A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNITY:

QUEERNESS AND URBAN AMBIGUITY IN NORTHEAST OHIO, 1945 - 1980

A thesis submitted

To Kent State University in partial

Fulfillment of the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

by

Max Turner Monegan

May, 2019

© Copyright

All Rights Reserved

Except for previously published materials

Thesis written by

Max Monegan

B.S., Kent State University, 2008

M.A.T., Kent State University, 2010

M.A., Kent State University, 2019

Approved by

______, Advisor Dr. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor

______, Chair, Department of History Dr. Kevin Adams

______, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Dr. James L. Blank

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS...……………………………………………………………………....iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………....iv

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW…………………………………………………10

SOURCES AND VOCABULARY……………………………………………..……….18

ORAL HISTORY METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………..23

CHAPTER OVERVIEWS…………………………………….………………………....24

CHAPTERS Page

I NORTHEAST OHIO: A PLACE………………..……………………………..26

DEFINING URBAN, RURAL, AND THE SPACES IN- BETWEEN…………………………………………………………..…………..27

SETTING THE SCENE: AKRON, CLEVELAND, AND NORTHEAST OHIO………………………………………………………………..……………32

II BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER…………………………………………...………...54 . LOW POPULATION DENSITY………………………………………………..56

FEWER TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS……………………………………...63

GREATER COMMUNITY SURVEILLANCE………….……………………...72

III BUILDING A COMMUNITY…………………………………………………………..78

LESBIANS ARE DIFFERENT……………………………………………….…79

WHAT’S STONEWALL?...... 84

FINDING COMMUNITY……………………………………………………….91

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………..98

iii

SOURCES CONSULTED………………………………………………………………...……103 APPENDICES A. CONVERSATION GUIDE……………………...……………………………….....106

B. NORTHEAST OHIO MAP...... 109

C. NOTES ON NORTHEAST OHIO BARS…………...... 110

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is the result of a long and twisting journey across more years than I originally suspected or intended. One advantage, I think, of this protracted endeavor is that I have had the opportunity to know many of my professors for much longer than other students have had this privilege.

Each and every professor who has taught me over the course of my stay in the Kent State University

History Department has given me a deeper appreciation for theory, method, and content. I am deeply indebted to you all for your tutelage.

In particular, I want to thank the professors who worked directly on my thesis with me. Above all others I want to thank my advisor, Dr Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, for bearing with me over the last five years.

Because you understood my work at Bio-med, you understood who and what you were getting, having me as an advisee. Your patience and endurance through this endeavor is deeply appreciated. My committee members, Dr Kenneth Bindas, and Dr Elaine Frantz, without your patience, experience, and help I would never have gotten this far. You have dealt with my personal timeline, inability to meet during convenient hours, and many questions. Dr. Kenneth Bindas helped me take my fist steps through oral history methods, best practices, legal questions, and offered a unique perspective on queer culture.

Dr. Elaine Frantz helped me think more deeply about gender and place on many occasions, and always pushed me to go digging through new primary sources.

I would also like to thank those professionals I have encountered on this journey: Gina Gatta from

Dameron for providing me copies of early Dameron Guides, which gave me my first tantalizing clues to the world I hoped to uncover; Ann Sindelar from the Western Reserve Historical Society archives for helping me make my first bumbling steps through the archives; Victoria Ramey from the Akron Public

Library Special collections for putting me into contact with so many others - both narrators and others interested in similar projects.

I would also like to thank the many members of the Akron LGBTQ+ community who directly or indirectly put me into contact with others. Liam Pal, from Canapi helped me in my search for narrators, as

v did the Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce. I also want to thank the individuals I met in

Akron’s bars while doing field research for your thoughts, insights, booklets you found stashed away in drawers, and your willingness to let me harass you for more information into the evening hours.

Lastly, and most especially, I want to thank my queer students - both past and present - for their willingness to talk about their lives, correct me, and explain how they see the world. This project would never have started if you had not forced me to see the dissonance between urban and rural queer culture. Words cannot properly express what you all have meant to me over the past seven years, and watching you strive to be the best versions of yourselves has been an inspiration to me. To Griffon,

Lukas, Liam, Erica, Max, Kayden, Miles, Eli, Connor, and all of the others who I have failed to mention,

I will never forget your spirit, your compassion, and your willingness to teach others. I dedicate this work to you and your futures.

vi

INTRODUCTION

As they say, it was thrilling because you know all of a sudden, you're in Hollywood and there's all these things, landmarks you see in books or see on television, see [in] the movies, and you're there. You're at Grauman's Chinese Theater and there's the handprints of the movie stars. And you're there, and there's the Hollywood sign and you can go see the Hollywood sign. You're there, you go, I went to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Or I drove out to Malibu Beach and walked on the beach and saw a movie star, right? I mean, this is a true story, where when I was going to acting school I would drive by, I had a little red pickup truck and I would drive out to Malibu Beach on a Sunday morning before it was busy, and I would just walk down the secret staircase. And...one foggy morning I'm walking on the beach and this figure, it's like a movie, comes out of the fog toward me and it's Burt Lancaster, movie star. So here I am walking, you know, I mean that doesn't happen in Orrville Ohio (laughs) but those are those wonderful moments that I was like, 'Oh my God this is real.' It makes it real. There's this person, but he's a person. But here you see him, in the movies, are these, you know, that's really amazing to be part of that. That it makes it real. That's, that was the most exciting thing. And especially that, you know, my fantasy of being a movie star, being an actor. There, there he was, you know, that year wasn't just this, a shadow on a movie screen. There was a real... I saw him. That was exciting.1 – Henry Goldring

Well there are certain areas where... it's like redneck and you really don't want to be... flamboyant or hanging on somebody or... it just causes issues. So, you kind of... button yourself up... behaved yourself and didn't like hold hands or stuff like that. So, I think too, sometimes, you would think... and we would go down to around Columbus to go to like the woman's festival. You're more out, like way out in the country, and you always were a little fearful about, 'what if the car breaks down and is someone going to think that,' ... is someone gonna show up that shouldn't be... is someone gonna try to harm us. But I think you know it’s more preconceived notions than maybe what really is there because you're just kind of a little fearful because, you are different, and people don't always accept differences well.2 – Terry Austin

Henry Goldring and Terry Austin had very different perspectives on the opportunities available to them in Northeast Ohio as they grew up. Henry left as soon as he was able for a life in

California and then traveled between L.A. and for most of his career. Terry has lived and worked in or near Akron for her entire life. Both agreed that life in Northeast Ohio was quite different from the larger cities of the east and west coasts. But different did not necessarily

1 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, January 25, 2019. 2 Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, December 5, 2018.

1 mean less-than, as is so often assumed in narratives of queer life in small cities, towns, and the countryside beyond. While Henry’s views often mirrored the common perception that he could only be himself in the big city, Terry and others found a very different kind of community in and around Akron. This community was larger, more tight-knit, and more enduring than previous scholars’ work on similar landscapes have revealed.

While most scholarship seems to suggest gay and communities only existed in large cities before the 1969 Stonewall riot, the Northeast Ohio Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,

Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) community was large, organized, and resilient before

Stonewall, throughout the 1970s, and through the AIDS crisis. Akron, like other small to mid- sized cities throughout the United States, has been ignored in favor of the larger centers more commonly associated with the gay and lesbian culture. However, this mis-step on the part of historians and researchers has obscured a vibrant queer culture that is distinct and separate from that of the larger cities.

Why have most scholars been unable to find LGBTQ+ community outside of major cities before 1969? The idea of the city and urbanity have long dominated the history of the 20th century LGBTQ+ community. The focus on, and privileging of, the city throughout popular and academic depictions of the LGBTQ+ community are due to the widely reported nature and perceived importance of the 1969 in New York and the 1979 in

San Francisco. Additionally, the urban locations of early organizations, who first attempted to imagine a national LGBTQ+ community, have contributed to an urban focus in our history. Similarly, our definition of community has been based on these well-known events and their environment. The ubiquity of the gay or lesbian , the glamorous style and nightlife, and

2 the story of the country kid who moves to the big city are all cornerstones of modern LGBTQ+ culture, and all reflect a metrocentric culture, history, and value system.

The inspiration for this work came from my effort to understand the culture of LGBTQ+ students at a rural school in Ohio where I was struck by the differences between LGBTQ+ culture in a rural space and the city. When I helped open a school that sought to create a supportive space for all students, it unintentionally created a very queer space in what is otherwise a very conservative area. This flourishing LGBTQ+ culture taught me many things about rural life in general and especially the struggles of LGBTQ+ youth in the countryside today. One of their complaints in my history class was that they did not see themselves reflected in my history curriculum. When I pointed to events like Stonewall, many students emphasized that those LGBTQ+ people were different from them, and that they could not relate to their actions or ideas. From there, I felt compelled to seek a better understanding of what it meant to be LGBTQ+ in a rural setting. The dissonance between mainstream, urban, LGBTQ+ culture and that of rural queer America that my students were responding to is significant, and not reflected in the history of the LGBTQ+ movement.

The lack of rural representation in mainstream LGBTQ+ culture is obvious for anyone who chooses to look. The most visible place that one finds rural America in modern LGBTQ+ culture is part of the long-standing advice that young queer people so often hear: Get out of the country and come to the city, the land of acceptance (or at least tolerance) and culture. Some, and maybe even many, LGBTQ+ youth do just that. They suffer in silence through high school and then go far away to college and the cosmopolitan future that awaits them in New York, Los

Angeles, , Washington D.C., Chicago, or other urban spaces nearer their homes.

Then, the story goes, you can be happy, authentic, and can come out and be the proud queer

3 urbanite you were always meant to be. For some members of the LGBTQ+ community, this version of the ‘youth going to the city to find their dreams’ story does become a reality.

However, for many this is not the case. Some cannot leave the rural spaces they grew up in due to a lack of resources while others choose not to. Finally, others do leave, but like so many young people, eventually go home or find a place similar to their childhood home to settle down and start a family.3

While my students rarely suffered in silence, many also chose to stay in rural spaces.

There are of course many reasons for this, and it would be insulting to suggest that LGBTQ+ youth in the late twenty-teens are making one of the biggest decisions of their life primarily on the basis of what is essentially queer folklore. That is, that in a big city you will be safe, successful, and satisfied. In the United States today, one can be queer and have all of those things in many different environments. And yet, the story remains, and in LGBTQ+ culture, the power and draw of the metropolis still stands out against the perceived hostility and backwardness of rural spaces.4

Our history - the history that the LGBTQ+ community tells itself - is saturated not only with tales of the city, it is more often than not told by the LGBTQ+ community living in the cities. The writers of our histories have largely been members of the community who themselves fled the rural places of America’s past to the urban university systems. There, they wrote their history in the wake of the AIDS crisis, and on into the new millennium, while cultural hostility to

LGBTQ+ people remained high. Scholarly interest in the LGBTQ+ community has been on the

3 Kath Weston, “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration.” GLQ 2 no.3 (June 1995) 253–277. Accessed February 18, 2019, doi: https://doi-org.proxy.library.kent.edu/10.1215/10642684-2-3-253 4 Ibid.; Stapel, Christopher. “‘Fagging’ the Countryside (De)’Queering’ Rural ” in Studies in Urbanormativity. Eds. Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas. (Lexington Books, Lanham, 2014). 153- 154.

4 decline since it peaked around 2009. Since then, historical investigations have declined dramatically. The reason for this decline is not clear, however, some of the many possible factors might include an increased interest in financial history following the 2008 market crash and recession, President Obama’s election and more supportive policies for the LGBTQ+ community which brought the community into the mainstream of American society, an exhaustion of most archival material on the LGBTQ+ community in and about New York and San Francisco, and few obvious directions for future research.

I write about the LGBTQ+ community as a member and an insider. Such disclaimers seem mandatory since the idea of authorial objectivity was disposed of in the postmodern revolution, and so I find myself - a gay man from the suburban Midwest - writing about queer people in the suburban and rural Midwest. Like so many others I have felt the pull of the city, been influenced by the LGBTQ+ community’s folklore about the city and, to an extent, sought out the myth for myself.

What does a non-metropolitan LGBTQ+ history look like? This is not an easy question to answer, and before it can be pursued one must first locate the people of the LGBTQ+ community who lived outside of the major cities. To do so presents its own challenges. This work does not seek to write an account of the history of small city, suburban, and rural LGBTQ+ people, but it seeks to destabilize the metropolis-centered narrative of LGBTQ+ history and contribute to the small but growing body of scholarship that has begun to uncover a more rural LGBTQ+ history that is an addition to our urban history and will offer a richer understanding of what it means to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Specifically, this thesis seeks what constituted community for homosexual people after 1945 in and around a small Midwestern city, Akron,

Ohio, to discover where that community could be found, and attempt to understand the

5 relationship that the Akron LGBTQ+ community had to other municipalities, big and small, in the region. Additionally, it seeks to encourage research into queer communities beyond heavily urban centers.

The timeframe for this work begins after the second World War and the national movement of people to urban environments that took place during and after the war. Many veterans of World War Two chose to remain in New York and San Francisco, the main points of return from service. This mass relocation was especially common for and who had served in the military, many of whom had discovered for the first time that they were not alone in their attraction to members of the same sex. Often these young queer people chose not to return to their small-town homes either because they were dishonorably discharged on the grounds of their or because they had become familiar with the gay scene in large cities during leave and chose to remain on the coasts instead. Both New York and San Francisco have had reputations as queer spaces, or at least for containing queer spaces, for many years.

Greenwich Village in New York City and The Castro district in San Francisco were well known by LGBTQ+ and heterosexual people alike as centers of gay culture. Both of these communities dominated the popular imagination of the 20th century LGBTQ+ cultural landscape.5

While searching for less-urban queer communities in a period where many LGBTQ+ people were moving towards large cities is unintuitive, the post-war United States represents a fertile starting point for several reasons. First, homosexuality was entering the popular lexicon of the United States and was reported on in a limited manner in various news media. Second, the growth of urban homosexual enclaves was not unknown to gay men and lesbians elsewhere in

5 For more on these migrations, see Allan Berube’s Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women During WWII (1990) John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940-1970, 2nd ed. (1998) and Lilian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (1991).

6 the nation, although these urban communities did not yet possess the prestige, they would acquire during the 1970s. New York in particular came to dominate the popular understanding of where to find queer people, followed closely by San Francisco. Third, the so-called discovery of homosexuality by the United States Government during World War Two also led to increased federal policing around the topic of homosexuality, as evidenced by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s

Lavender Scare, which forced numerous gay men and lesbians out of the federal bureaucracy.6

The years following World War II and preceding Stonewall lie at an interesting junction in the study of identities, including LGBTQ+ identity, and benefits from an intersectional analysis. Women, and therefore lesbians, were claiming more power, freedom and agency in the

United States, but second wave feminism had not yet reached its height and backwards-looking laws and cultural norms still restricted the movement of most women. The women interviewed for this study appear to have been less willing, or at least less forthcoming, than their male counterparts about using personal ads from Dameron Guides or other similar magazines. Women may have struggled to utilize personal correspondence to connect to other lesbians because of heightened surveillance from family in the home and officials in the post office. The lives of

Black gay men and lesbians were still segregated from white society, and this frequently extended to relations within the LGBTQ+ community. To the extent black gay men and lesbians

(such as Bayard Rustin and Pauli Murray) engaged in activism, they may have been more likely to work for civil rights or even women’s rights. The Chicana/o movement was still in its formative stages and seems to have been generally more inclusive of gender and to a limited

6 On the see David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago, 2004).; Andrea Friedman, “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics,” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1105–1129; On homosexuality in news media, as well as the notoriety of large cities as queer places, see John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (Chicago, 1998), George Chauncey’s Gay New York (1994), and Martin Meeker’s Contact’s Desired (Chicago, 2006).

7 extent . The rise of the women’s, civil rights, and Chicano social movements in the post-war era impacted the lives of many LGBTQ+ people and have also eclipsed the roles of these varied people in what is colloquially referred to today as the gay rights movement. White men, on the other hand, participated in greater numbers in gay bars, bathhouses, adult theaters and bookstores, and also in responding to personal ads. They enjoyed more mobility everywhere in the nation and less surveillance by authorities and community members.7

Comparatively, white gay men have always been able to access not only spaces, but careers that have privileged their representation in historical research. In 1950, only 1.52% of rural Ohioans were non-white, in 1960 that number was 1.4%. Of all LGBTQ+ people, white gay men enjoyed the most societal protection, and often the lightest consequences when entanglements with the law occurred. Their greater mobility and decreased surveillance allowed them a greater freedom of movement, a key advantage in accessing the LGBTQ+ community beyond the limits of the city. White gay men also had much easier access to middle-class careers than their , black, and brown peers and many of these white gay men lived double lives to enable access to respectable jobs and wealth. Thus, white gay men have also left most of the sources that historians have uncovered.8

7 On Rustin, see John D’Emilio’s Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (2003). On Pauli Murry see Rosalind Rosenberg’s Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murry (2017). 8On the Chicano/a Movement generally, see Lorena Oropeza’s Raza Si, Guerra No: Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era (2005). For Queer involvement in Vietnam protests, Oropeza points to Justin David Suran’s article, “Coming Out Against the War: Antimilitarism and the Politicization of Homosexuality in the Ear of Vietnam” in American Quarterly 53 no. 3 (2001). 452-488. On the troubled relationship between race and sexuality: Kevin J. Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights: Race and the Politics of Sexual Orientation in , 1969–1982,” Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 49–72. Kwame A. Holmes, “Chocolate to Rainbow City: The Dialectics of Black and Gay Community Formation in Postwar Washington, D.C., 1946–1978” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011). United States. Census Bureau. Census of Population – 1950 – Volume II, Part 35 Characteristics of the Population: Ohio. Table 13: Color By Sex, For The State, Urban and Rural: 1930 to 1950. 56.; United States. Census Bureau. CENSUS OF POPULATION: 1960 Vol. I CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POPULATION Number of Inhabitants, General Population Characteristics, General Social and Economic Characteristics, and Detailed Characteristics Part 37 OHIO. Table 13: Summary of Population Characteristics, For The State, By Size of Place, and For Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Urbanized Areas, Urban Places, and Counties:1960, 47. On the preponderance of gay men in the literature, see Lanser, The Sexuality

8

Originally, this study of a non-metropolitan queer community intended to end its narrative in 1969 right before Stonewall, assuming the riots heralded in a new age of queer politics and visibility, which changed all queer communities. Unfortunately, not enough Akron- area interviewees could speak to the history between 1945 and 1969. While all of the narrators were able to reflect on the 1960s, many remembered the decade only as children and were not in contact with the LGBTQ+ community, nor did they recall hearing about the LGBTQ+ community from their parents, relatives, or news media. What has become clear from the interviews is that many did not hear about the 1969 Stonewall riots for quite some time, for some narrators it was years later. This implies that Stonewall only became important to their lives in retrospect. Of those who did hear of them soon after the riots occurred, many did not view them as a major moment, or see their relevance to Akron. These responses to Stonewall in communities like Akron and Northeast Ohio are valuable to the larger narrative of LGBTQ+ history in that they disrupt the assumption that the larger narrative of San Francisco and New

York was a homogenizing force and fostered a sense national unity or connectedness – something that my narrators almost universally rejected. Ultimately, by studying less-urban

LGBTQ+ communities after 1945 through the 1980s, this thesis hopes to contribute to the scholarship already destabilizing the dominance of the New York - San Francisco narrative in

LGBTQ+. Doing so will reopen the field to a broader understanding of what it means to belong to the LGBTQ+ community, re-define the ways we think about community, give voice to those who have been written out of our history, and give my former rural LGBTQ+ students a history

of History; Margot Canaday, “LGBT History,” Frontiers 35, no. 1 (2014): 11–19; Linda Garber, “Where in the World Are the Lesbians?,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14, no. 1/2 (2005): 28–50; Regina Kunzel offers an extensive list of sources on the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation/queerness in her review of the field, “The Power of Queer History” American Historical Review 123, no. 5 (December 2018): 1579. DOI:10.1093/AHR/RHY202

9 that begins to connect their lives to an inclusive past, to give them people like themselves in history.

