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.