarily more socially accepted, but tolerance and fascination rose dramatically. From 1935 until 1969, with the Stonewall Riots in New York City, Chicago’s queer community underwent an Underground Era, in which it became markedly less “okay” to be gay. Police persecution skyrocketed and clubs were raided and shut down regularly. The preexisting concept that homosexuals were ‘perverts’ or ‘deviants’ was heightened by legislation that made it legal to commit a gay person to a mental institution simply for being gay. The Civil Rights movement inspired many subsequent social movements, including the Second Wave Feminist Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement. Beginning around the occurrence of Stonewall, this third period of time in Chicago’s gay history is still happening. Based in activism and aimed toward equal rights for all genders and sexualities, the Gay Liberation Movement has seen a few different forms, but it still burns bright to this day. This jump toward action helped solidify the place in society and Chicago for the gay community, eventually settling in the neighborhoods in which they remain today. This evolution from the quiet rebellion of the early twentieth century to the loud rebellion of the Gay Liberation Movement traces the path of social standing and geographic place of Chicago’s queer population. It is a journey toward finding a home, toward finding equal ground, and it is one that lies just beneath the surface of the soil from which Chicago’s historical canon has grown. It is high time the soil was overturned.

Note: I cannot figure out how to get footnotes into a blog post. Research was drawn from the following sources:
Baim, Tracy, ed. Out and Proud in Chicago :an Overview of the City’s Gay Community. (Chicago: Surrey Books, 2008), 13. 

Fleeson, Lucinda, “The Gay ‘30s,” in Out and Proud in Chicago: an overview of Chicago’s gay community, ed. Tracy Baim et al. (Chicago: Surrey Books, 2008), 45.

Katz, Jonathan Ned, “Henry Gerber: Gay Pioneer,” in Out and Proud in Chicago: an overview of Chicago’s gay community, ed. Tracy Baim et al. (Chicago: Surrey Books, 2008), 32. 

Painter, George. 2004. “The Sensibilities of Our Forefathers: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States.” Sodomy Laws. August 10. http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/illinois.htm#fn73.

Timelines and a defense of the word "Gay"

For this week's analytical blog, I've created a brief, rough timeline of events in the history of Chicago's gay community. I also am toying with the idea of using the word gay, instead of queer, or perhaps both but only in each appropriate circumstance. I think the word gay works better functionally for the time period I'm talking about, and Tracy Baim, editor of the book Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community, sums the reasoning up nicely: "I deliberately chose the word 'gay' as all-encompassing because the word has historical significance. 'Queer' is too modern, and including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer/questioning, intersex and allies (GLBTQIA), etc., is difficult to explain in a mainstream context. We were once 'gay,' and that included men, women, transgender, bisexuals and more. We are now LGBTQIA, and we are still a community. 'Gay' simplifies, but it does not deny the reality of our diversity. I am a lesbian, but I am also 'gay' and 'queer' and 'dyke' and whatever words someone chooses to use to define me when they love me or hate me, fire me or hire me, attack me or honor me. We have alternately used LGBT and GLBT throughout the book, because there is no one standard used by the community."


Below is the timeline. Enjoy, and keep in mind that it's still somewhat of a work in progress-- I think a hand drawn or computer generated timeline may be easier to understand than the interactive timeline that I made below.

Sources: 

Baim, Tracy, ed. Out and Proud in Chicago :an Overview of the City’s Gay Community /. Chicago: Surrey Books, 2008.

Bergquist, Kathie. A Field Guide to Gay & Lesbian Chicago /. 1st ed. Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 2006.

Chicago (Ill.).Vice Commission. The Social Evil in Chicago :a Study of Existing Conditions /. 4th ed. Chicago: Republished by the Vice Commission of Chicago, Inc. for distribution by the American Vigilance Association, 1912.

Onge, Jack. The Gay Liberation Movement /. Chicago: Alliance Press, 1971.

Mining for Sources and accidentally striking gold: a saga of finding out that the really great source I was using didn't do very good research