Historiographical Overview

Scholarship on the history of the 20th century LGBTQ+ community first began to appear in the 1970s and from its beginnings the scholarship has mostly focused on the urban centers of

New York and San Francisco. The works that focus on these urban communities also define the whole LGBTQ+ community within the framework of urban LGBTQ+ culture. They consistently reproduce the ideas and folklore that LGBTQ+ culture is centered in urban environments, that rural spaces are hostile to LGBTQ+ culture and community, that LGBTQ+ community must look the same in rural and urban spaces, and that rural LGBTQ+ culture is, by and large, an oxymoron.

Several very important works of scholarship dominate this narrative. John D’Emilio’s

Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States

1940-1970 (1983) remains the foundational text of the urban-focused movement towards a national community consciousness. In Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, D’Emilio examines the homophile movement in New York and San Francisco and the events that lead to Stonewall.

Building from D’Emilio’s foundation, George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban

Culture, and the Making of the Gay World 1890-1940 (1994) pushes our understanding of urban gay culture back further into the late nineteenth century. In Gay New York, Chauncey examines the early homosexual culture of New York against the backdrop of the emerging American modern culture, and the decline of homosexual culture in the 1930s. These two texts constitute the core of our understanding about LGBTQ+ culture, community, and how the LGBTQ+ community fits into the national narrative of the twentieth century. Sexual Politics, Sexual

10

Communities and Gay New York also serve as the points of departure to more specific studies in both cities, and within the larger historiography of the field. The urbanist assumptions that undergird these works therefore undergird the literature overall. David Eisenbach’s Gay Power:

An American Revolution (2006), for example, is a more recent analysis of the urban-focused

1940-1970 timeline and beyond into the 1980s and 1990s, with updated research and understandings that seeks to build from D’Emilio’s work and keep the central narrative of the field relevant. Eisenbach does not attempt to diversify the field beyond white gay men, a common omission in the field generally, nor does he draw from the research on less metropolitan interpretations of queer history that were available in 2006.9

Another focus of research remains the urban-focused early homophile groups, the individuals that constituted them, and the community building that they did in New York and

San Francisco. These groups and individuals would facilitate the community consciousness that resulted in the Stonewall and White Night riots, as well as the movement. These authors are also building from the foundation that John D’Emilio, and to a lesser extent George

Chauncey, built in their works. For example, Barry Adam’s The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian

Movement (1987) focuses on challenges the urban LGBTQ+ community faced after the

Stonewall riots, including the AIDS crisis, and rise of the modern LGBTQ+ movement in the

1990s. Another exemplar of this urban community development strand of research is Martin

Meeker’s excellent Contacts Desired (2006) which claims to address rural community, though does so only in the sense of identifying the rural with the periphery. Meeker examines the ways in which gay men connected in the second half of the twentieth century. In this respect it is fairly

9 John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940-1970, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay World 1890-1940, (New York: Basic Books, 1994); David Eisenbach, Gay Power: An American Revolution, (New York: Carroll + Graff Publishing, 2006).

11 unique, telling histories of connection and community growth from a lens outside of the politics of gay liberation. Yet works like these continue to move the dominant urban narrative forward in time, and reinscribe its meanings in modern LGBTQ+ culture.10

Outside of this focus on New York and San Francisco, a number of authors have attempted to show how the LGBTQ+ community has developed nationally or in less-urban places in the decades after the Stonewall and White Night riots. These works broadly fall into two categories: those that seek to push the narrative of LGBTQ+ history beyond the urban and those that add to theories of community and identity development within the LGBTQ+ population outside of the city.

Another group of authors aim to de-center the narrative created by D’Emilio, Chauncey, and others. Most of this history is focused on the period beginning during the 1940s including

World War II, and beyond. This group of authors explores what it means to be a member of the

LGBTQ+ community - or more frequently the white gay male community - outside of New York and San Francisco in the post-depression and post-war years. John Howard’s Men Like That: A

Southern Queer History (1999) is the most well-known of these. Howard details how rural gay men made connections. He chronologically spans 1940 to the 1980s and is singularly useful in understanding how rural men met. The work itself is all about Howard’s native Mississippi and belongs to a relatively robust sub-field of queer southern histories.11

Other regional histories of the LGBTQ+ community would dominate scholarly interest in the late 1990s and continue well into the next decade. These works include Will Fellows’ Farm

Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (1998). Fellows’ was the decade’s only study of

10 On Homophile groups in large cities, see John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and to a lesser extent George Chauncy’s Gay New York. Barry D Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement, (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987); Martin Meeker, Contacts Desired, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). 11 John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).

12 the Midwest and contains stories of Midwestern men who left the countryside to live in

Midwestern cities. His primary aim is to tell individual histories, not to locate a larger community within the Midwest. Fellows expresses in his introduction that he had desired more stories from rural places but did not find them. His primary method of finding his interviewees was through newspaper advertisements requesting the interviews. In a different vein, Peter

Boag’s Same Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest

(2003) is a series of regional studies of several events and criminal cases that changed public perceptions of homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest, drawn primarily from that broke in newspapers as a result of vice squads and sting operations, particularly in public restrooms.

Both of these works in regional history begin a shift away from New York and San Francisco in

LGBTQ+ history. However, they still remain bound by D’Emilio and Chauncy’s root assumptions about urbanity, especially that life in the city is better than life in the rural places of

America. John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman’s Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in

America (2012) also occupies this space in the historiography. Their collaborative work examines changing conceptions of sexuality in the United States from before the American

Revolution through the 1980s. Threaded throughout are discussions of the changing perceptions and understandings of the LGBTQ+ community by American society. D’Emilio’s second significant work in this field also reinforces the narrative strength of his original claim; while

Intimate Matters explores regions beyond New York and San Francisco, urban narratives continue to dominate the text and assumptions.12

12 Peter Boag, Same Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).; Will Fellows, ed., Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).; John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).

13

The second group of scholarship, more focused on sociological and theoretical approaches, follows in parallel chronology to the first. Brett Beemyn’s Creating a Place for

Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Histories (1997) is a collection of community stories from small towns to small cities, all outside of the New York - San Francisco narrative.

Beemyn easily demonstrates the presence of LGBTQ+ folks in these moderately-sized cities and lays the foundation for much of Howard, Johnson, and Thompson’s thinking on rurality, transportation and space. Wayne Brekhus’ Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity (2003) looks at differing expressions of homosexuality.

Specifically, he examines those who are first and foremost gay, those who seek to disguise their homosexuality, and those who put other attributes before being gay. This is one of the few works that explicitly looks at suburban spaces and attempts to quantify the likelihood of these ‘types’ of

LGBTQ+ people living in different environments. It is also notable for its attempt to show how these differing types each possess survival techniques for social environments beyond the city.

These two works are particularly useful in thinking about rurality and the LGBTQ+ community as they provide templates for how non-urban people construct queer identity.13

A decade later, other authors writing in a similar vein to Howard benefited enormously from the theoretical work that emerged in the intervening years. Among them is Brock

Thompson whose work, The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South (2010), is similar to Howard’s in content and aim but with a focus on Arkansas. Thompson and other historians of the queer South have sought to separate it from the New York - San Francisco narrative. They do so by ascribing primacy to the Southerness of the communities they study rather than rurality -

13 Brett Beemyn, ed. Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories. (New York: Routledge, 1997).; Wayne Brekhus, Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003).

14 though rurality plays a significant role in their study as well. scholar Colin R.

Johnson focuses more broadly on concepts of community and rurality. His work, Just Queer

Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America (2013), though not confined to the South, examines queer understandings of rural places, and how rural Americans understood the

LGBTQ+ community in the first half of the 20th century. Johnson makes it clear that his work is an explicitly rural - not regional - study. He contrasts himself to Howard and examines how sexuality/ and variation intersected with rural culture as the ideas of homosexual and heterosexual began to infiltrate American society in the twentieth century.

Johnson’s research on community and rurality serves as a critical model for my own research and uncovering a broader community in small towns and a different understanding of community itself after World War II.14

A more recent account of queer community that offers valuable insights is social scientist and researcher Mary L. Gray’s Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural

America (2009). Gray’s contemporary research of the lives of today’s rural queer youth seeks to examine the ways in which technology has changed the face of community and communication in the rural LGBTQ+ culture, with an emphasis on the internet and electronic communication.

Her work is strongly committed to finding a rural digital community in the modern era whose connections, I argue, parallel the earlier LGBTQ+ community found in rural places. Mary Grey notes that cities thrive on a collection of varied interests, identities, and cultures.

Metropolitanism and cosmopolitanism value this diversity, which we still see today, both in and out of the LGBTQ+ community. She continues, “Rural communities...organize around an

14 Brock Thompson, The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2010).; Colin R. Johnson, Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013).

15 appreciation for solidarity expressed through blending in…. But a semblance of sameness, particularly rooted in family connections, purchases something valued in rural communities: the sense of familiarity and belonging so central to structures of rural life.”15 Grey agrees with John

Howard’s assertion that difference was allowed a quiet existence so long as it did not disrupt the institutions of family and community. As Grey notes, this is hardly an environment in which members of the LGBTQ+ community can thrive, especially if thriving is defined by urban queer standards. The digital communities in Gray’s work, as well as their pen and paper predecessors, both show strong connections to Benedict Anderson’s work in Imagined Communities.

Benedict Anderson’s theory of community formation for nations is suggestive for how the early LGBTQ+ community was formed. Many historians have utilized his ideas of imagined communities to theorize about urban LGBTQ+ communities, as have those few authors who have begun to explore suburban and rural LGBTQ+ community. This study continues to use

Anderson’s theories to construct the unevenly-urban LGBTQ+ community of Northeast Ohio.

Most of the people who communicated with each other through personal ads never met face-to- face. Those who did meet did not necessarily continue that contact. Other people who met in bars, bathrooms, parks and other places did not always learn the names of those whom they interacted with, and often never saw them again. These contacts allowed LGBTQ+ people from the country to know that there were others like them, that they were not alone in the world. These also occasionally led LGBTQ+ people to realize that they shared knowledge of queer spaces, had mutual acquaintances, or former lovers, and these connections allowed LGBTQ+ people to

15 Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 38.

16 imagine themselves as part of a sprawling network of queer people that was not confined to the city.16

Finally, the body of scholarship identified as Rural Queer Studies is dedicated to investigating the gap between urban-dominated, mainstream, LGBTQ+ culture as popularized in media, stereotypes, most historical accounts, what is often portrayed as the “rural closet” and the lived experiences of queer people in rural places. Commonly, this work calls for a number of re- imaginings of the rural, including de-centering the urban, contesting assumed definitions of rural, repositioning the rural as definitionally distinct from the urban, and challenging the perceived neutrality of metrocentrism. Mary Gray has suggested that in rural spaces, we should be attentive to the idea of the politics of visibility, “the need to locate and mark queer subjects to distinguish and contain them from normal people.”17 This attention to queerness and the need to mark homosexuality is a key component to metronormative understandings of LGBTQ culture and goes largely unanalyzed in metrocentric studies of homosexuality. In Queering the Countryside

Mary L. Gray, Colin R. Johnson, and Brian J. Gilly note that only 2.62% of land in the United

States meets the government's definition of urban. Despite this, the majority of Americans do not live in rural spaces. Gray, Johnson and Gilly go on to further describe what other authors have called the ‘fiction of rural spaces,’ a list of common assumptions and associations about the rural. In their description, Gray, Johnson, and Gilly include the ‘slowness’ of rural life - with its attending implications of stubbornness and stupidity - that rural equals farming, an assumed high religiosity, racism, membership in the Republican party, and isolation from national and international trends. These culturally embedded assumptions about the rural dominate popular

16 Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. (New York: New York University Press, 2009).; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. 2nd ed. (: Verso, 2006). 17 Gray, Mary L. Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. (New York University Press, NY, 2009). 146.

17 perception and tinge much academic writing on LGBTQ+ people in rural places. In particular, the “rural closet” merits a more thorough examination as the primary trope relating LGBTQ+ culture to rural spaces. The rural closet is part of the larger LGBTQ+ mythos that posits, if you want to be queer and happy you must move to the city. The rural is associated with , hostility towards queer people, and an unactualized self, while the urban is coded as homosexual-friendly, accepting or tolerant of queer people, and actualized. In this arrangement, the urban and the rural act as a binary, yet Colin R. Johnson notes that this is akin to claiming that apples and oranges are also binary opposites. Johnson suggests we learn from

Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet and treat them as a binarism, or a linked pair that operate as exact opposites rather than being acknowledged as qualitatively mismatched.

Uncoupling the urban and the rural allows us to interrogate the reasons to construct this association as well as the manner in which the urban has used the rural in constructing the rural closet. The primary effect of the rural closet has been the positive association of the city with multiculturalism, individuality, consumerism, culture, and to associate the rural with regressive social norms, conformity, a lack of choice, and absent of a culture.18

Sources and Vocabulary

The primary sources for this project are interviews with Akron-area LGBTQ+ people who utilized these early communication networks to contribute to the formation of community connections. I initially hoped to find that writers, whatever their original intent in contacting others, began to create circles of friends, a network of personal and professional contacts, in

18Gray, 5-6, 22-26; Johnson, 10-17.; Johnson, Gilley, and Gray, 2-20; Mason, Carol. Oklahomo: Lessons in Unqueering America, (State University of New York Press, New York, 2015). 14-15; Gray, Mary L. Johnson, Colin R. and Gilly, Brian J. Queering the Countryside (New York University Press, NY, 2016). 2-4,12.; Gray, Mary L. Out in the Country, 6-11. Johnson, Colin R. Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America. (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2013). 10-17.; Stapel, 151-154.

18 addition to seeking out romance. While I never did find boxes of letters, these interviews revealed a thriving queer culture and two distinct communities living in Akron with very different norms, values, and goals. Those communities would eventually come together during the AIDS crisis and become the modern LGBTQ+ community in Akron and the surrounding areas.

My original intention was to develop a bottom up history focused on everyday LGBTQ+ people of all walks of life, regardless of skin tone, gender, and socioeconomic status. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a number of lesbian women - or “gay girls” as some preferred to be called – which allowed for half of the collected material to be the voices of women. The eight participants I ultimately conducted interviews with consist of three lesbians, one trans-woman, and four gay men. All of them spent a significant number of their early years living in Northeast Ohio. My narrators were born between 1946 and 1959, with most born in the very early 1950s. The careers of my narrators point to a bias towards middle class professionals and small business owners: all of my narrators attended at least a few years of college and most earned a degree or certificate. I was ultimately unable to locate non-white participants who were willing to share their stories with me. Another gap in this work is that while I was able to interview lesbians, gay men, and an individual who today identifies as a trans-woman, I was unable to find anyone who was bisexual and willing to share their story. As an educator with students from many walks of life, it is my sincerest hope that these gaps in my work are not interpreted as an attempt to erase certain identities.

Terry Austin is a fifty-nine-year-old white female living in Akron Ohio and has lived in

Akron for all of her life except for twenty years spent in Stow, Ohio, a nearby suburb. She has a bachelor’s degree in business and has had a number of jobs including positions as a court clerk,

19 paralegal, and a variety of positions for various banks, including taxes, real estate, and collateral analysis. She was married in 2016 to Kathy McGlone.

Jeff Bixby is a sixty-seven-year-old white male living in Medina Ohio, the community where he grew up, after spending the majority of his adult professional life in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked as an elementary school teacher. He has a bachelor’s degree in education and worked towards a master’s degree at one point in his life. He has never married.

Rosita Estefan is a seventy-year-old white woman who was born in

Maryland, and lived in Buffalo, New York, until 1963 when her family moved to Bath, Ohio.

She has remained in the Greater Akron area since moving out of her childhood home. Rosita has a degree in interior design and another in cosmetology. She has never married but had several long-term relationships.

Henry Goldring is a sixty-three-year-old white male living in Akron, Ohio, who took four years of college courses before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. He is also a writer, playwright, and author, and spent most of his adult life moving between New York and

San Francisco. He has never married.

Kathy McGlone is a fifty-five-year-old white woman living in Akron, Ohio, and has an associate degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in finance. She has worked in real estate and related fields for her whole career. She married Terry Austin in 2016 and, like Terry, has lived in Akron for her whole life, except for when they lived in Stow.

Jerry Raker is a seventy-two-year-old white male who was born in Wadsworth, Ohio, and now lives in Akron, Ohio. He spent his early adulthood living in Columbus, Ohio, teaching ballroom dancing, and after that spent twenty-five years traveling extensively as a national and

20 international trainer for a beauty company. When he settled in Akron, he opened his own beauty salon. Jerry has never married.

Jill Shamp is a sixty-seven-year-old white woman who lives in Akron, Ohio, and grew up in Wooster, Ohio. She graduated from Bowling Green with a bachelor’s degree, and works in her field, which she did not disclose. She has lived in Akron since returning from Bowling Green and has never married.

Jerry Shedley is a seventy-two-year-old white male and lives in Akron, Ohio. He has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, and an associate degree in engineering and construction. Jerry has held numerous jobs over the course of his life, from teacher to entrepreneur, to a production job at Goodyear. He grew up in Akron, and his family moved to

West Salem, Ohio, as he was approaching adolescence. He returned to Akron for college and has not left. Jerry was married, though it was not recognized by the government, until his partner died from complications related to AIDS. He has been in a committed relationship with another man for some time now.

While my initial hope of finding that various LGBTQ+ people maintained regular contact through letter writing never quite worked out, the creation of a community by establishing friendships, intimate relationships, and circles of friends by building connections between people that other authors have portrayed as disconnected was much more successful. This thesis will show connections between various social circles, the ways in which local geographies played a part in contact, and more broadly define the community through these interviews, current theories of queerness, and by juxtaposing them with established knowledge of more urban places.

21

Several notes on vocabulary are appropriate here. Up to this point I have used the acronym LGBTQ+ to reference the people and community that I discuss. In and among the community, there is an enormous variety of opinions on inclusive language ranging from using

LGBTQQIAA - or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, , asexual, and ally - to simply using gay or queer. There is a lot to be said for inclusive language, but there is also a lot to be said for language that rolls off the tongue - literally or metaphorically. Given the choice, I use queer because, in my opinion, it is the most inclusive and aesthetically usable word in the community’s vocabulary. However, queer also leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many members of the LGBTQ+ community, and especially the older members I interviewed, as it was the epitaph of choice in the mid-twentieth century. Today’s younger generations have largely reclaimed the word, but the subjects of this work almost universally found it distasteful. Equally, the words homosexual, transvestite, cross-dresser, homophile, pansy, invert, fag and faggot are either in near complete disuse or extraordinarily offensive to today’s younger LGBTQ+ community as well as many community members from prior generations. However, in the mid- twentieth century, they constituted the language of the community, and the larger society in which they lived. In the interest of a varied lexicon I use queer, LGBTQ+, and homosexual as essentially interchangeable throughout this work with the full understanding that these words mean different things to different people and that the meaning of these words changes with time.

Inevitably I will offend someone, leave someone out, or neglect to use the best term. This is of course not my intention, and so I apologize now for my mistakes or offense in the future.

Identity was another contentious issue for my narrators. Most expressed confusion, distaste, or both, for the modern diversity of identities epitomized by the acronym LGBTQQIA.

While I did not interrogate them on this point, I got the sense that this may be a generational

22 issue. To them, gay was gay. Gay men, gay women; what else do you need to describe someone?

I include this note to clarify to readers that modern formulations of , , (a)romantic attraction, (a)sexual attraction, gender fluidity, and others covered by the phrase gender and sexual minorities did not fit older constructions of queer identity. This emphasizes the importance of understanding queer identity as a construct strongly dependent on time, place, and culture.

Oral History Methodology

For this project I sought out narrators through a number of avenues. I contacted local

LGBTQ+ organizations and publications including the Cleveland and Columbus LGBTQ

Community Centers, PRISM magazine, PLEXUS Cleveland, CANAPI, and the Kent State

University LGBTQ+ Alumni Association. I also took out a small ad in a number of local newspapers, posted on internet forums, and utilized my own local network of queer people in

Akron. Further, I asked my participants to give my information to anyone they felt might be interested in participating. One participant responded to the CANAPI ad, and later recommended three other participants, two of which were also interviewed. The remainder all came from personal connections in Akron, one of which was a direct connection. Approximately ten individuals declined to participate, or found they were unable to participate due to personal circumstances. Interviews were conducted initially in public spaces to acquaint the participants with myself, and a second interview was conducted in the participant’s home at a later date.

Interviews were conducted using the life story interview.

23

Chapter Overviews

Chapter One, Northeast Ohio: A Queer Place, attempts to reconcile the common definitions of rural and urban with the actual communities that existed in Northeast Ohio through a framework build on the ideas of several scholars work on rurality, identity, and performance. It also locates and contextualizes Northeast Ohio as a region, and the cities of Cleveland and

Akron. In this contextualization, the region’s larger historical, social and geographic place are discussed in order to make the region more understandable in relation to larger national events, as well as to set the stage for the descriptions and analysis in the following chapters.

Chapter Two, Bringing People Together, details the existing research on communications networks between LGBTQ+ people and looks at how they made contact on a one on one basis. It begins by briefly reviewing the research on urban communication networks and community and also outlines how LGBTQ+ people in urban spaces made contact while contrasting those networks with the body of scholarship on the barriers that existed in rural spaces that prevented urban communication forms from operating effectively. From there, the chapter examines the mediums that LGBTQ+ people used to meet and communicate in the relative isolation of rural spaces. Throughout the chapter, the voices of narrators from my interviews are interwoven to add additional contrast and context to the foundation that other historians and sociologists have laid.

The narrators offer an exploration of the Akron region through the people who participated in the early coming together of the queer community. Within the interviews, the LGBTQ+ social geography of Northeast Ohio with its queer spaces, and its homosexual cultural voids are mapped, showing a network of LGBTQ+ people that crisscrossed the region.

The final chapter, Different Communities, answers several main questions: What constituted homosexual community in Northeast Ohio? How did homosexual men and women

24 differ in the ways that they understood community? What networks or groups existed? What kind of information flowed through these lines of communication? What does a thriving rural

LGBTQ+ community look like and how did its members perceive what it meant to thrive? What informed their perceptions of success as a community? In exploring these questions, I show, primarily through the voices of the narrators who were interviewed for this project, what it meant to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community in Northeast Ohio.

In the conclusion, I will begin to ask and answer several additional questions. First, what did it mean to thrive in northeast Ohio during this time? Second, how does Akron’s community change the way we understand New York and San Francisco’s gay rights movements? Third, how do these findings affect the larger narrative and debate of what it means to be LGBTQ+ in

America today? If we re-imagine our past, how will it change our present, and what does that mean for the metrocentrism of LGBTQ+ culture today?

25

CHAPTER I

NORTHEAST OHIO: A QUEER PLACE

To understand the culture of LGBTQ+ people in Northeast Ohio it is necessary to shed the idea that non-urban LGBTQ+ people will either conform, or will desire to conform, to the metronormative ideals of the city and its politics of visible gender expression. Gender identity and sexual orientation have always had a complicated relationship that has been glossed over in queer culture and some members of the modern LGBTQ+ community continue to debate whether a trans-man dating a cis-gender female ‘count’ as members of the community, or if they are a straight couple. Rather than looking at gender and sexuality as separate areas of analysis, it is more useful to consider the complex assemblages of gender, gender identity, and social identity that accompany non-urban understandings of LGBTQ+ identity – as composite identities. This chapter will argue that these composite identities will offer a more varied interpretation of what it means to be queer than near-hegemonic urban LGBTQ+ culture allows for in popular representations of LGBTQ+ people. In a similar manner, this chapter argues the landscape of Northeast Ohio constitutes a ‘queer’ place that blurs the lines in between urban and rural in ways that are varied and are far more complex than idealized urban and rural forms permit.

This chapter has three main goals. First, it lays out a working definition for the spaces and environments between rural and urban in Northeast Ohio. Second, it will offer a description of Northeast Ohio generally, followed by the city of Cleveland, and the much smaller city of

Akron. My purpose here is to not only provide description for those unfamiliar with the area, but also to provide meaningful examples for a greater understanding of what rural, less-urban, and urban means in the context of Northeast Ohio. Finally, this description will provide the

26 background for a theoretical framework for understanding gender performance, and the navigation of sexual identity outside of heavily urbanized environments.

Defining Urban, Rural, and the Spaces In-between

The terms urban rural and suburban are often derided as empty or unhelpful by students and scholars of rurality-focused studies. The field of rural queer studies has struggled over a singular definition for rural, rurality, and similar words, ideas, and spaces which are all reflected in the debate over the definition of rural as an organizing principle, and whether such a singular definition is even appropriate. States like Indiana, Wyoming and Vermont are all overwhelmingly rural, but in very different ways. The authors within this field have almost unanimously found government and dictionary definitions of rurality to be problematic not only because the government defines rural only in terms of its lack of urban-ness, but because the word has dubious descriptive value in the face of popular imagery of the rural and its status as a foil for the city. Attempting to define the rural can be an exercise in frustration and circular logic.

Nevertheless, an attempt at an operational definition is necessary for any project attempting to examine and explain rural places.19

The complex relationship between the definitions of rural and urban make using either term difficult when trying to describe specific spaces in the real world. Merriam-Webster (2019) presents the popular definition of rural as, “of or relating to the country, country people or life, or agriculture.” As a starting point, this definition lacks specifics. A further interrogation of terms such as “country,” “urban,” and “suburban” prove just as unilluminating. Each dictionary definition is defined either in opposition to others – a rural space as a space that is not urban – or

19 Gray, 5-6, 22-26; Johnson, 10-17.; Johnson, Gilley, and Gray, 2-20; Mason, Carol. Oklahomo: Lessons in Unqueering America, (State University of New York Press, New York, 2015). 14-15.

27 is so vague - as the definition of rural above is – as to be inadequate for making fine distinctions between specific spaces. Because of this, many companies, organizations and researchers regularly use the US Census Bureau’s definitions. The Census Bureau recognizes two types of urban areas: Urbanized Areas (UAs) of 50,000 or more people and Urban Clusters (UCs) - which were added in 2000 as a category of analysis - of at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people which surrounds an UA. UC’s essentially recognize suburbs as urban. Rural, is simply defined as all population, housing, and territory not included within an urban area or urban cluster. These definitions of urban and rural have also been largely unsatisfactory to scholars who study rurality, as the negative definition of rural remains. A modern example is the Village of Malvern,

Ohio, and the nearby community around Lake Mohawk, which together constitute an Urban

Cluster. This community has few structures larger than a single story, and State Route 43 and the intersection of Reed Avenue, the main roads through the village, have the only stop light.20

Rural Queer Studies scholars have attempted to establish various definitions of rural, but as a whole have yet to reach an agreement on what rural is. However, they have gained a number of insights into the dangers of the metronormative definition of the rural, and its nature as a spatial representation. As a method for defining the rural, making assumptions about rurality, urbanity, the dispositions of ‘red’ or ‘blue’ states, religiosity, modernity, technological access, and general geographic position within the nation are problematic at best. Regional and local culture seem to be important factors in identifying the rural, however, this inevitably produces multiple rurals - consider largely rural New England, versus the equally rural Midwest, versus the rural Deep South. Each of these places have areas that certainly fit the census definition, yet they do not seem to fit well together. For this reason, regionalism seems to fall short as well

20 This community is visible on the map located in Appendix B, in the lower right corner.

28 when attempting to find a working, unifying principle. Geography and geographic features also fail to unify these places, as the above examples evoke very different places. One of the few agreed upon standards for rurality is that ‘you know it when you see it,’ a somewhat tongue-in- cheek statement by scholars that references the Supreme Court’s Jacobellis v. Ohio decision from the mid-1960s.21

Christopher Stapel, in “Fagging” the Countryside? (De)“Queering” Rural Queer

Studies, offers some important insights on the nature of rurality and the disconnect between real spaces and popular perceptions of the rural. He notes that rural is often a taken-for-granted category that relies on modernist definitions bound by population, population density, and a metropolitan centrality. That is, rurality is defined by its lack of urbanity. Stapel advocates for an understanding that unifies material spaces, or ‘rurals’ with idealized representations, or

‘ruralities’ to better understand the complex ways that metronormative imaginings of the rural intersect with the actual localities. He describes rurals as, “material spaces that satisfy a set of

(largely) arbitrary criteria. These criteria can be demographic (based on population and densities), geographic (based on proximities and adjacencies), economic (based on the presence or absence of productivist agricultural and extractive industries), or based on other measures

(such as commuting patterns), though social rural criteria are notably rare.”22 Stapel goes on to describe ruralities as, “subjective, idealized … representations of the rural. They’re ‘significant imaginative space[s], connected with all kinds of cultural meanings from the idyllic to the

21 https://www.merriam-webster.com accessed 4/4/18; 2010 Census Urban Area FAQs https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/uafaq.html accessed 4/4/18; 1960 Urban Definition: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1961/dec/pc-s1-4.html; Jacobellis v. Ohio is discussed later, related to its role in opening the US postal service for the distribution of LGBTQ+ materials. The phrase itself entered the popular lexicon after Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart used it to describe his test for obscenity. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15356452945994377133&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr Accessed 5/2/18. 22 Stapel, 152.

29 oppressive.’”23 This produces a plurality of rural spaces, few of which conform to metrocentric imaginings, but which are more authentic. He also specifically rejects the narrative of the city as the beacon of tolerance and community for LGBTQ+ people, and the rural as void of same sex desire. Instead, he argues, metronormative imaginings of the rural have erased queer identities and sexualities and promoted the fiction that all rural spaces are steeped in intolerance, backwardness, and homogeneity - despite material evidence to the contrary. Stapel posits that part of this imagined hostility comes from urban attempts to erase the and violence of the city. 24

Despite the conflicting definitions of rural, rural queer studies scholars offer a number of useful observations about rural areas as they relate to the LGBTQ+ community. In her article

“Midwest or Lesbian” Emily Kazyak troubles the notion that rural spaces are hostile to LGBTQ+ people because of their sexual orientation. She claims that gender presentation and performance may, in fact, be far more important to a sense of belonging in non-urban environments. Kazyak’s gendered analysis of the problem of LGBTQ+ acceptance leads her to several interesting conclusions: First, rural culture (in so far as one can claim a unifying rural culture) values traditional masculinity. Further, in the highly urban culture that is associated with the LGBTQ+ community masculinity, is associated with lesbians, and femininity is associated with gay men.

These associations, Kazyak claims, underpin the hostility to effeminate gay men but make female masculinity more normative than transgressive. This observation aligns with and may help explain the widespread trend of lesbians not leaving rural spaces with the frequency that gay men choose to do. Kazyak also lists being known as a good person and being able to assert belonging in the community, or at least not being a stranger, as routes to rural acceptance. This

23 Ibid., 152-53. 24 Ibid, 151-154; For a more detailed discussion of Stapel’s authenticity of local communities, see Stapel, 152-59.

30 helps to explain the observation that in rural places most queer folk forcefully reject urban queer culture and in particular male femininity, since urban and the specter of the stranger often go hand-in-hand.25

Kazyak’s work aligns closely with Wayne Brekhus’ Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs:

Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity, which discusses how LGBTQ+ people construct and layer their identities. While the gay men that he interviews for his case study and field research are the root of his theory of the grammar of social identity, as he calls it, Brekhus works to generalize the theory, and demonstrate its usability in any group attempting to navigate environments with a variety of marked and master statuses. Important to his work is the idea of

“master status” - an identity that dominates all others. He opens with an interview with a gay man who has trouble coming out to a friend, not because of the friend’s attitude towards homosexuality, but because he cannot convince his friend that he is an actual homosexual, since he does not conform to any of the stereotypes utilized by the media and metronormative queer culture to indicate belonging in the LGBTQ+ community. Brekhus identifies three ideal types, in the Weberian sense, of LGBTQ+ social identity: “Lifestylers (peacocks) Commuters

(chameleons) and Integrators (centaurs).” Peacocks treat their gay identity as an essentializing noun and experience their gay identity as a master status. This is also the group idealized by metronormative queer culture, and that most heterosexuals understand as the normative experience for queer people. Chameleons treat their gay identity as, in Brekhus’ terms, a “mobile verb.” This means that in queer spaces, queer identity takes on master status. However, in non- queer spaces they downplay or minimize the identity. Brekhus describes these people who

25 Kazyak, Emily. “Midwest or Lesbian? Gender Rurality, and Sexuality” Gender and Sexuality 26, no. 6 (December 2012): 825-848. Accessed January 27, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41705738.; Gray also discusses this, see Gray, 22-24.

31 identify an ‘everyday’ self and a ‘gay’ self - both equally their real selves - but desire control over the choice to inscribe their master status as they see fit. Centaurs, the identity integrators, experience their queer identity as a complimentary status that is a part of who they are, but it never achieves a master status. They go through their days as people-who-happen-to-be-queer rather than queer-people.26

Taken together, Brekhus’ and Kazyak’s work offer a framework to understanding the ways in which queer people in non-urban spaces modulate their identities to better conform to cultural norms of gender expression within their local communities. Brekhus’ and Kazyak’s work also highlights the complex relationship between gender expression and sexual orientation in these environments. Stapel’s ideas of rurals and ruralities applied to the varied and complex nature of individual rural places, as constructed both by their material conditions and local urban imaginings of those real places, reveals how local queer communities and identities might be shaped in these environments. Further, we can consider through Brekhus and Kazyak’s work how local queer identities might be constructed and incorporated into these communities in ways that do not idealize metronormative constructions of queerness.

Setting the Scene: Akron, Cleveland, and Northeast Ohio

The region identified as Northeast Ohio is difficult to define in terms of urbanity or rurality. According to the 1960 federal census, there were four major metropolitan areas in

Northeast Ohio: Cleveland (1,785,000 total population), Akron (458,000 total population),

Canton (173,00 total population), and Youngstown-Warren (373,000 total population). Akron and Canton are commonly considered part of the same metropolitan area by local residents due

26 Wayne Brekhus, Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003). 1-14, 27-33.

32 to their physical proximity - a mere twenty-three miles between their downtown areas - and when considered together had a population of 631,000 in 1960.

Cities like Akron-Canton and Youngstown-Warren anchored a much larger area of rural

Northeast Ohio. Additionally, as small cities, they possessed a local culture more akin to small town America than to the urban metropoles such as New York and San Francisco.27 Of the fourteen counties that make up Northeast Ohio - Geauga, Lake, Ashtabula, Trumbull, Portage,

Mahoning, Stark, Columbiana, Medina, Wayne, Ashland, Summit, Cuyahoga, and Lorain - only

Summit, Cuyahoga, and Lorain are mostly urban. Lorain and Cuyahoga County are both part of the Cleveland Metropolitan area, and Summit county, aside from sharing its northern border with

Cuyahoga County, also contains Akron and an attending suburban sprawl of its own. The remaining counties are all varied in their urban-rural proportions. What this means is that, ultimately, most people in Northeast Ohio live within a few hours of what the census describes as an urban space. Within this space and considering Stapel’s proposition for multiple rurals and ruralities, locating and defining a cohesive rural space in Northeast Ohio that accurately represents the region’s character, culture, and geography is one of the primary challenges of this work.28

Northeast Ohio has, in many ways, remained constant in the decades since 1960. In 1960, seventy-five percent of the state population was urban, with about half of that number residing in the urban cores of cities and the the rest in suburban sprawl around the larger urban centers. As

27 For the reader's convenience, a map of Northeast Ohio, including major metropolitan areas, is included in Appendix B. Note that the map is from the 2010 Census and displays additional urban areas, due to population growth and is intended merely as a geographic reference. Source: 2010 Census Urbanized Area Reference Map - Akron, OH 28 U.S. Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Vol. I, Characteristics of the Population. Part 37, Ohio. Table 11. Population of Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas: 1960 and 1950. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1963.

33 of the 2010 census, Ohio had changed little, with seventy-seven percent of the population living in urban places. This lags behind the national movement to urban places more generally, in 1960,

69.8% of the population of the United States lived in urban places, compared to 80.7% in 2010.

In Northeast Ohio, most ‘urban’ residents live in urban clusters (the suburbs) rather than urban areas. This trend is visible in much of Northeast Ohio which has seen modest gains in population over all, such as in Akron-Canton’s population, 848,744 in 2010, a 34.5% increase over the 1960 population. Youngstown-Warren, on the other hand displays the stagnant population of many of the more remote urban areas. In 2010 the population of Youngstown-Warren was 387,550, a mere 3.9% increase. However, both urban areas have failed to keep up with national population growth statistics. In the United States as a whole, the population has increased 72.1% from

179,323,175 in 1960 to 308,745,539 in 2010.

One of the most noticeable characteristics that sets Akron-Canton and Youngstown-

Warren apart from Cleveland is the rapid change in the landscape from urban and heavily occupied to rural sparsely occupied. By the late 1950s, I-76E allowed a traveler to go from the center of downtown Akron to the city’s limits in Mogadore in under fifteen minutes. And upon reaching the city limits of Akron, Canton, Youngstown or any of the smaller ‘urban’ areas you quickly leave the urban behind and find yourself in farmland or other sparsely populated areas.

Stapel’s ideas of actual ‘rurals’ and imagined ‘ruralities’ are active in the area. Northeast Ohio is

‘slow paced’ compared to the nation as a whole, and largely ‘unchanging’ in terms of its population and urban development.29

29 U.S. Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Vol. I, Characteristics of the Population. Part 37, Ohio. VIII. Chart 2.; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010 Census Urban and Rural Classification and Urban Area Criteria: Lists of Population, Land Area, and Percent Urban and Rural in 2010 and Changes from 2000 to 2010. https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html Accessed 4/23/18.; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010 Census Urban and Rural Classification and Urban Area Criteria: Lists of 2010 Census Urban Areas, https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_ua.txt, Accessed 4/27/18.; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010

34

Of these urban areas, Cleveland is the only one that conforms to popular expectations for a large city. It possessed almost two million inhabitants in its metropolitan area in 1960 and had a larger population than San Francisco within its city limits. For these reasons, Cleveland and its goings-on will be excluded from much of the analysis in this work. Certainly, there was movement between Cleveland and the other metropolitan areas, and it would be closer than

Akron-Canton or Youngstown-Warren for some residents of Northeast Ohio who lived in rural places.30

However, this does not mean that Cleveland should be ignored altogether. As the second largest city in Ohio by population, smaller only than the state capital of Columbus, Cleveland has been the industrial heart of Ohio for much of the state’s history. As an industrial city, it also has a number of parallels to Akron in terms of its demographics, politics, and the challenges it faced in the latter half of the 20th century. National forces and policy effected Cleveland and Akron in similar ways, and national initiatives and resources – such as grants for specific kinds of projects

– were appealing to both municipalities. These parallels are most apparent in three inter-related ways that all merit some degree of analysis – the decline of industrial jobs - particularly in urban places - in the latter half of the 20th century, urban renewal, and race riots.31

Akron has been an important city in Northeast Ohio since the early 1900s, due in no small part to the rubber tire industry and the Goodyear Tire Company. It grew steadily through the first half of the 20th century and as automobile sales continued to grow, so too did Goodyear,

Census Urban and Rural Classification and Urban Area Criteria: Urban, Urbanized Area, Urban Cluster, and Rural Population, 2010 and 2000: United States. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_ua.txt, Accessed 4/27/18. See also Fellows, Will. Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest, (The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996). 31-32, 129-131. 30 By the US Census definition of rural - Any place not classified as urban (containing fewer than 50,000 people). 31 The main purpose for including the descriptions and analysis of events in Cleveland is that Akron itself has not received significant scholarly attention. The following sections attempts to make the parallels and differences clear while also offering a useful general description of Northeast Ohio’s more urban locations.