I've been utilizing a text called "The Gay Liberation Movement" by Jack Onge, published in 1971, which he, as a gay man himself, dedicated to his fellow brothers and sisters of the movement. The text is.. well... it's not the most well written or edited thing I've ever seen, and not published by a university press or well-known publisher which is an issue. I found so, so, so much stuff in this text though-- nearly 6 pages of instances of police harassment of gays in the 20s and 30s, invaluable information about beginnings of Chicago Gay Liberation organizations, and general historical background that I hadn't found anywhere else in this much detail. But then, I looked into a point he had made about the Gay Lib group picketing a Chicago American Medical Association conference and protesting the man presenting due to his extremely anti-homosexual agenda. I found an episode of "This American Life," one of my favorite podcasts, from 2002 talking about this exact event and I was thrilled because as a podcast addict, if I could just do all my research based on podcasts that would be perfect (kidding, mostly.) And then my face fell. This whole protest situation didn't happen in Chicago, despite two texts in my carrel insisting it did (the Onge text as well as a more recent text by Kathie Bergquist called "A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago") and upon googling it, I found dozens of reputable sources talking about this same event, but telling me that it was, in fact, in San Francisco. Disappointed, I started to look into other claims Onge had made. Luckily, he was spot on about pretty much everything else, but I'm going to have to mention this in my paper now and it gave me a lot of extra work I wasn't expecting. I think the mix-up is largely due to the fact that Onge's main sources are almost entirely newsletters from Gay and Lesbian Liberation societies (mostly the Midwest branch of the Mattachine Society) which are somewhat reliable but not written by professional researchers and are all entirely from a first or secondhand personal experience. Despite this setback, I found a ton of new resources because of my extra research to look into Onge's credibility. I'm including some of the gold that I found in this credibility-based expedition into the research ether, a two clips from a woman who was one of the initiators of the Gay Lib movement in D.C., and a remarkable activist to this day. I highly recommend watching them-- they're now available online because of her personal donation of her film and other manuscript materials to the Library of Congress. All in all, today's research moral of the day is that even if you find yourself swimming through garbage, you'll probably find something good in there.

http://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2014/06/lilli-vincenz/ 


Sources:

        Bergquist, Kathie. A Field Guide to Gay & Lesbian Chicago /, n.d.

        

        Mashon, Mike. “Lilli Vincenz and the Power of Pride | Now See Hear!” Webpage, June 5, 2014. http://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2014/06/lilli-vincenz/.

Onge, Jack. The Gay Liberation Movement /, n.d.

81 Words. This American Life. Accessed October 13, 2015. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/81-words.

"Social Evil" in Chicago and the struggle to filter out what is and is not relevant

In 1910, Chicago put together a Vice Commission, comprised of mostly men and two women, all of whom "command the respect and confidence of the public at large" (1). Their goal was to investigate the "social evil" (a term which is never defined throughout the entire nearly-300-page report) and create a solution to eliminate it from or control it within the city. The Mayor released a statement to the press about how years before (the exact date is unspecified) the city attempted to segregate vice in certain districts of the city, but as these groups of people perpetrating the activities labeled under Chicago's definition of vice were pushed out by their neighbors, they were sent into different neighborhoods and were now in a state of disarray, scattered all over the city. The committee separated into seven subcommittees: existing conditions in Chicago, social evil and saloon, social evil and police, sources of supply, social evil and crime, child protection and education, rescue and reform, literature and methods, medical questions, and law and legislation. The commission met regularly as well as holding 98 conferences over a period of 6 weeks, all of which were arranged by letters of invitation and press notices. Representatives from several philanthropic, civil, social and reform and business organizations attended these meetings to speak to the committee in person. The report is full of paradoxes. The committee itself was constructed of rich white men, but at the same time they make a big show of adding a black community member to the ranks, mentioning this addition five separate times within the first 10 pages of the report. The organizations involved were relatively well-suited to diversity but the two women on the committee were largely silent. From what can be surmised, the "social evil" is essentially comprised of anyone involved in prostitution, gambling, drinking to excess, or "perversion" which seems to be the code word of choice to say "homosexual." Within the perspectives and investigation into this social evil come even more paradoxes. On one page, the report will talk about how "it is a man and not a woman problem which we face today--commercialized by man--supported by man--the supply of fresh victims furnished by men--men who have lost that fine instinct of chivalry and that splendid honor for womanhood where the destruction of a woman's soul is abhorrent, and where the defense of a woman's purity is truly the occasion for a valiant fight" (47) but on another they will discuss whether or not they should sterilize all prostitutes. It's disorienting, to say the least. This text, however, is a wealth of information regarding to the treatment of the queer community. There are mentions of cross-dressing, even language that suggests trans* presence, as well as lesbians. The entire section mentioning the queer community is labeled under "medical questions" as "sex perversion." Any person mentioned is repeatedly labeled a pervert, and the law regarding "infamous crimes against nature" is brought up and the reader is reminded that anyone committing these crimes can no longer hold an office of honor, trust or profit, vote at elections, or serve as jurors, they will be sentenced to no more than ten years, and "it shall not be necessary to prove emission, to convict any person of the crime against nature" (348). This breakthrough is going to be pivotal for the foundation of my thesis, and the timing of discovering this could not have been more perfect. I am so thrilled to use this section in addition to other information about locations of these activities, particularly their prevalence in the north side, in proving my thesis that the neighborhood diaspora of Chicago's queer community was caused by under-reported, under-the-table police and societal persecution.


Source:

Chicago (Ill.).Vice Commission. “The Social Evil in Chicago :a Study of Existing Conditions /,” no. 1 (n.d.).