35 and Akron. It should come as no surprise that Akron became a satellite of urban Cleveland, close enough that their various suburbs would commingle after World War Two. During the three decades following the end of World War II, Akron and Cleveland would also develop in parallel on several fronts. Industrial decline, urban renewal, race riots, and an increasingly out and organized LGBTQ+ community would all come to Akron in ways similar, yet different, to

Cleveland. With the post-war population boom came many of the men and women who would form the early LGBTQ+ community in Akron. Whether they were born there or moved there for the prospect of work, many people settled in and around Akron, and it has served much of

Northeast Ohio as a regional urban hub, offering stores, entertainment, restaurants and services unavailable anywhere else outside of Cleveland. It is in this manner that it also served non-urban similarly to the ways described by many authors of the rural South. Howard, Thompson, and Johnson each mention the role of the city in their works. And like the history of the southern

LGBTQ+ community, the Akron LGBTQ+ community is also one whose story is largely untold.32

At the end of World War II Cleveland was, like other industrial cities in what would become the rust belt in the following decades, beginning to suffer from a loss of working-class factory jobs as well as white-flight to its suburbs. Locally, the industrial decline of Cleveland evoked responses by various civic boosters to, “Believe in Cleveland” – a phrase that was used most recently in the opening years of the 21st century, but that none-the-less summarizes the various slogans and campaigns that have sought to promote the city during its troubled years. As with other rust-belt cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Akron, the eroding tax-base

32 For a more in-depth account of the strong ties between Akron and the Rubber industry see: Steve Love and David Giffels, Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron. (The University of Akron Press: Akron, Ohio, 1999).

36 of downtown led to a multitude of inter-related problems that would shape the city’s politics and policies for the next fifty years.33

By the end of the 1950s, Cleveland’s population was in decline because of job losses and flight to the city’s suburbs. From its peak in 1950 of 914,808 it would decline at an accelerating pace to 876,050 in 1960, 750,903 in 1970 and 573, 822 in 1980. This loss of nearly 40% of the city’s population over three decades would have dramatic consequences. As the economy of

Cleveland slowed in the late 1950s and residents began to leave the city for its suburbs, the city began working on several projects to revivify its stagnating economic outlook. As the federal highway system took shape over the course of the 1950s, Cleveland sought to bring more travelers and businesses who employed white collar employees into its downtown area via an

Interbelt. Keeping in line with many urban renewal practices, ‘blighted’ – almost always coded black, working class, or both – neighborhoods would be demolished or cut off from the downtown area by this highway system. This in turn cut off many residents from the routes that they had previously traveled to and from their factory jobs. Increasingly, industry was pushed away from the urban core and out into the city’s periphery. Prior to World War II, industry depended on railroads and a labor force that could walk to work. This meant that factories themselves needed to be located in the urban core, near both railroads and urban housing. More widespread access to automobiles, due to their falling prices in the decades following World War

II, meant that both factories and workers no longer needed to be centralized downtown. Both could be moved to the periphery of the city. The Inner Belt Freeway would speed the

33 J. Mark Souther, Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation” (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2017); Daniel R Kerr, Derelict : Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio. (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011); David Stradling and Richard Stradling, Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.); Nishani Frazier, Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2017).

37 decentralization of Cleveland’s working class and black populations and encourage developers to revitalize old working-class neighborhoods with new apartments or home that priced out the pervious residents of the neighborhood. As the city center was vacated, urban renewal plans were formulated to remove the most troubling neighborhoods, and spur redevelopment.34

Like Cleveland, Akron’s population grew dramatically in the post-war years. As the demand for rubber continued to grow with the booming automobile industry, Akron’s industry was temporarily shielded from the economic downturn of the late 1950s. The city continued to grow through the 1960 census when it reached its peak of 290,351. As the 1960s progressed, automobile sales slowed, and three of Akron’s big four rubber companies would be bought out or sold off to foreign competition. Firestone, after major layoffs to try and stay afloat, would become an asset of Japanese owned Bridgestone. French owned Michelin – the competitor who began the decline of American tire companies with their radial tires - would purchase B.F.

Goodrich. General Tire got out of the tire business when it changed its name to GenCorp and sold off its tire unit to a German company. Goodyear would limp along, after fending off an attempted takeover by a British-French financier. Unlike Cleveland, Akron did not see the mass movement of residents out of the city until well into the 1980s. From its peak population to the

1980 census, Akron lost about 20% of its population, a far smaller number. While Akron’s population declined in the later years of the 20th century, its surrounding suburbs, such as

Cuyahoga Falls and Stow, continued to grow – somewhat analogous to the white flight of the

1950s and 60s in Cleveland as jobs dried up there.35

34 U.S. Bureau of the Census Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990. By Campbell Gibson, June 1998. https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html Accessed 3/11/2019; Kerr, 136- 141. Ibid., 105-06. 35 U.S. Bureau of the Census Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990. By Campbell Gibson, June 1998;

38

Downtown Cleveland was the site of various plans and ventures throughout the 1950s,

60s and 70s. Though some were never approved, especially in the 1950s, later attempts would be more successful in building a downtown that local elites wanted – a beautiful playground for the upper-class. While some projects in the late 1950s, such as a subway, failed to gain traction and bond referendums on a new civic center and hotel also failed, smaller scale projects and the removal of industrial factories and blighted neighborhoods proved more successful. The city procured a grant from the federal government to buy out homes, Cleveland State University’s property was expanded, as were several hospitals, and the Garden Valley and Longwood developments were created to re-locate the residents of more desirable areas near to downtown.

While many of these projects had their slowdowns and pitfalls, the net effect was to push working class and black residents out of the urban core, and in this these projects were quite successful - with the notable exception of the Hough neighborhood.36

Akron would also embark on several urban renewal projects in the 1960s. The most prominent of these was the creation of the State Route 59 Inner Belt in 1967. Part of the Inner

Belt project involved the demolition of South Howard Street (also known as the Cascade Project) was part of a larger effort to renew the Central Business District and be the end point for the

Inner Belt. By the end 1967, all of South Howard street, and several other roads were completely demolished to bring State Route 59 into downtown Akron. Both the black community and the

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html Accessed 3/11/2019; Donald N. Sull, “The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire & Rubber and the Radial Revolution” The Business History Review 73(3) Autumn 1999. 431; 35 U.S. Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of Population: 1980. Vol. I, Characteristics of the Population. Part 37, Ohio. Table 156. Social Characteristics for Places of 10,000 to 50,000: 1980. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1983; U.S. Bureau of the Census U.S. Census of Population: 1960. Vol. I, Characteristics of the Population. Part 37, Ohio. Table 5. Population of Incorporated Places of 10,000 or More From Earliest Census to 1960. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1963; Steve Love and David Giffels, Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron. (The University of Akron Press: Akron, Ohio, 1999). 5-9. 36 Kerr, 128-47; Souther 36-44.

39 queer community were targeted by the Howard street demolition. South Howard had been the site of several black bars along one side of the road well known for its music scene, and in earlier decades had been the cultural heart of Akron’s black community. On the other side of the street had been the largest collection of gay bars in the city throughout the 1960s, which served as the social center of the gay scene in Akron. Both black and queer community institutions were wiped away because they did not fit with city planner’s ideas of what the central business district should look like.37

Akron’s Inner Belt highway project was meant to ease the commute of downtown employees and bring additional shoppers to downtown businesses. However, the project also cut in half the Akron Model Cities Neighborhood: Opportunity Park – supposedly a model for combating urban blight. The plans also demolished several other areas, generally those occupied by low income black residents. Urban Studies scholar Frank Kendrick described the project’s impact on the Model Cities Neighborhood of Opportunity Park:

This many-faceted project, located directly to the east of the new freeway location, was begun in 1966, covers 404 acres, and will cost, when completed, over $80 million. Only 25% complete, it has required the relocation of 1,244 families, 886 individuals, and 316 businesses, and has provided 696 housing units so far. Although the housing units do not replace all those that were torn down, the taxes on the new units are more than double what they were before the project was begun. The housing part of the project is considered by the Planning Department of Akron as a kind of new town-in-town, and an example of an outstanding approach to urban renewal. Its execution also means that the Model City Neighborhood was already greatly affected before Innerbelt construction began. As for the neighborhood in general, it consists primarily of single-family housing units, 50 to 60 years old, about 40% of which are substandard. In 1960, the population in the Model City Neighborhood was 26,000. By 1970, after the advent of urban renewal and freeway building, the population was down to about 20,000. About two-thirds of the residents are now lower income, nonwhite, with a high unemployment rate. The neighborhood is already divided by an expressway, with mostly blacks living to the north and whites to the south. The Innerbelt will further divide the neighborhood by creating a barrier between poorer blacks to the west and the new racially mixed, urban renewal

37 Frank J Kendrick, “Effects of Transportation Planning on Urban Areas” Ohio Journal of Science 77 no. 6 (1977): 267-275. Accessed March 12, 2019.

40

project to the east. When plans for the freeway were announced, many objections were raised, and it is reported that some neighborhood meetings in 1970 experienced near riot conditions. No attempt had been made to determine attitudes of residents, so the neighborhood was simply informed of the route that would be taken. Considering the fact that the announcement was first made in 1963 and less than one mile of the freeway has been completed, there was probably a long-term intangible effect on residents who did not know for years when, or if, they were to be relocated. Naturally, this probably also added to the general depression of the neighborhood.38

It is clear that the civic leaders of Akron were just as willing to be tone-deaf to their own black population as those in Cleveland. Akron’s attempts at urban renewal seem to have been mixed in their successes and their failures, as were those in Cleveland, and as in Cleveland, relationships between civic leaders and the black community seem to have deteriorated as part of the process.

This deterioration would lead to riots in both cities: the Hough riots in Cleveland in 1966 and the

Wooster Avenue riots in Akron, in 1968.39

The Hough neighborhood was a powder keg of tension by 1960. In the 1950s it was primarily occupied working-class whites. In the following decade, the area would rapidly transition to a predominantly black neighborhood. As white residents left for the suburbs, the landlords began charging higher rents to black residents, a common practice, despite not maintaining properties, and sub-dividing homes into spaces that failed to meet local building codes. This would result in rent strikes in an attempt to combat these conditions, and the city made several attempts to purge the area of rat nests, which were endemic to the neighborhood, in an attempt to show residents that the city was concerned for their welfare. Limited job opportunities, high rent, unresponsive landlords, a lack of housing elsewhere, police ,

38 Ibid., 270. 39 Ibid; Author Unknown, “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” Author’s Personal Collection.

41 and limited access to retail establishments of even the most basic nature would ultimately erupt into the Hough riot of 1966, the biggest riot in the city’s history.40

The Hough riot erupted July 24th, 1966 after an incident at a local bar involving the white owners and black residents. Crowds rioted for ten days across several neighborhoods. The

National Guard was called early but failed to suppress the riots quickly. Crowds deliberately firebombed several government buildings associated with segregation and urban renewal.

Businesses were also targeted based on their relationship to the black community. Later investigations would blame the riots first on the Black Panthers, who had no chapter in

Cleveland, and later on white Communists, refusing to believe that the residents could have organized themselves. This outburst of violence was not unusual for the decade, and many of its factors – inadequate living conditions, police harassment, and limited job opportunities – were common to many of the other riots seen in other cities across the nation throughout the 1960s.41

In July of 1968, the residents of Akron’s Wooster and Edgewater Avenue area would riot due in part to excessive force on the part of police officers who initially were attempting to quell fights between gang members, but ultimately turned on civilians. The riots would last from July

16th to July 23rd. After the riots had ended, Akron’s Mayor, John Ballard, appointed a commission to investigate the causes riots and to put forth recommendations. The Akron

Commission on Civil Disorders reported on April 16th, 1969. In their report, the commission identified five areas in which the city could improve relations and services with the black community: government, economics, education, housing, and a general or miscellaneous category. The Commission was, over all, sensitive to the feelings and desires of Akron’s black

40 Kerr, 148-59; Souther, 47-66; Frazier 74-75, 153-55; Stradling 49-74. 41 Souther, 159-63; Stradling 66-74.

42 community and appear to have acted in good faith in their recommendations to the Mayor.

However, the commission’s authors end with this note:

We wish we could conclude this report on a note of optimism, but at present we cannot. Those conditions which fostered the hostility behind the civil disorder of 1968 are still present. The people of Akron and its surrounding communities have not shown an understanding or concern that could lead to their reduction and elimination. Whether future disturbances actually take place will depend on many things, but all or part of the recommendations presented above would reduce the probability of trouble…. However, above and beyond all actions, there remains a community attitude of indifference. Until this changes, the members of the Akron Commission on Civil Disorders cannot be very hopeful for the future of race relations in Akron.42

These riots stood out to LGBTQ+ residents of Akron as well. Terry Austin recalled them as the most troubling thing she could recall from the 1960s, because of their proximity to her childhood home. Akron and Cleveland shared in their successes and struggles in many ways in the decades following World War II. Racial tensions, economic troubles, and population changes all demanded solutions, which civic leaders in both cities pursued by way of what came to be known as urban renewal. These policies have rarely met with happy outcomes in the long run, and often had severe consequences on the minority populations of cities across the country, regardless of their size and population. In these ways, Akron and Cleveland had much in common in terms of ideology about race, class, and worthiness to participate in civic life. The scale of projects and the size of their populations may have been drastically different; however, their responses have remained consistent.43

42 Akron Commission on Civil Disorders. 1969. The Report of The Akron Commission on Civil Disorders. By Edwin L. Lively. Akron, Ohio. 40-41. Accessed March 13, 2019. http://www.akronlibrary.org/images/Divisions/SpecCol/images/Akron_Commission_on_Civil_Disorders.pdf 43 Terry Austin, Interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Akron Commission on Civil Disorders. The account that follows is pieced together from four main sources. First is the Dameron Guidebooks from 1965, the first edition of the guide, to 1969. Second, was the publication GOLD, a local gay magazine for the Akron-Canton area published in the 1970s. Third, the Akron City Directories from 1958 to 1969. Lastly, an independently produced local publication called “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009: 61 Years Out in the City,” which appears to have been written with the aid of several prominent community members, including several of the owners of gay bars in Akron, and with the financial support of the bars. I initially stumbled upon GOLD, available in the Western Reserve Historical Society archives, and later acquired photographic copies of the Ohio

43

Another similarity that Cleveland shared with Akron was the emergence of a much more visible and organized LGBTQ+ community in the 1970s. Educator and pundit of LGBTQ+ issues Ken Schneck notes the creation of several community and cultural organizations in

Cleveland, such as Oven Productions (1975), which highlighted queer art and music; Northern

Ohio Coalition INC (1978), an organization for business leaders; Cleveland Hard Hatted

Women(1978), organizing women in skilled trades; and High Gear (1975), a newspaper specifically for the LGBTQ+ community. Radio Free Lambda, broadcast from Case Western

University covered news and goings on throughout the 1970s. Cleveland also had its own circuit of house parties, a lesbian separatist space known as the Land Project, at least three bathhouses, numerous gay bars – including the Leather Stallion which has remained open since 1970 and continues to be a feature of the Cleveland gay bar scene. These institutions mirrored the emergence of similar public-facing businesses and associations in Akron.44

Popular attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community between Akron and Cleveland seem to be much more divergent than in the areas of declining industrial jobs, urban renewal, and race riots. The ubiquity of the gay bar, however, in LGBTQ+ life seems as prominent in Akron as in

New York or San Francisco. A few years after World War Two, Akron’s first gay bar of note, the Lincoln Bar, opened in 1948 and was the centerpiece of Akron’s gay scene until the late

1960s. Located at 28 S Howard street and owned by Molly Illitch and Charle Nakos the ownership of the bar would change several times, but the clientele did not. “A History of Akron

sections of the 1965-69 Dameron Guides from Gina Gatta, the current publisher at Dameron. These sources provided the names, and a few addresses of the bars, theaters, and restaurants described here. Additionally, all names mentioned here are from the Akron City Directory. I make no assumptions about the sexual orientation or gender identities of these individuals, merely that they are listed as owners of the properties in question. The little descriptive detail that is contained here is largely based on the descriptions from “A History of Akron Gay Life,” interviews from members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as my own notes, which I have included in Appendix C. 44 Ken Schneck, LGBTQ Cleveland: Images of Modern America. (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2018). 10-16, 30- 35.

44

Gay Life” describes Lincoln Bar as the most “infamous and widely whispered” 45 gay bar in

Akron. Other early bars included the Cadillac Cafe, located at 46 S. Howard from 1954 to 1967 and owned by Theodore Nukes and various other associates. Rosita Estefan remembered the

Cadillac Café from her experiences talking to others in the community as she was coming out as

“the original homosexual bar in Akron."46 The third bar located on S. Howard was, Eli’s located at 15 S. Howard from 1960 to 1967. These bars constituted the center of Akron’s gay bar scene through the sixties and together with Grace Park, located a few blocks east, were the most important public places the Akron gay community called its own. These were the bars that were demolished to make way for the Inner Belt.47

All was not lost in this wave of urban renewal, and several other gay bars existed away from the cluster at S. Howard including the Beer Barrel, located at 399 E. Cuyahoga Falls

Avenue and open from 1954 to 1959, and the Hi-Hat located at 31 N. Howard from 1960 to

1967. These bars are notable not only for their physical separation from the majority of gay bars on South Howard street, but also the separation of their clientele. Beer Barrel was a , and Hi-Hat was a black bar with a mix of gay and straight patrons. Another early bar, the

Robinhood Lounge was located at 837 W. Exchange street and remained open from the mid-

1950s through 1969.48

45“A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 1. 46 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018. 47“A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 1-2. 48 There is some contradiction in the sources here. The Akron City Directory lists the Robinhood Grille at this address, which the lounge was likely part of. The Dameron guide has two entries under Robinhood, one “Robinhood Bar” from 1969-70 at the 837 W Exchange address, and another for the “Robinhood” from 1965-68 at 83 W Exchange. The Directory does not note any other Robinhoods in Akron, so this seems a clear-cut case of address confusion. However, “A History of Akron Gay Life” only lists it as a community location from 1962 to 1965 and offers no reason for the date range. It does note that after Robinhood closed, it became a black bar, named Rob-Roy, however, the Akron City Directory indicates the Robinhood Grille was still open in 1969.

45

In the mid-1960s a new generation of gay bars emerged in Akron. These bars were widely dispersed around Akron – from the east side by Goodyear’s headquarters to downtown - rather than clustered in the soon-to-be-demolished South Howard Street area. Prominent among them was the Akron Cafe, which opened in 1967 and remained open into the 1980s. It was owned by Anthony Granata, the final owner of the Lincoln Bar before it was forced to close, but never achieved the wide following that had been typical of the Lincoln. 1339½ E. Market street would house several basement bars, including The Dugout from 1965 to 1966 which was closed after one accidently shot and killed another during an altercation with several straight patrons that had become unruly. Shortly after, Market Cafe opened from 1967 to 1970, before it too closed. RENE’S was another basement bar, located under the Marne Hotel49 at 1 N. Main street from 1966 to 1967. It too closed after the owner chased several problematic straight people out of the bar at gunpoint and shot them as they fled. It then changed owners to G. N. Malek and its name and became the Moulin Rouge, which would remain open until 1971. The Beefeater located at 53 Mill St. from 1968 to 1973 was a popular bar with a private dance floor above. It later became Mother’s and remained open into the mid-1970s.50

Mother’s, in particular, was a favorite of the narrators who recalled the bar scene from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. During the day, Mother’s operated as a restaurant, and in the evening, a gay bar. For Jeff Bixby, Mother’s second location after a move onto High Street, was his first experience out in the gay community. Rosita Estefan also recalled Mother’s and a picture, “of some man sorta dressed like an old lady that was you know an oval sort of frame as you walked in the door and that was Mother.”51 Jerry Raker also remembered the painting of

49 There is some confusion amongst the sources about the location of the Marne hotel, which I am unable to reconcile. The address listed is from “A History of Akron Gay Life.” 50 “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City.” 51 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018.

46

Mother, “And there was a light over the picture, painting, oil painting of mother. It was the guy's face, but he had his hair pulled up like, Whistler's mother, in a rocking chair. And when the door opened the light shining down on him. It was cool.”52 The bar had two floors, the first contained the bar itself and was the main space. The second floor, accessed by a set of stairs with a large landing that allowed patrons to look over the main bar, had the restrooms and a “large dark room or petting room.” When Mother felt that something was amiss – possibly plain clothes police or simply people she did not recognize, she would flick a light switch that would alert patrons in the dark room to “make sure your zipper’s up…and you’re just standing around having casual conversation ..and what you’re smoking is just an ordinary cigarette.”53 Mother’s also hosted

Drag shows, as Jerry Raker recalled, and the drag queens would descend the winding stairway down from their changing rooms upstairs. Mother, it seems, had done her best to make the bar a safe and welcoming place for her patrons, something they no doubt appreciated in light of the violence other bars had experienced throughout the decade.54

It was not just the physical layout of Mother’s that my narrators enjoyed but the people who frequented it. Jerry Shedley fondly recalled finding his way to Mother’s thanks to some friends. “But I fell in love with Mother’s. It was a perfect bar. There were a well mixture of ages there. And since I was still kinda feeling my way as to how involved do I really want to get here?”55 When he finally made his way there for the first time, Jerry also met Mother, “so, I went into the bar and I went early one evening and so they weren't real busy and the guy who was the primary bartender, who was the one they referred to as Mother. He was a bigger man. And he

52 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019. 53 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 54 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019; Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 55 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018.

47 kept a baseball bat behind the bar, under the bar. And was not afraid to use it if he needed to.”56

For Jerry, Mother’s was a place where young gay men could be gently brought out into the gay community, in no small part to Mother’s advice:

[A]nd of course, he would say, ‘Well so-and-so over there, you see 'em? You stay away from that. They're no good. They're users. So-and-so over there, they're OK. You know, just watch yourself but, you know, they're not going to hurt you. So…he would try to cue me in and so one night we're sitting, I'm sitting there. And he was down waiting on somebody and the one person that he had said, you know, watch that person. Came over and sat down next to me. And Mother came down the bar and she put her hands on the bar and she took him straight in the eyes and she said, ‘He's under Mother's protection.' And the guy just got up and walked away. But you know there was that in the in the community at that time. There was that kinda, you've got a newbie here, let's not destroy him the first night. Let's give it a week.57

While Jerry spoke about Mother’s in far more detail than other narrators, they all conveyed this sense of affection for the bar, its patrons, and for Mother. Jerry would meet up with many people he did not expect to at Mother’s, including at one point several former fraternity brothers from his own fraternity. Bars such as Mother’s were important to the LGBTQ+ community in Akron, however, my narrators suggested that only the white gay male community made them the center of their social lives. For the gay men who loved Mother’s, and for other men who loved other bars, these spaces were the social centers of their lives in Northeast Ohio.58

Being a part of the bar scene, both before and after the Stonewall riots allowed one to imagine themselves as part of a larger community. As Rosita recalled, “even when you first start going to bars and stuff like that you know that you're not the only gay bar in the whole world.

You know that's everywhere.”59 Bar patrons would occasionally find out-of-town travelers in their midst, connecting the bars in one town to those in another, strengthening this sense of

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 59 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018.

48 community. There were, of course limits to this community as well. Heterosexuals were obviously not included, however local culture no doubt also played a part in excluding some homosexuals. Women and men’s bars were frequently segregated, as discussed elsewhere, and some men’s bars attracted a very specific kind of gay man – leather bars serve as a good example. Other kinds of exclusion may also have been present, as well if the patrons of a bar felt like someone didn’t belong. Jerry Shedley, remembered his first visit to a gay bar:

So, I sat down, and I noticed these guys all looking at me. And this one little cocky rooster, he throws his shoulders back and he marches his little ass right up there to me and sits down on the stool next to me. And he says, ‘Do you know what kind of bar you're in?’ And I, I get in that part of me that has to fuck with somebody's head. And I looked around. A bar that sells alcohol? Yes. But do you know what of kind of bar this is? I says, I don't know, what kind of bar is it? And he goes, it's a gay bar! And I'm like, 'Oh thank God I've been looking everywhere for a gay bar.' He goes. Ah, you mean you are?!' I said, 'I'm pretty sure.' And he, instead of sitting there and talking to me he marches his little ass back down there to everybody (makes whisper noise) I never had so many drinks come my way so fast. I mean back then we used to say 'new meat on the rack' was the term they would use. And, but it turned out that with talking to the bartender and stuff, that he was able to tell me where some of the other places were, where a lot of the younger people went.60

While Jerry was not expelled from the bar after revealing that he was part of the gay community, or at least looking for it, the bar’s patrons were obviously protective of their space. The bartender’s willingness to direct him elsewhere might also indicate that some tribalism was at play.61

In the 1970s, many of the bars that many of the narrators of this study frequented first opened their doors. However, as several of them noted, ‘opened their doors’ was probably a poor euphemism. Not only were most bars unmarked without signs identifying them as such, many did not have windows of any sort either, to keep the nature of the clientele hidden from any

60 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 61 “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 1-3.

49 prying eyes. Several bars also had other measures to dissuade random passers-by from entering.

Many of the bars posted ‘members only’ signs – regardless of whether or not they actually kept a membership list – to encourage straight people to go to the more accessible bars. Kathy McGlone recalled paying a membership at Rosetta , roughly two dollars a year, an effort to make sure that the bar knew their patrons, and that outsiders stayed away. Getting in without being with a member or having one vouch for you was all but impossible. The membership requirements at many gay and lesbian bars were not only a way to keep outsiders away, but also literally showed membership in the community. Some bars had cards with expiration dates, to ensure that membership dues were paid, while others were simply to indicate that you could walk through the door. Club Akron, a bar that also connected to a bath house, also issued guest passes for first time guests which required the signature of a current member. The exclusive nature of these establishments, the comradery they engendered, and the imagined boundary between the bar’s interior and the straight world beyond all contributed to the sense of community that began to emerge in the 1970s.62

The bars in the 1970s seemed to stay open longer than their predecessors in the 1960s, although this was not always the case. Chat Noir, at 46 E. Market St was operated by Raymond

Nemor and was open from 1969 until 1977. The American, a bar several narrators praised for its , was open throughout most of the 1970s at 417 Kenmore boulevard before being sold in

1979. Myrtle’s 5 &10 was popular with the narrators as well, Rosita Estefan remembered it as the first bar she was brought out to by her friends, and Jeff Bixby remembered it as well. A short-lived bar, The Crypt Lounge, was open from 1975 to 1977 at 1338 ½ E. Market, the site of

62 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio December 12, 2018; Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 3-4, 19.

50 several former bars. After its failure, the building was renovated into a gay bath house. Satan’s

Den, on the other hand, opened in 1974 and after moving the next year remained open until the mid-1980s. It was a segregated bar with the top floor called the Blue Devil, and the basement being a strictly women’s bar. When it moved to 839 S. Arlington Street and rebranded itself as

Satan’s Inferno it also lost its segregated character, allowing men and women to mingle. In 1976 one of the bars that would have true lasting roots in the community was The Hayloft, at 77

Adams Street. It retained that name until the original owner sold it and it was re-branded Adams

Street Bar. Adams Street Bar expanded into the storefronts it was adjacent to over the following decades and was the longest operating gay bar in Akron as of the publishing of “A History of

Akron Gay Life,” however, it has since closed, in 2018. The last two bars of note that opened in the 1970s were The Sahara and the Old Plantation. Both were known for their Disco scene. The

Sahara, at 990 E. Market Street, was notable for its ‘Saturday Night Fever’ style dance floor – the only of its kind in Akron – however, it closed within the year. The Old Plantation, originally the American, was also known for its disco floor. Jeff Bixby had worked there as a bartender for a time and remembered it as a good spot. Jerry Raker also remembered the Old Plantation as his favorite disco bar in Akron, though he also recalled the dance floor at Adam’s Street also being particularly popular with the gay disco scene.63

The Stage Coach was another bar that opened in the 1970s, and only lasted a few years before being burnt down. While the owner opened a second Stage Coach, Jill Shamp remembered vividly the concern over bars being burned down in acts of arson:

The biggest problem was wondering whether the bar was going to get busted, whether it was gonna burn down or whether the drag queens were gonna get into a fight with some butch women in the bars. Those were the concerns. We tried to kind of stay together

63 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018. Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, January 24, 2019; “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 3-4.

51

because you never really knew for sure, if something was going to happen in there. You know they all eventually burned down. Fortunately, whoever burned them down didn't do it when there were people in there, but you didn't know that at the time whether it was going to be a Saturday night when you're in there. So, you had to watch out for yourself a little bit.64 Jill’s comment, that “they all eventually burned down” is a reminder of the that the community perceived it faced. Jill could not recall anyone being arrested for the arsons at the bars she recalled burning down, but it is clear from her words that she felt the bars were destroyed because they were places where queer people gathered. The perception that the community was under siege, in Jill’s case primarily during the 1970s, reveals a fear that the community’s spaces were now known to the wider public – a result of the increased visibility of gay bars who began to put signs with the bar’s name out front rather than an unmarked door. Jill also recalled the clandestine behavior that was expected going into and out of lesbian bars, “They were kind of more like speakeasies, like back alley boarded up windows and doors. We snuck in the back doors. You would be very quiet. I mean you got out of the car and you were very quiet going in and going out. Didn't matter if you had too much to drink or not. There was no loudness or rudeness.”65 This kind of caution regarding going out to the bars was also vivid in Kathy

McGlone’s memories from the late 1970s and early 1980s. “I think we were just scared of being found out.… because of Stonewall… that we were going to get beat up walking in or out of a bar. The place is going to get bombed or people are going to come in and shoot.… I think it was like a safe place, once we were in it. But we were afraid to go, and we were living a lie.”66 Both women were attuned to this fear of being caught going into or out of a lesbian bar, and Jeff

Bixby and Jerry Shedley both related a similar fear: in cruising places. There was clearly an anxiety amongst the community about the threat of physical violence against them,

64 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018. 65 Ibid. 66 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

52 and while none of my narrators specifically mentioned violence against themselves, it is clear that it was a common enough experience that they feared the possibility. Ironically, Stonewall had made them targets more than it had liberated them. For reasons neither my narrators mentioned, nor I could make out, 1985 was a poor year for the gay bars in Akron. Many that had been open for a decade shuttered their doors.67

In the wake of the spaces and geographies I have laid out, as well as the definitions and theoretical framework I am advancing in Chapter II I will show how LGBTQ+ people found each other in non-urban spaces outside of the bar scene and how they understood their place in their local communities in Northeast Ohio. Additionally, I will demonstrate where they located the LGBTQ+ community, the ways they imagine themselves to be a member of a larger community, and the values and norms that the community possessed. In the next chapter I will show how non-urban understandings of the LGBTQ+ community differed from urban sensibilities and institutions built around nightlife, and how non-urban members of the community viewed their urban counterparts. 68

67 “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City” 3-4; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, January 24, 2019; Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 68 Here I am drawing inspiration from Martin Meeker and Mary J. Gray’s use of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Meeker discusses San Francisco as a gay capital in the national imaginary. I am interested in how local communities imagined themselves. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities. 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2006); Gray, 10, and Meeker, 189.

53

CHAPTER 1I

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER

To find the LGBTQ+ community beyond the largest, densest cities, it is imperative to begin to locate local gathering points, and the methods used to establish contact with other homosexual individuals. This prompts the following questions: How did homosexual people know where to meet each other? What common signs and signals indicated that a location was a gathering point for homosexuals? How did homosexuals identify each other? How do these strategies differ from those Martin Meeker elaborates upon in his own work? In an era where being identified as a homosexual came with the cost of losing one’s job and being rejected by family and friends, not to mention the consequences for those caught in homosexual acts by the authorities, these questions would have to be approached carefully by members of the LGBTQ+ community seeking contact with others. Most scholarship focused on homosexuality and the city, for example, indicates a well-documented history of men using handkerchiefs to advertise one’s preferences, however such hanky-codes varied by region, and the purchase of handkerchiefs is difficult to trace as many department stores had them available for sale for more conventional uses.

Two other methods that gay men used to establish contact with each other were travel guides and homosexual magazines that contained personal ads. Both assisted in finding the communication networks that helped to compose and organize the social and romantic lives of suburban and rural homosexuals. Dameron Travel Guides, a guide started by Bob Dameron in the 1960s, collected and listed the names and locations of homosexual bars, bathhouses, restaurants, and cruising locations across the nation and abroad. These guides not only provided a more reliable way to find places of interest to the LGBTQ+ community than telephone books,

54 but they also published personal ads in the back from gay men and lesbians looking to make contact, whether written or physical, with other homosexuals. The few homosexual magazines, cultural or pornographic, that existed at the time often contained homosexual personal ads as well.69

It would be absurd to claim that queer people are by their nature urbanites. Rural spaces have always contained queer people and the LGBTQ+ community did not originate in New York and San Francisco and colonize the countryside after the start of the Gay Liberation movement.

LGBTQ+ communities were vibrant in Northeast Ohio in much the same way it was true across much of middle America before the Stonewall Riot of 1969. These communities spanned rural spaces, suburban sprawl, and small cities beyond the major urban centers of the country.

However, locating rural queer communities is fraught with challenges.

The conditions that allowed large city LGBTQ+ communities to thrive simply did not exist in less populated areas of the nation, and historians have often concluded that this means that these communities did not exist in any substantive way. To understand this conclusion, and to move beyond it, we can turn to historians Colin R. Johnson, John Howard, and Brock

Thompson who identified three challenges that rural homosexuals experienced that negated or made impossible many of the strategies urban queers used to find each other: low population density, fewer transportation options, and more community surveillance. All of these challenges were present to some degree in Northeast Ohio since 1945, and Northeast Ohio’s queer

69 On urban clothing as a signifier of homosexuality, see Chauncey 3-5, 51-55. See Meeker for more information on the types of books published during this time period, especially 113-28.

55 community could not have followed in the footsteps of New York or San Francisco because of these challenging conditions. Whether they wanted to was another matter.70

Low Population Density and the Ambiguity of Invisible Minorities

The crush of people in densely populated places allowed LGBTQ+ communities to form more easily, to maintain a similar character, use common symbols, and develop a common set of coded linguistic terms. Businesses, services, and entertainment were not only closer, but appeared in more variety, and competed against each other to appeal to different sets of clienteles. In less-urban environments, low population density has hindered both the development of widely recognized coded language in a complex form and the development of clusters of queer-friendly businesses.

Finding communities like the LGBTQ+ community has always presented particular challenges. There is nothing innate visually that identifies someone as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. Like other invisible communities, such as religious communities, it is only through deliberate signs that membership can be known and acknowledged. These signs have remained fluid and localized for the LGBTQ+ community, reflecting the regionalism and insular nature of these communities. For example, in post-WWII urban American places like Greenwich

Village in New York and The Castro in San Francisco, gay men wore certain colored or patterned ties, or handkerchiefs to communicate membership in the community, but also certain types of desire. These ‘hanky codes’ allowed those who knew their significance to approach cautiously and make discreet inquiries. These codes conveyed a wide array of information about

70 Johnson, Howard and Thompson discuss these ideas in varying depth, but represent a consistent thread through each work. See Howard, John, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).; Thompson, Brock, The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2010).; Colin R. Johnson, Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013).

56 the wearer’s sexual interests and role in sexual activities. According to historian Martin Meeker, citing the writings of historian Jess Stern from the 1960s, lesbians also wore certain colors, different in various major cities, on Thursdays to show membership in the Lesbian community.

Coded language has been another mainstay of the urban LGBTQ+ community, often with a surprising level of sophistication, and allowed LGBTQ+ people to have public conversations about their lives and loves without the concern of drawing unwanted attention. Outsiders who were not in-the-know would find little of substance, if the chatter was understandable at all, and giving the wrong response indicated you did not belong to the queer community. 71

Certain areas of large cities would come to be friendly to LGBTQ+ Americans for a variety of reasons. Sometimes business owners were only concerned about volume of business and tolerated relatively discrete LGBTQ+ gatherings. Other businesses operated in legal grey- spaces, or were outright illegal, and the clandestine clientele they attracted often included

LGBTQ+ folk, who shared the owner’s desire to avoid contact with the law. Still others tolerated or even expected homosexual patrons among their clients, like theaters and late-night restaurants did in New York and other cities. Regardless of the reasons, these concentrated spaces created a distinct culture and community.72

71 George Chauncey provides an example from New York’s bathhouse scene and the different approaches and motivations of the owners, see Chauncy 208-218. For cafeteria society and similar restaurants, see Chauncey 164- 177. On Coded language see, Meeker, Martin, Contacts Desired, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). 128. and Chauncey, George, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay World 1890-1940, (New York: Basic Books, 1994). 286-91; On urban clothing as a signifier of homosexuality, see Chauncey 3-5, 51- 55. 72 On these factors, see Dereka Rushbrook “Cities, Queer Space, and the Cosmopolitan Tourist” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8(1-2, 2002), 183-206, and additionally the the articles she points to in her first note, on page 201, “See Gill Valentine, “(Hetero)sexing Space: Lesbian Perceptions and Experiences of Everyday Space,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11 (1993): 395 –413. See also Nancy Duncan, ed., Body Space: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1996); David Bell and Gill Valentine, eds., Mapping Desires: Geographies of Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1995); and Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter, eds., Queers in Space: Communities/ Public Places/Sites of Resistance (: Bay, 1997). “Space” is both process and social product, arising from and conditioning everyday spatial practices; it both constitutes and is constituted by social relations (see Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory [New York: Verso, 1989], 80). “Place” refers to the locales and locations in

57

These techniques, aiding in communication and identification of the community, were almost entirely useless outside of the gay of New York and San Francisco. This is because there were variations between the languages spoken on the east and west coasts, a dearth of avenues for nation-wide cultural transmission, and, most importantly, too few people who knew the ‘language’ spread over too large of an area to enable widespread adoption by the non- urban community of Northeast Ohio. Queer folks were more likely to run into a heterosexual who happened to have a hanky than a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and without someone to regularly converse with in coded language, it fell victim to the ‘use it or lose it’ workings of the mind - assuming one could find a fluent speaker to teach them in the first place.

It was simply impractical for a more dispersed population to rely on either method.

For rural and suburban LGBTQ+ people, isolation and loneliness were common feelings.

Many gay men, like Henry Goldring, have reported to historians that they thought they were the only person in the world who felt the way they did about members of their same sex and discovering that anyone else felt the same way was often a shocking experience. “Nothing. No books, no interactions, so you were so isolated in your feelings you couldn't tell somebody about it even if you suspected maybe somebody was like you. Here they would deny it or be mad or tell their mother or you know their pastor or whatever. And it was horrible. The isolation got deeper and deeper and deeper.”73 These feelings of isolation often continued into adulthood as well, Jerry Shedley recalled from his early adulthood, “Well in West Salem to be a gay man usually meant that you know you just, your life was just pretty, well, negative. You know you usually ended up spending most of your evenings just drinking in a local bar. Going home alone.

which these social relations are inscribed. Importantly, it implies a sense of place and attachment to place; for instance, the Castro has significant meaning even for those who have never visited it.” 73 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019.

58

Even if they thought you were gay or whatever you didn't act on it. So, what did you do? You got drunk.”74 Information about others like themselves was often hard to find, although it became easier as homosexuality increasingly entered the popular consciousness in the 1950s, and when information could be found from authoritative sources, the information was often negative.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the guide that the American

Psychiatric Association publishes as a guide for the description and classification of mental disorders - classified homosexuality as a mental disease from 1952 until 1973, homosexuals were vilified in the news, especially during the McCarthy years, and the government actively purged homosexuals from the federal bureaucracy on the grounds that they were security risks, prone to blackmail. Despite these negative characterizations, which some LGBTQ+ people regarded as inauthentic or inaccurate, many queer people sought out information at libraries and in the mass media that offered information about homosexuality. This was also where many became aware of the LGBTQ+ communities that thrived in New York and San Francisco.75

This process of seeking out information about queer people was often a first step towards finding the LGBTQ+ community. In non-urban places, however, that community was quite different from its portrayals in the mass media and popular imagination. Johnson, Howard, and

Thompson explain the challenge of finding information about the community and finding the community itself in terms of population density, which in 1960 was 237.5 per square mile in

Ohio as a whole, compared to 24,697 per square mile in New York City, and 15,553 per square

74 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 75 Meeker, 8. Meeker notes that smaller communication networks of the era were, “tight knit but often fleeting” and discounts their presence as uninfluential. He does not, however, investigate these networks in detail beyond his speculation. On feelings of isolation and loneliness see Grey, Johnson and Gilly, 33-34, 233-34; Howard, 21; Johnson, 123-25, Fellows, 14-16; D’Emilio 33-34. Additionally, three of my narrators, Henry Goldring, Jeff Bixby, and Jerry Shedley all describe feelings of loneliness or isolation. On the medicalization of homosexuality in the psychiatric field during the 1950s and 1960s see D’Emilio 140-44. Removal of homosexuality from the DSM, Ibid., 247.

59 mile in San Francisco. Cleveland, Ohio’s most populous city in 1960, had a population density of

10,789 per square mile. For queer people in Ohio, this difference in population density meant that the community was dispersed over a much larger area, even if Cleveland’s population outpaced that of San Francisco. Further, the sprawl of Cleveland and of Northeast Ohio generally did not lend itself to the kind of business competition found in urban neighborhoods. Instead, queer residents of the region established centers of community and contact where they could, in patterns that would more closely resemble rural networks of contact. One of the ways that rural and suburban queer people began contacting others was to go to moderately-sized cities near their homes. Akron-Canton and Youngstown-Warren would serve this purpose for many of the region’s residents, offering businesses that were not only unavailable in smaller municipalities, but also businesses that sought to reach out into the rural surroundings and pull in potential customers.76

Often times, these LGBTQ+ friendly bars, bath houses, and restaurants were located on the fringe of town, in out-of-the-way places or industrial areas, hoping to avoid notice, much like their clientele. These businesses functioned similarly to their parallel institutions in large cities, police raids and all. The gay bath house first came to Akron in 1968 under the name Akron

Steam and Sauna, which was located at 5 N. Martha Avenue. It would move in the 1970s to a new location, which is still in operation today. Several competitors would open in the 1970s as well. Chat Noir and The Village would both open in 1969, and while The Village would close its

76 Resident Population Data." Census.gov. Accessed November 22, 2017. https://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-dens-text.php.; "Table 19. Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1960." Census.gov. June 15, 1998. Accessed November 22, 2017. https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab19.txt.; It is worth noting that Cleveland’s population was actually greater than that of San Francisco in 1960 at 876,050 in Cleveland compared to 740,316 in San Francisco. However, Cleveland occupies almost twice as large of an area in square miles, 81.2 compared to 47.6. Population density remains the relevant factor for businesses as well as the development of neighborhoods with particular characteristics.

60 doors within the year, Chat Noir continued on into the late 1970s. Other city sites for making contact were urban parks that had acquired a reputation for being a good place to cruise for others, especially men. The ideal park was often unlit, provided cover, or had bathrooms that allowed for some measure of privacy - or at least an early warning if someone else entered.

Grace Park, in Akron’s downtown area, was the place to cruise for men after the bars closed. For more than thirty years it was known as the primary locations to go cruising, until train tracks and destitute transients in the 1980s brought an increasingly temporary, drug-using and violent crowd

- rough trade - for those who still dared to go there after hours. Both parks and LGBTQ+ friendly establishments had their own local crowds and rural and suburban homosexuals, who often had to drive hours, were - with some difficulty- able to form lasting friendships with those who lived nearby in the city. However, travel to and from these locations added additional challenges, from being off the beaten path to being hours away from some of their patrons. 77

Less-urban communities would look entirely different from their large urban counterparts in terms of culture, size and goals. Thompson, Johnson and Howard each describe close knit networks of varying sizes. Thompson describes a particularly interesting local queer community, closed to working class queers, of middle and upper class white gay men in in Hot Springs,

Arkansas, who shunned everything associated with urban LGBTQ+ culture. Instead, they preferred a circuit of house parties and occasional gatherings at respectable bars where their whiteness and social status protected them and let them remain invisible to outsiders. While urban culture would call these men , it is clear from Thompson’s descriptions they are not. Resort towns may not be known for having a particularly rural flavor; however, Thompson makes it clear in his description that comparing this community to Washington DC or other large

77 Chauncy, 180-184. On bar locations, see Howard, xv-xvi, and Chauncy, 94-6; “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City.”

61 cities would be a mistake; Hot Springs lacked the numbers and visibility to replicate large urban communities. Instead, Thompson’s description of Hot Springs offers an example of a less-urban queer community, and some of its methods of meeting others while maintaining privacy more relevant to spaces outside of major cities. The local residents possessed a different culture more attuned to their non-urban locality, and it is cultures like this one that must be located and understood in order to uncover the norms and values of rural queer communities.78

Several individuals from Akron described house parties as the primary way in which they kept contact with friends, got together for larger activities, and prepared for going out for the night. Terry Austin, Jill Shamp, Kathy McGlone, and Rosita Estefan all described house parties as a regular part of their social lives. Rosita in particular remembered entertaining guest frequently. “And I met a whole lot of people through entertaining. And then they would bring friends of theirs with them, and then you'd meet those people, and some people would be visiting from out of town. And you could correspond with them, maybe, later…if you had any rapport with them, they might be giving you their telephone number or address or something and you'd go right back and forth to them or call them.”79 In addition to meeting new friends and acquaintances, Rosita emphasized the role that entertaining played in the social life of her large friend group. While she did not necessarily believe that most people entertained, she did find that those who did attracted many guests.

Maybe not a lot [of people entertained], but a lot of people would come to it if you did entertain. Like I was with a group of people that were friends and they liked to entertain, and they liked drinking. And so, some entertainment, I like cooking so I would make… foods and and I'd have a bar and stuff like that. But sometimes in terms of entertaining you wouldn't have to have like any type of buffet or anything like that you would go and [have] some kind of snacks or hors d'oeuvre and some cocktails and people would be good. And a lot of times they would do that prior to going out to the bars…. You'd come

78 Thompson, 54-55. 79 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, November 15, 2018.

62

at maybe nine or eight o'clock or something and have wine, cheese, and whatever and then all of you who get together, this is usually on Friday or and Saturday or one or the other, and you would have that little gathering and then all of us get in the car and go the bars. And sometimes later on they'd all come back to your house and someone would stay at your house some would, they all get together and eat again, and I used to have a piano and they would play the piano and sing show tunes. Things that were things they enjoyed.80 For Rosita and others who entertained, coming together for food and drinks was a regular part of their social calendar, facilitated by the differences in housing between heavily urban places like

New York, and less urban places like Akron where private homes could easily support large gatherings.81

Fewer Transportation Options

The mass transit systems being developed in heavily urbanized locations around the nation provided easy movement across the city, and so LGBTQ+ people could easily get to centers of the community without having to live there. This not only allowed poorer members of the community to easily gain access to community institutions, it also allowed a measure of discretion through distance for those who lived double lives. Easy movement through and between urban landscapes allowed for many more LGBTQ+ people to access the community.

This lies in stark contrast to the situation that rural LGBTQ+ people found themselves in. For most rural and suburban LGBTQ+ folks, these urban centers, regardless of size, were places to visit when they could or to find company for a short period of time. In Northeast Ohio members of the local queer community relying on traditional urban-focused assumptions would have to travel to Cleveland, Akron-Canton, or Youngstown-Warren if they wanted to find a business that

80 Ibid. 81 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018; Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

63 tolerated or accepted their presence as open homosexuals. These smaller cities, and others like them across middle America with mid-sized populations, often had a few establishments that catered to the LGBTQ+ community; especially outside of the bar scene. It was not until the late

1970s and 1980s that so-called gay churches and other more formal political organizations began to emerge on a large scale. While these establishments were often difficult to find, LGBTQ+ networks of friends and lovers passed along their locations. 82

The automobile, historian Tim Retzloff argues, “allowed gay and bisexual men to assemble like never before, and these men gave new meaning to the concept of driving for pleasure.”83 Retzloff notes the mobility and privacy offered by the automobile opened many options for men in the years following World War II. Johnson, Howard and Thompson, on the other hand, explore the idea of transportation as playing a key role in preventing rural LGBTQ+ communities from forming in the same manner as their urban counterparts. While car ownership increased in the 1950s, this took place mostly in the context of urban and suburban populations benefitting some non-urban members of the community. Howard discusses the importance of the automobile to rural queers. While quoting from several other authors, he concludes that, “the

‘instrumental significance of the automobile’ for queers cannot be overstated, especially for rural locals.”84 He goes on to note, though, that the entire system of building highways through

Mississippi was uneven, poorly planned, underfunded, and rife with corruption. Akron’s own

82 Japonica Brown-Saracino, How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities,” (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018). 121-22. Simon Hall, “Protest Movements in the 1970s The Long 1960s” Journal of Contemporary History, 43 (4, Oct 2008) 655-672. 83 Tim Retzloff, “Cars and Bars: Assembling Gay Men in Postwar Flint, Michigan,” in Creating a Place for Ourselves, ed. Beemyn, 243. 84 Howard, 100.

64 struggles with highway planning, including the Inner Belt, leave little doubt that Mississippi was not the only state that struggled to build highway systems in an efficient manner.85

Rest stops along the interstate highway were another place co-opted by local men. These rest stops were often considered prime real estate for cruising, or actively searching for sexual partners in public spaces. Rest stops would serve a similar function in the country as city parks did in urban spaces. Rest stops contained restrooms, and often green spaces where travelers could relax. In the evenings, however, traffic slowed dramatically, and restrooms and the outside spaces were often appropriated by local LGBTQ+ people as a place to meet others anonymously.

Much like their urban counterparts, the rest stops that became known as the best cruising places were often dimly lit or completely unlit, provided cover in the form of nearby bushes or woods, and had bathrooms that allowed for privacy. Rosita recalled that others used them regularly in

Northeast Ohio:

[T]hey also had roadside parks where you're driving up the expressway [they had] a roadside area to basically use the restroom or whatever, but it wouldn't be unusual for people to go up there, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, at night and you know pick up some kind of a trick or activity in there. They had sort of like, well, they did odd things. One was maybe be at a urinal and some people stare at each other and next thing you know they're outside on a picnic table. Or they, it's very common to have, I think they call them glory holes or something, they drill them in the side of a, like a bathroom partition type thing and people stick their wares through there and basically having sex but not knowing who they're having it with at that point. Which is not, that's terrible but that's the [early years] before people felt comfortable with… having a relationship with someone or having friends that you can go do things with or without some kind of a sex thing added to it. Seems like it's, like really, the early years of homosexuality dealt with sex. A lot more so than basically getting to know someone. [It was n]ot an interest.86 Rosita’s description of cruising in a men’s rest stop succinctly articulates when and how men made sexual contact at these places. The convenience, privacy, access allowed men to find what they wanted quickly and be on their way. Howard’s research aligns with this

85 See Howard, 100-106, and Thompson, 52-54. 86 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018.

65 representation and contends that these connections were often fleeting and that rest stops were not spaces for finding long time companionship.87

Jerry Shedley, on the other hand, remembered several local rest stops or “Tea Rooms,” as the gay slang of the time would have termed them, on State Route 21 in between Massillon and

Norton and another in Canal Fulton, “I mean restroom cruising was real big on the interstates and stuff prior to them putting night attendants in all the restrooms.... And [those places were] just a beehive on both sides… and there just seemed like there was nothing you had to be worried about. The location was such that there was virtually no traffic on that road.” Jerry’s recollections also trouble the idea that these stops were used primarily for anonymous sex. “And it was our regular meeting place. And people got to know each other's names and they really socialized there. Not just sexually. A lot of times maybe they didn't have sex. They would just sit around on the benches and and talk and everything. That was one of, the main areas in this town that people got to go.”88 The social utility of rest stops as gathering points, especially in rural places where bars may not have been available, has not been investigated in depth by historians and may reveal more complex social networks in rural and other less-populated areas than previously thought.89

Other forms of transportation, such as busses, to larger cities were much less frequent in rural places and required traveling greater distances to find establishments that would tolerate

LGBTQ+ patronage. In the end, rural queers would find alternatives to city spaces for many of their meetings. These places were often not for intentionally for meeting others, but instead were places to avoid the surveillance of the home and community. These spaces were also poor

87 For mass transit, see Chauncy 197. For roadside stops, see Howard 110-13. 88 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 89 Ibid.

66 parallels to the apartments that urban LGBTQ+ people relied on and used for privacy. The risk of discovery and exposure were far higher in rural areas and while parks and ‘lovers’ lanes’ were not exclusively queer spaces - in fact there was a certain acceptance or disapproving tolerance for heterosexual relations in many of these areas - the consequences for rural LGBTQ+ people were far harsher. 90

Parks, which were much more expansive in rural spaces than their urban counterparts, would be purposed in similar ways by gay men - for cruising. In many ways these parks were safer in rural spaces as well. The state and national parks that populate the nation's rural spaces are often hundreds, or even thousands, of acres in size and offer miles of trails. Finding a private space would not have been difficult. Additionally, surveillance of these parks was uneven with a limited staff patrolling a large area. In a similar vein, back roads and large fields could provide a measure of privacy unavailable in more densely populated areas. When used this way, these sites were often less about forming community than satisfying sexual urges. The connections forged here might become relationships, however, they did little to create a web of connections. Another usage, however, was more conventional.91

Local groups of LGBTQ+ people could freely associate with minimum disturbance for picnics, sports, and other recreational uses. Kathy McGloan reflected on the use of parks and other outdoor spaces by the lesbian – or “gay girls,” as she preferred to be called – community.

Well we would go to the women's festivals and a lot of times those were out of town. There was one in Kirkersville and they never gave us the directions to it. We had to meet at a secret place to get a meeting place and I don't know if they were just checking out who you were to get the map to even go to where you had to go. So that was always a we'd go to the women's festivals.…Ok, there was a magazine called Lesbian Connection and it would come in a…brown envelope….[Y]ou would probably write to

90 See Howard, 100-106, and Thompson, 52-54. 91 On parks, see Howard, 113-14; Chauncy describes the ‘ideal park’ on 195-196.

67

'em, send them a letter with your deposit, send them cash in mail, and…they would correspond or call you and tell you where to go. But yeah it was usually through the Lesbian Connection, maybe flyers at the bars. They they would be a contact. And I know there was some, we didn't do too many of them, but the churches some of the church places would have 'em. Word of mouth.92 Kathy’s memories of women’s festivals reveal that public spaces were not just used as convenient places for sexual encounters but did also serve more conventional purposes for many members of the LGBTQ+ community. Other narrators also went to festivals in the region, Terry

Austin reported similar experiences in her own life, and Jerry Shedley also had fond memories from festivals, including one where he met his current partner.

And I met him that day at the Asian and friends’ picnic and I had been invited there because I met some of the club members at one of the prides and they asked me to come. So, I was alone, and I thought, “wow. OK I'll go up for the fourth of July.” I didn't have anything else to do. And I went around said hi [to] everybody, that took five minutes…. It was getting close to the time for the fireworks…I wasn't so much interested in that. I kind of wanted to get out of town before all the…. So, I had seen Wasson come into the party. And he was with a young Caucasian guy. And I thought… “what a nice-looking couple” …and I went down the lake and…[was] looking out over the lake. It was starting [to] become twilight. I thought, “Well, I'm going to get out of here now.” And I turned around and I almost knocked him over. He said he had been standing behind me for about 15 minutes. But I was so deep in thought, he said he didn't want to disturb me. And so, we talked for a few minutes and I said, “well I'm going to get ready to leave.” I said, “I think your friend is looking for you up there.” And he goes, “Who?” I said, the gentleman you walked in with. He goes, “Oh, I don't know who he is. He was getting out of his car at the same time I was getting out and…he was just simply walking behind me to get down here…I don't even know his name.” I go, “oh” …. he asked if I liked coffee and I said yes. And he said he just didn't want to be at this party and wanted to know if we could go have coffee. So, we left.93 Jerry’s memories of this event and others demonstrate a very well-connected community that consistently hosted large events at certain times. Though my male narrators often described the gay community as primarily organized around bars, it is clear that other options existed. It seems clear that parks and public spaces were often utilized by the queer community in less urban

92 Kathy McGloan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 93 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018.

68 spaces to meet with others who had similar interests, including music and the arts, and for simply meeting new friends and romantic partners. This may have assisted the community in overcoming the dearth of more customary - by urban standards – meeting places, such as bars and restaurants.94

Because most rural spaces did not contain gay bars, or bars that tolerated same-sex affection, queer people had to develop other methods of identifying each other. Authors of rural studies have interviewed men who have consistently described using eye contact in straight spaces to find queer partnership. Making connections in less-urban places with other members of the LGBTQ+ community was difficult, especially in areas where homosexuality was actively policed. This policing necessitated covert actions and privacy. Members of the LGBTQ+ community relied on both chance and intentional encounters to meet others. Meeting other homosexuals at bars that were not explicitly queer spaces was one way that such chance encounters occurred. LGBTQ+ people will often talk about the importance of making eye contact and a prolonged gaze while attempting to discern if someone is a member of the community. Several narrators also mentioned the way someone carried themselves as an indicator of belonging to the community, especially if their body language ran against gendered norms. Holding eye contact, and then approaching to make conversation was common for

LGBTQ+ people at bars when gay bars were unavailable. This method, of course, had its risks.

However, one of the appeals of this kind of interaction was that the face to face meetings could lead to repeated contacts, friendships, and partners. A lingering gaze and prolonged eye contact have served as a consistent and surprisingly reliable measure of queer desire across time and

94 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, December 12, 2018; 94 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, January 25, 2019; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, OH, November 26, 2018.

69 location. This tactic, far more than clandestine meetings in out of the way places, has fostered the identification of members of the rural queer community to each other, due in large part to its applicability in a variety of settings. While most authors have focused on the use of eye contact for finding romantic or sexual companionship, LGBTQ+ people have reported using it in a variety of places to identify other members of the community.95

Jerry Shedley, recalling his time cruising for other men recalled learning, “how to ‘spot’ each other to a certain degree. You know that. That look. You know catching eye contact and just holding it for a little while and and before you look away, and then looking back. There were, what to call that? Skill building. It was homosexual skill building at that time.”96 Jerry’s skill building was an important part of using eye contact and body language, along with assumptions about masculine presentation, to identify other queer people. Henry Goldring would, “talk to anybody…. I like to smile at people. 'Hello. How are you?' You know, strangers, and if you get a wink and nod or a hello,” then you would strike up a conversation. Henry continued, “it’s by chance. You know…everybody is different.”97 Jeff Bixby remembered more visual cues, saying, “Well if you were a good-looking man and you were friendly, I think chances were you were gay.” He went on to describe the traits he associated with gay men,

“They had a big sense of humor. You were fun to be around. You know if he loved to joke with people and… that…chances are you're pretty…you were gay…. We were cute. We had sense of style. We danced well, we dressed well…. So yeah, those little alarms would go off, I think when

95 Allan Berube discusses eye contact and cruising in the most succinct manner in his work Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: The Free Press, 1990). 102-114. See also Chauncey 188-89. The other authors cited frequently in this work discuss cruising in varying detail, most of whom spend very little time discussing eye contact and the rituals around it as a form of cruising; Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, December 5, 2018. 96 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, December 12, 2018. 97 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, January 25, 2019.

70 you'd see somebody, they would be like that, you know, chances are he's probably gay.”98 Rosita recalled the practice indirectly, but perfectly describes the practice normally attributed to gay men in the 1960s and 70s, “Some people, it's just, usually we glance at someone or just look at them. And probably couldn't tell you a whole lot about them as you pass by them. Usually, I think that's called cruising like when you walk by and you keep having eye contact with that person, may circle around and come back in their same area. I think that's how you would probably notice if they did more attention than just passing by.” She went on to describe how her friend, who was familiar with the lesbian community, “always says this is a lesbian thing where they'll walk by and they won't acknowledge you, each other, by saying, 'Hi how are you doing?'

But they sort of do a head nod. And walk on by. That's sort of like an old lesbian way of saying,

'you know I'm part of you.' That's what she said I don't know if that's true, but I'm not a lesbian.”99 All of these descriptions of cruising someone or attempting to discern their connection, or lack there-of, to the LGBTQ+ community show a remarkable similarity to each other. These homosexual skills of zeroing in on gender non-conformity, lingering glances of desire, and group dynamics seem to reveal something about the social construction of queer identity and culture generally – its specific rejection of certain gender norms as a way of differentiating itself from the dominant gendered hierarchy and the restrictive boundaries of gender within that hierarchy.

Gathering points for the rural community such as churches, work, school, local festivals or celebrations, and shops in town, all presented opportunities to meet other queer folks if one knew how to look. It is in these opportunities that one can begin to trace the outlines of these communities, based not on urban values, but on rural ones. Community institutions were co-

98 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, OH, November 26, 2018. 99 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, November 2018.

71 opted as places to meet queer friends and socialize amongst the straight community, unnoticed in the crowd. Pronoun switching served in place of coded language, and a discreet distance from listeners allowed for fairly open conversation.100

Greater Community Surveillance

Living arrangements, surveillance, and censorship laws also played a role in limiting the formation of rural LGBTQ communities in the image of their urban counterparts. In the 1950s it was still fairly common for children, especially female children, to reside with their parents until they married. While this trend had long been in decline, it was far more common for single young people to live alone in urban environments where apartments and other short-term housing was readily available at a variety of prices. These places without parental or community surveillance allowed LGBTQ+ people far more independence, privacy, and freedom of choice in their lives. Large numbers of gay men would often ‘take over’ boarding houses and would inform their friends when further rooms became available. Rural communities rarely had an abundance of rental living units, and those that did exist saw far less change in occupancy, and therefore a heightened community surveillance. One of the perils of small town living for

LGBTQ+ people has always been that everybody knows everybody, and participation in the community is not only seen positively, but as necessary to belonging. Withdrawal or avoidance, particularly for extended periods of time, were routes to exclusion, suspicion, and the attention of the community.101

In rural and urban areas, adult bookstores and adult theaters would play a very different, yet equally important, role in creating networks for the LGBTQ+ community. Both of these

100 On churches as queer sites, see Howard, 51-54. On rural community institutions, see Howard, xi - xiv. 101 On Boarding Housing, see Chauncey 152-163.; On the trend away from living with one's parents, see Chauncy 76.

72 locations would be sites of heavy surveillance, subjected to the federal Comstock Act, and well as a patchwork of state and local regulations. The Comstock Act was a series of anti-obscenity laws aimed at regulating obscene - very broadly defined - material and what could and could not be sent in the United States Postal Service (USPS).102 Additionally, states and smaller municipalities often had their own standards and regulations regarding what counted as obscene material. Before they were struck down, the Comstock laws prohibited the distribution of obscene, and especially pornographic, content. All LGBTQ+ materials were labeled as obscene, even when they were not pornographic, and it was not until a string of legal victories from Roth v. United States (1957), One, Inc v. Olesen (1958), and locally in Ohio, Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) that these materials were available through the mail to the home for those brave enough to have them delivered. This also allowed the larger distribution of these materials to adult bookstores and theaters as well as at stores or stands for those who were not interested in buying them at adult theaters and others stores that sold pornography.103

The adult theater was a place to view pornographic material. They were often located in out-of-the-way places in urban environments, or on lonely highway exits, discreetly labeled and away from the eyes of the communities in which they were located. These stores allowed patrons to view short films, alone, in small booths and most, if not all, of these stores actively forbid multiple occupancy in their booths. However, this does not seem to have kept LGBTQ+ people -

102 For a brief history, see P. C. Kemeny, "Banned in Boston": Moral Reform Politics and the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice. Church History, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Dec. 2009), (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 819- 831. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20618793 Accessed: 01-05-2018 01:47; In relation to books in the 20th century, see ibid., 845-46. 103 Meeker, 19.; Howard, 196. For additional detail, see Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14778925784015245625&q=roth+v+united+states&hl=en&as_sdt=6, 36 Accessed 5/2/18; One, Inc v Olesen, 241 F.2d 772 (1957). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=7911273081513480843& Accessed 5/2/18; and Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15356452945994377133&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr Accessed 5/2/18.

73 and gay men in particular - from trying to use them for other purposes. There are numerous documented cases of gay men appropriating these spaces for clandestine meetings, especially if a particular location was known for lax surveillance. Beyond the bar scene, several institutions also served the community. In Akron, The Forum, the Astor, and the Strand were all theaters that operated in the 1950s and 1960s. Both the Astor and Strand showed adult films - the Astor only showed adult films after 1974 - and the Forum was known for its Sci-fi and B-movie showings, including many gay cult classics; all were used regularly by the community. There were also two restaurants that were popular gay hangouts, Kippy’s, at 45-47 S. Main street from the 1950s through the 1970s, and Myrtle’s Restaurant, at 6 S. Maple street from 1967 to 1968. The former was well liked for its 24-hour service on weekends and late closing time during the week, while the latter was owned by the same man, Michael Greenburg, who owned Beefeater’s and, later,

Mother’s.104

Adult bookstores were - unsurprisingly - places were adults could purchase books with adult themes. This often did not include outright pornography, at least not in plain sight of any police officers that might come in. Rather, these book stores sold adult interest books of various types, from hobby magazines to steamy romance ‘pulps’ and other risqué material alongside more pedestrian fare. Some of these bookstores gained reputations for their willingness to cater to the homosexual community and carry a wide array - for the time period - of LGBTQ+ related material. Older material from the 1930s had been made to satisfy the public’s curiosity and included works such as Strange Brother (1931), Twilight Men (1931), A Scarlet Pansy (1932),

Goldie (1933), Better Angel (1933), and Butterfly Man (1934). Some, like The Intermediate Sex

(1908), Must You Conform (1956), The Sixth Man (1961) and The Homosexual Revolution

104 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018; “A History of Akron Gay Life 1948-2009:61 Years Out in the City.”

74

(1964) were studies or exposés related to the community. The curious reader could also find a wealth of queer content in pulp romance novels. While much of this content was intended for the straight community, it often offered lesbian content with tragic endings. We Walk Alone (1955),

Well of Loneliness (1928), and Giovanni’s Room (1956) are all examples of the genre that exploded in the 1950s. Hobby magazines were another staple of adult bookstores. A wide variety of interests would have had been represented, and on the surface, it was probably the most wholesome section of the store. However, among the magazines for airplane models, trains, radios, electronics, sports, cars, and others were also male physique magazines, such as Adonis, and Physique Pictorial which were, in fact, very thinly veiled pornography. The popularity of physique magazines and pulps increased throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.105

The most significant benefit that these locations provided was a place where one could purchase LGBTQ+ periodicals without the interference of the Comstock Laws. This in and of itself was not particularly beneficial to building community, however, more importantly these periodicals contained personal ads in the back. In this way, these sites provided a sort of communication nexus for queer community members, and access to a wider network of contacts beyond chance meetings and the local - or distant - bar scene. These ads, sometimes disguised as hobby-related pen pals, granted access to the local LGBTQ+ community through personal letters and also helped the writer to imagine a queer landscape of homosexual desire. Guides such as Le

Guide Gris, the Dameron Travel Guide, the Gay Girls Guide, The Lavender Baedeker, and The

Address Book all offered information on spaces that were, at least supposedly, friendly to homosexuals. Most hobby magazines also had pen pal sections in the back, and as Martin

Meeker notes, Adonis and similar physique magazines pen pals had an unusual number of male

105 See Meeker for more information on the types of books published during this time period.; For Men having sex in adult theaters, see Howard, 96.

75 nurses, florists, hair stylists, and others that would have been a clear message to any gay reader as occupational gender inversions associated with homosexuality.106

Adult bookstores and theaters had also crept into rural areas, especially along highways, and offered similar fare to rural LGBTQ+ people as their urban locations did. What makes these locations more notable in the context of rural spaces is that their value as places for contacting other LGBTQ+ people was greatly enhanced. Lacking the LGBTQ+ tolerant gay bars or other establishments that urban environments had, the magazines and travel guides became a relatively easy and safe method for contacting other queer people. In this way, these businesses served as a sort of informal communication nexus for the far-flung LGBTQ+ community. They offered access to a postal network of rural queer voices, concerned about their lives, their place in the world, and how they related to community.

These establishments represent only a portion of what establishments were available to the LGBTQ+ community in Northeast Ohio during this time, and while Akron represents a significant urban anchor, narrators mentioned that that Youngstown-Warren and Canton contained their own places where queer community members intent on the city could visit. While some of the local institutions that were available – the gay bars, bath houses, and parks to go cruising in - reflected the metrocentric understanding of homosexuality that we associate with

New York and other large metropolitan areas, others were much less urban in character. Large house parties in the suburbs, organized get-togethers in the area’s large state and national parks, and a community that held together in the face of adversity bring to light some of the ways in

106 Meeker, 24-26; Chauncey 324; Howard 196-97.

76 which Akron’s LGBTQ+ residents formed a much more cohesive community than existing literature would suggest we should expect.107

107 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018; Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 26, 2018.

77

CHAPTER III

DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES

Akron’s queer community was strongly divided between lesbians and gay men from the end of World War II through the 1970s. Neither group went into the other’s bars nor did many members of either community frequently associate with each other. The cultural norms of both communities seem to have been at odds with each other, especially when it came to the way they spoke to one another. This chapter answers several questions that revolve around the ideas of community, networks, and what it meant to thrive for LGBTQ+ people in Northeast Ohio generally, and in particular, surrounding the city of Akron. It is also divided into two main parts.

The first focuses on the lesbian community and the second on that gay male community. These communities held distinct values, goals, ways of being that are better illustrated apart rather than together. It allows the narrators voices to be more clearly heard and understood within the context of their lives. It also reflects the attitudes of many of the narrators, particularly the lesbians or gay-girls, that shared their stories with me. For many, each community stayed separate until the AIDS crisis and political upheaval of the 1980s started to bring the two communities together.108

108 The interviews conducted for the oral history component of this work were informed by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, Rebecca Sharpless. History of Oral History: Foundations and Methodology. (AltaMira Press, Lanham, New York, , Plymouth, UK, 2007); Donna M. DeBlasio, Charles F. Ganzert, David H. Mould, Stephen H. Paschen, and Howard L. Sacks, Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History. (Swallow Press, Athens, OH, 2009); Michael Frisch. A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. (State University of New York Press, NY, 1990). In these works, the idea of shared authorial responsibility is as key component to in authentically representing the voices of narrators, as is a certain skepticism – as with any primary source – in crafting an historical narrative.

78

Lesbians are Different

Relieved. I was hanging out with all these girls in college and I knew one or two of ‘em were gay, but they invited me over to one of their houses one day and there was about six of them sittin around, kind of like an intervention. And they said they were going to gay bars in Cleveland, or in Toledo over the weekend. I was like, 'Okay I'll go you know.' And they were like, 'Well Jill it's a gay bar'. And I'm like. 'Oh' and they're like, 'you're gay, you know, you're gay, you are' and I'm like. 'I am?' And they're like, 'yeah you are. You just don't know it.' And then I started thinking about I was kind of like putting all the puzzle pieces together through, from the time I was 15 and I was like, 'Yeah I guess I am yeah.' So somewhat of a relief. And it was kind of a, little bit of, not much of a decision but a little bit of a decision just to say it.109

Lesbians are different. This phrase has echoed through much of the literature on the

LGBTQ+ community, usually as a justification for not including lesbians in major works.

George Chauncey notes in his introduction to Gay New York, “This book focuses on men because the differences between gay male and lesbian history and the complexity of each made it seem virtually impossible write a book about both that did justice to each and avoided making one history and appendage to the other.”110 He goes on to discuss the differences in power that males had in society, the possibility of a visible culture, the ownership of public spaces by men, and ascribed differences in emotional and sexual characters of men and women. Colin R.

Johnson is equally up-front in the beginning of Just Queer Folk about his own study’s limitations, “[I]t is almost always easier to uncover evidence documenting men’s experiences and perspectives than women’s – unless of course one is looking for men’s evidence regarding men’s perspective on women, in which case the task becomes considerably easier….[W]here the subject of sexuality is concerned, men receive far more attention than women do”111

109 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, OH, October 31, 2018. 110 Chauncey, 27. 111 Johnson, 23.

79

Acknowledging the lack of emphasis on lesbians in many works here is not a condemnation of these authors, rather it is to focus attention on this gap.112

This section will address how lesbians and other queer women understood the idea of queer community in Akron Ohio during the decades following World War II. It will attempt to show what kind of community networks existed, and what kind of information traveled through those networks. It will also demonstrate what the narrators believed a thriving community looked like, what it meant to thrive, and what informed their perceptions of success or failure in the community. Throughout this section, the voices of the narrators will be front and center in describing Akron and the surrounding areas.

For Kathy McGlone, queer community consisted of, “a sense of family. Support. Kind of confirmation that you were okay. I think that's what the gay community was to me. You know there's nothing wrong with me because I am gay. I mean it's, there's others like me and I can look around and they're normal. You know it's not a disease. You would have friends and you'd be like, ‘naw I don't see it that way.’ You know they're a good person there. So, I think it was a good sense of support.”113 The queer and lesbian women who shared their stories with me seemed to view their community in a much more concrete and way than the gay men. That is not to say they viewed it as a concrete social structure, Terry Austin specifically felt that in her younger years there was not a sufficient community, nothing to fall back on in bad times other than yourself and anyone directly connected to you. In her experience, “when we were younger

112 Chauncey, 27-28. It was important to me to purposefully include women’s voices in this work, and while I cannot make a case that their insights are representative of the lesbian community in Akron, much less any wider community, I find their stories to be an important place that future scholars of queer women in Akron could start from. Much could be gained from a larger, more selective sample, better leveraging lesbian communication networks, and a more solid grounding in the literature concerning women in rural, urban, and all places in between. 113 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

80 and we probably needed more of a community, there wasn’t a community there.”114 She went on to reflect that today, younger people have a much greater sense of community that they can rely on when they make their first tentative steps out into the LGBTQ+ community, that they know there are people there for them, even if they do not know who those people are. Other narrators discussed the connections they made through the Akron bars that allowed them to participate in larger social events for gay girls.115

My narrators frequently mentioned the bars as the first step into the lesbian community, but bars were not the center of the community. The bars, according to Kathy McGlone and Jill

Shamp, were places that felt as if they belonged to the community, however, the community itself was located outside of the bar scene. Jill reflected, “There's kind of small groups here and there. And then there's a larger community, you know, like it depends on what kind of event or activities is going on. I mean if you're talking about pride there's a thousand or two or three but if you're talking about somebodies wedding, you're probably talking about a hundred or so but mostly, probably small intimate groups.”116 These small intimate groups took many forms, from groups of friends that attended house parties to softball leagues to women’s festivals. Kathy also talked about the importance of being connected to the community and participating in it as she got older, “I think I was as involved as we were able to be involved…. If there was a march or a gathering, we were present. I know that I always tried to be involved…. In the gay community I felt that I was involved and visual and if there was something going on, I wanted to be part of it.

I wanted to see what the next thing was. So, I tried to be as involved as possible.”117 Akron’s

114 Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 115 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 116 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018. 117 Kathy McGloan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

81 lesbian community seems to have revolved primarily around small social circles for most events, and those circles would come together for larger community activities. In many ways, their community mirrored heterosexual community, small groups of friends got together frequently and larger community events drawing larger crowds. For the women who participated in Akron’s lesbian community, the values of the community were another important difference in between the gay male and gay female worlds.118

The queer women of Akron were very specific in identifying how their community differed from that of gay men. Jill Shamp specifically condemned the values of the gay male community that she found most egregious and off putting to women, “They're pretty lewd, pretty loose. Flamboyant. Gay men don't really make a good name for gays and lesbians. I mean I do know some gay men and they're very nice, but I have always been very picky about the gay men

I would spend any time with. They start getting gross, so I don't want to hang out with them anymore.”119 Kathy McGlone recalled a sense of family and support as the most important parts of the lesbian community, and an inclusivity that she bemoaned the perceived loss of in today’s

LGBTQ+ community:

I think there's… more now of different classes of gay people. Back then you were gay, you were gay, you were in the same pot. Now I feel like, 'Oh you're... a gay this or you're a gay that.' I just feel like the classes are more separated…. [B]ut I feel like back in the day it didn't matter what you did, or [who] you were just everybody was more accepting of each other because I think we all have the same goal of wanting to be accepted.120 This theme, the loss of a sense of community based on everyone being ‘in the same pot’ was a recurring theme with my narrators, regardless of gender and identity. Each of them felt in some

118 Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 119 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018. 120 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

82 way or another that the fragmenting of the community into specific identities – LGBTQQIA and so forth – had eroded the interconnections between everyone who in a different time would have been a gay guy or gay girl. They also felt a sense of loss with the disconnect between those who survived the AIDS crisis and those who grew up in the 1990s and beyond.

The networks that my narrators described fell into three main categories: locational, personal, and distributive. Over all, these networks highlighted the necessity for personal agency, some detective work, and some measure of luck in contacting others. Bars, restaurants, softball fields, bowling alleys, and other locations where queer women met served as the locational hubs for communicating information about the LGBTQ+ community. It was here that people often met for the first time, were brought out into the community,121 and gained access to other networks of queer information. These locations gave access to new contacts and social circles, and to some of the distributive information network. Kathy McGlone and Terry Austin remembered flyers and gay newspapers at bars, and that those locations were usually where women first stepped into the queer women’s community. Gaining access to the other two kinds of networks was an important step for people searching for the community. The physical locations carried many of the LGBTQ+ periodicals, flyers, and announcements for events, as well as listing other community institutions. The other parts of this distributive network were often national publications, such as the Lesbian Connection, which every lesbian narrator mentioned as a way to access regional information, especially how to find women’s festivals. For the narrators, the personal networks were by far the most important. Kathy McGlone recalled lesbian phone-chains being used within her extensive social circle to pass along news of house

121 For an explanation of the idea of coming out to the community, rather than the closet, which was more culturally relevant prior to Stonewall, see Katherine Schweighofer’s “Rethinking the Closet: Queer Life in Rural Geographies,” in Queering the Countryside. 223-44.

83 concerts, festivals, and other important community events. The personal connections that women made in the decades after World War II seem to have been the most important sources of information that these women had. The well-organized nature of women’s communication networks merits more study and calls into question the assertation most clearly articulated by

Martin Meeker that early non-urban communication networks were neither robust nor long lasting.122

What’s Stonewall?

I was trying to read about like Stonewall happened in 1968 and so I was aware of all of that, but I really didn't get it. I didn't understand what a drag bar was or riots or any of that. I didn't. You didn't. It wasn't in my vocabulary, I didn't know that we're fighting back against police. What? what were they doing? But then when I moved to L.A. one of the first bars, I went to was called the Blue Parrot on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. And the first night I got courage enough to go into that bar there were police cars on the street outside. Not arresting people, but just harassing. The presence of, you know, it was still to doing something bad and wrong and you know you should be aware that we're watching you.123

The men I interviewed consistently reinforced ideas that have been identified with metronormative assumptions of gender and sexuality, yet also consistently disavowed specific knowledge of the Stonewall riots or the metronormative understandings of queer culture that accompanied this knowledge. Jerry Raker, who had been serving in Vietnam, had returned as the

Kent State University shootings happened in May of 1970, and because of the distress he felt between the two events completely avoided national news. While he could not pinpoint when he heard about and understood what had happened at the riots, he felt certain it was years later.

Jerry Shedley did recall hearing about the riots, on his way to Woodstock later in the summer.

122 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 123 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019.

84

While the locals he spoke with in Boston seemed to know a fair deal about what had gone on, “I wasn't sure exactly what it all meant.... And all I knew from kinda just listening and observing was that whatever this was that was taking place in New York, was definitely something out of the ordinary. And that it was Earth shaking. Because even though you could tell people are talking about it and they were excited, they still whispered.” Jeff Bixby was certain he did not hear about Stonewall for several years after it happened, until he got involved with Kent State

University’s , in 1971. He laughed thinking about news of the Stonewall

Riots making their way to Medina, Ohio. For Henry Goldring, it was nearly a decade by his recollection before he understood what had happened at the in 1969. He did recall hearing about the riots, but any understanding of the social and political forces we associate with the riots today took years to get to him.124

The dissonance between the notion that the Stonewall riots were an immediately impactful event that “sparked the gay revolution”125 as portrayed by writer, editor, and filmmaker David Carter and the ways in which the narrators recalled the Stonewall riot’s impact on their local culture begs two questions: when did news of Stonewall, along with the understanding that the event was a watershed moment, reach Akron and how quickly did this information spread through the community? My narrator’s perceptions of Stonewall only slowly filtering into the community suggests that the spread of knowledge about Stonewall itself was a gradual and uneven process within the community, though most people knew of the riots within a few years. Understanding that the riots marked a moment of significance, on the other hand,

124 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019; Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019. 125 David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. (St. Martin’s Griffon: New York, 2004). David Carter’s book is probably the most well-known and highly circulated account of the Stonewall Riots in popular culture. It received wide-spread attention in the gay community after its release in 2004 as the gay marriage debate was heating up in the politics of the United States.

85 seems to have taken much longer, implies that Stonewall itself is only important in retrospect, that is, the events that followed Stonewall made it important. The Stonewall riot’s causal relationship to the shifts in the LGBTQ+ community in the 1970s appears to be in some doubt, from the perspectives of my narrators.126

The gay community in Akron seems, in many ways, to reflect the metronormative assumptions put forward by other scholars. Bar culture was important, as was an anonymous and prolific culture of sexual freedom. While narrators never described themselves in terms that would impugn their own character and story, they were all at least familiar with the sexual goings-on of others in the community generally and, to quote Rosita Estefan, who in the 1960s and 1970s identified as a gay male, described the values of the community as:

Loose. I mean everyone slept with everyone it was…OK. You may meet a person in a bar and they totally fall head over heels for you and you would, say, go home and have an affair with them. And the next night when you went out, you'd see that same person they wouldn't know who you were. So, everyone was very odd when it comes to having relationships. So, the relationships were like loose. They were basically a sexual release and that was it. Nothing to get personal with you, to be interested in what you like, maybe go out with you to a play or something. That was early. And then as time went on you had people. Had, they'd say, they used to call them, to have husbands or wives or something. Call 'em 'my lover' is what they would be called, lovers. And sometimes that lasts a very long time, sometimes, you know, a couple weeks. Depends on whatever. And it's, that's the way people acted in those days. Not 100 percent with anyone at any time. In the outside world, and I'm sure they're not today or any other day beyond having multiple partners when they're having sex. Like Ménage-a-trois, etc. And another big thing in those days that and I'm not sure they do today or not, they probably do.127

Rosita’s description of the gay community is consistent throughout her interview – sex was the number one priority for men. It was often anonymous, did not come with commitment, and participation in this culture at the time carried no stigma within the community. In many ways,

126 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019; Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019. 127 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018.

86 the gay male sexual norms of the 1950s and a1960s seem to have foreshadowed the free love movement, or perhaps gay men simply had fewer social restraints on their behavior and the forces that culminated in the free love movement more broadly were able to take root first in the gay community. While the interviewees for this project do not constitute a representative sample of gay men in Northeast Ohio, they raise a question. How much does the popular representation of gay male sexual culture, which is coded as metronormative, actually represent urban queer culture? The pervasiveness of prolific sexual behavior in the accounts of my narrators, especially those who identified with bar culture, seem to make it clear that and active sex life was not solely an urban phenomenon. When one considers the apparent slow movement of information regarding Stonewall to Akron, it seems unlikely that sexual norms would travel any faster.

Additionally, some of the men interviewed by Historian Will Fellows in Farm Boys, who were coming of age at the same time as my narrators, also reported cultures of sexual exploration and promiscuity. This led me to wonder if the sexual culture of gay men truly has anything to do with urban places, or is it instead linked to maleness or male culture more generally?128

For the gay male narrators who shared their stories, the early gay community in Akron seemed disconnected and fleeting, especially when juxtaposed against the lesbian community.

Each of my male narrators described feeling alone, lonely, or isolated as they grew up because of their homosexuality. Concerns about ones’ job, violence towards gay men peppered their stories.

Most had heard of gay bashings, and Jerry Shedley was certain his career as a teacher would have ended if his identity as a gay man were ever revealed. For those who were out in the

128 This question goes far beyond the scope of this project, but the pattern of responses was interesting enough that it seemed worth mentioning. Recent scholarly attention to masculinity, male culture, and other related ideas might assist in uncovering interesting historical patterns. Or, it could be that the cultural stereotype of gay male promiscuity – true or not – is a reinvention of the city-as-sinful trope from the late 19th century. Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019; Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018; Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019. Fellows, 34-217.

87 community, such as it was, in the 1960s, those feelings often persisted. Jerry Shedley remembered his own experiences as detached, “But. If there was a community it was simply a detached community. For the most part, and that's was my experience. Maybe it was because I was more detached. I'm sure there were pockets where people knew each other and always got together always had meals together and stuff.”129 Jerry also makes it clear that there was little to no trust between gay men, the secret of their identities came before all else:

I was aware of other gay people, but I was also very detached because I was still at the point where when you met somebody at the bar you gave a phony name. You never discussed personal details like 'Oh what kind of job do you do?' 'Oh, I'm a bricklayer.' You never got anything where that person could pin you down. And actually, know maybe who you are or know somebody who knows you…. You know, especially when they were detached everywhere else or so closeted that they didn't dare recognize each other in the community. Because if I say hi to so-and-so, I might see that person as straight there. But I don't know if somebody else actually sees him as gay and then they're going to look my direction or the other way around. If I come across gay and, and they see me and I'm, you know, conversing or in very friendly with the person. He's liable to get. So, so, much better to meet someplace. And that and then you go, and you just don't recognize each other. Walk past each other on a sidewalk. And, you know, if it was safe, maybe not. You know. Safety it always had, you always had to keep that mind”130

Jerry paints a bleak picture of gay male social relations in the 1960s. The concerns about job security, being recognized in public, and violence towards gay men all echo the concerns of urban gay men from earlier decades, and it is clear that the same social forces were present in the less urbanized areas of the nation. The 1960s, based on my narrator’s memories, seem to have been a period of solitude for the gay men living in Akron.

In the 1970s, a profound shift seems to have occurred in gay community in Akron. While the 1960s seemed to a decade of isolation and disconnection, the 1970s had a much stronger feeling of community to my narrators. Jerry Shedley and Jerry Raker both commented that the

129 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 130 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018.

88 community seemed to be more connected, even if those connections were still primarily centered around bar culture and often around anonymous sex. Jerry Raker offered an interesting perspective on the 1970s because he was living in Columbus, but frequently returned to Akron to visit his parents and relatives in Wadsworth. When he was in the area, he would go out, and noticed the difference, not only between the two cities, but also between the 1960s and 1970s.

“The gay community was just starting to come out… And the gay bars were not afraid to show you that it was a gay bar and they were lit up, and back then some of the gay bars were mixed bars. Gay life in Columbus was very carefree.”131 He contrasted this image of Columbus with that of Akron, in the 1960s, “[Columbus was] very integrated. It wasn't segregated like it was in the 60s. But here in Akron in the 60s it wasn't that segregated, the gay bars.”132 This lack of racial segregation is very much in line with what John Howard discusses about the character of gay bars in smaller cities and towns, race was often less important than in other social spaces.133

Jeff Bixby recalled the 1970s with the most enthusiasm, perhaps because he was also in college and well connected to Kent State’s Gay Liberation Front,

I talk an awful lot these days about the importance of community and how we've lost that sense of community. Back then the only other place to meet other gay people were in the bars. That was the only place that you could pull you know you knew other gay people were there. That was it. So, there was a sense of community in that way. There was the bar community. I mean it wasn't until later that I, you know, I've always gotten myself involved in organizations and groups, you know, with gay rights but I don't think everybody did that. You know, I was unique in that way too. That. Yeah it was important for me not only to be gay but to fight for gay rights and to be a part of that movement. But not everybody did that. And that wasn't necessarily a part of the movement back then.134

131 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019. 132 Ibid. Jerry is specifically discussing racial segregation. He went on to note that gender segregation was very common, “They were from lesbians. They were not letting a lesbian…go…into a gay bar, and a gay guy couldn't go into a lesbian bar at that time.” 133 Howard, xxii-xxiii. 134 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018.

89

Jeff mentions that his experiences may be unique, however, the opportunities for more political involvement, and community involvement seem to have opened significantly in Akron during the 1970s. The cause of this shift is unclear, perhaps it was generational, spurred on by the

Stonewall riots and the activism they inspired in young queer people, or maybe the geographical changes happening in Akron’s LGBTQ+ community with the destruction of the older gay bars by the innerbelt provoked a reaction against having queer spaces destroyed. Such speculation is beyond the scope of this project but offers interesting avenues for future community research.

Much like the lesbian community, the gay community in Akron relied on three main types of communication networks. The locational network of bars, restaurants, and sports teams served purposes for the gay community that were similar to those that the lesbian community used them for. Jeff Bixby remembers that you could find information on parties at the bar, “You know, sometimes people would have parties. Christmas parties, you know, somebody would host a bunch of people at their place and then would all go out to the bar afterwards. There were people that I knew that had some parties but the party, party, aspect of it wasn't big for me.”135 A number of flyers, notices about upcoming events, and other items that flowed through the gay male distributive network in the bar scene have been preserved in ‘A History of Akron Gay

Life.’ From the Old Plantation’s 11pm Easter Egg Hunt the night before Easter Sunday, which promised “Eggs will have money & other surprises,” to Tear-EZ “Trash Gone Wild” Trailer

Trash Ball, to various drag shows and bands at the bars, the gay bars seem to have reinforced their own centrality in the community. 136

135 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018. 136 “A History of Gay Akron.”

90

Less important for gay male socialization, from my narrators’ perspectives, was meeting people outside of the bar. None recalled going to many house parties, if they attended any at all, and only Jerry Raker mentioned going to a sports league. The distributive materials that gay men used outside of bars also differed in nature from the lesbian community. Physique and other hobby magazines were used to convey desire, and there seems to have been no gay male equivalent to the Lesbian Connection. Even the connections sections of hobby magazines were used by the gay male community to convey desire and find sex, Jerry Raker recalled, “I knew a guy that was in, was called The Scene magazine. You ever heard of it? Scene Magazine, and he knew he was bisexual. But he was doing really prostitution out of the magazine. Not as an escort but as a masseuse. And possible escorting.”137 While the gay community seems to have become more like a community in the 1970s, it also seems that the focus of that community was still on sex and personal growth and fulfillment, rather than a larger sense of belonging.138

Finding Community

When I asked my narrators if they imagined a larger homosexual community beyond

Akron or Northeast Ohio, I got a variety of answers, from absolutely yes, to certainly not. Their experiences and paths in life seem to correlate with their perceptions of a larger homosexual community, however, participation in larger events did not necessarily make them feel that there was a larger community. Another notable trend was the time periods they thought of most when they considered this question. For those with more positive answers, they referred more consistently to the late 1970s, into the 1980s, and occasionally into the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century. Overall, however, the idea of a larger network of connected queer people was

137 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019. 138 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019.

91 something they associated with the present, rather than the past. For some this was technological, and they associated this larger queer network with the internet, chatrooms, electronic message boards, email, instant communication, and cell phones. They also associated this connectivity with youth, specifically today’s youth, and not always in a positive way. For others, the idea of a larger queer network in earlier decades was absurd because of the oppressive nature of society, and also because they were struggling with their own identities and attraction to others of the same sex.

Jeff Bixby was nearly the only narrator who imagined a larger community for LGBTQ+ people in the 1970s, and the scope of his vision was larger than any of the others. This was also fairly unsurprising after he related his extensive experiences being involved in gay political activism.139 With all of his connections, it is little wonder that he saw a national network, something, he admitted, that probably made him fairly unique. He summed up his thoughts saying:

You know, and always, if fear of what might happen keeps you from living your life that's a horrible way to go through life. I'm afraid of what might happen if I do this. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna, you know, I just never did that. Never thought about that. So, I just get by going along on my way doing what I was doing as if there was nothing wrong with it. No because there wasn't anything. So, you know I had that. I didn't have to learn that. That was set in my mind early because I had the love and support from my family. I had a good circle of friends. I had great role models. Everything was fine. I wanted for nothing. I didn't have bad experiences. So, I'm unique again in that way.140

139 Jeff had been member of the Gay Liberation Front in college, where he had first heard of the idea of a national movement in New York and San Francisco. As a teacher he had been heavily involved in his union and had eventually found himself on the Human Rights Committee for his local union, and then on the Ohio-level Human Rights Committee, which sent him to the National Federation of Teachers conventions every two years. He became the co-chair of the American Federation of Teachers Gay and Lesbian Caucus for twelve years. Additionally, this position got him involved in the Pride at Work board of the AFL-CIO. Jeff also helped produce a show on public access cable in the mid-1980s, as part of the Gay Cable Network, and his segment ‘This Week in Gay History’ became popular enough that it was broadcast nationally. In 1995 he became involved with GLSEN, a national organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ youth in schools, and present at conferences for educators about being out in the workplace. 140 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018.

92

Jeff’s perceptions more than any other narrator draw attention to the link between political activism and a larger imagined community. As with other LGBTQ+ activists, Jeff was keenly aware that a larger community could be built, and his work largely centered on bringing a national community together. Henry Goldring also saw connections nationally. He was not as politically involved as Jeff was, however, he did travel nationally and lived in both L.A. and

New York City throughout the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s. He remembered that his idea of a national community in the 1970s and 80s was, “Not like today but I just imagine there were pockets of more people like me. I hope there were. I hope that I wasn't alone. Yes, but not in how it's imagined today…. I envision that there would be a larger community but nothing, I had no idea today. I mean you even bring up what's a CD? It's read by a laser beam. That's like science fiction. Are you kidding me? But it's reality.”141 His disbelief and comparison to science fiction point to a skepticism about the very notion of a national community in the decades before the new millennium. Rosita too felt that a national sense of community, or at least the knowledge that others like her existed. “Oh yeah. I thought, I definitely, even, even when you first start going to bars and stuff like that you know that you're not the only gay bar in the whole world.

You know that's everywhere. And so, it's just like any type of group. As time goes on it can expand.”142 The optimism and insight of these narrators predicted the future of the LGBTQ+ community far more than they described the present in the 1970s, yet their imagined national community was indeed being brought into being, as Jeff Bixby’s experiences so clearly indicate.143

141 Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019. 142 Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018. 143 Jeff Bixby, interview by Max Monegan, Medina, Ohio, November 26, 2018; Henry Goldring, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 25, 2019; Rosita Estefan, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, November 15, 2018.

93

Other narrators were much more skeptical about the notion of a national community.

Interestingly, the women I interviewed, who seemed to have the most supportive community in

Northeast Ohio, were some of the most skeptical. Jill Shamp replied simply, “No. No. We were just identifying ourselves and identifying each other and trying to find each other. We didn’t imagine a community, much less a national one.”144 When I asked Kathy McGlone and Terry

Austin about national community, both reflected on the 1980s, seeing the AIDS quilt, going to various pride celebrations in big cities, vacationing in Provincetown, and other distinctly queer expeditions. However, when asked about those places connecting back to the community in

Akron, Kathy replied, “No. Not in a million years. They just seemed so distant. I mean we even went to Toronto for the , which was mostly men. And in the 80s and it just seemed like a world away. It just, I had no idea. You know that we're more connected than what we realized, but at the time it just seemed like different worlds. Totally different worlds.”145 In her own interview, Terry simply said, “No not really. No, a different world.”146 Jerry Raker was perhaps the most well-traveled of my narrators, having lived for a brief time in many different places as part of his job. Despite this, he probably experienced the weakest sense of a queer community.

He had meet gay men all over the country in the course of his work, but did not see connections between the communities in different places:

No, I didn't. I really didn't. And even when I traveled. I knew that you were either a lesbian or a gay guy. I didn't know about the and the LBG. Is that it? I didn't know anything about that. Because you know. I wasn't in connection with that type of organizations or groups. You know because I was, on a professional level, and I wasn't thinking about being gay or trying to pick someone up, so I didn't know anything about. You know I just knew what I was inside and when I was at home and what I would do when I was home. That's sad to say because you know I had all those chances to see what it was like in other places, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't. I couldn't teach you today

144 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018. 145 Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018. 146 Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018.

94

and ran into you at a gay bar tonight and then have you again tomorrow and you thought that since I saw [you] last night, I'm going to be better in class, because he saw me. And I can't do that.147 It is somewhat ironic that Jerry’s life, disconnected from a single local community, left him less able to imagine a national community. It is also unexpected, because he saw and articulated the similarities and differences between the various communities he visited, and his answers to the questions have led to more unanswered questions about community, belonging, and place than I began with.148

Jerry Shedley was also skeptical about the idea of a national community; however, he offered the greatest insight on the moment when Akron’s gay community and lesbian community came together.

Oh no. No, I probably I didn't imagine much of a connected community beyond a particular bar. You know, within Akron. Because you had people that maybe the social party or potlucks and that was their connection with each other. You had the ones at the bar you had the ones at the bathhouses and stuff but nationwide? Worldwide? No way. Nobody is going to venture out that way. Took a long time. Took a real long time. But I think, I think when it really changed was when the HIV epidemic hit. Because suddenly, at least here in Akron, I know it was because I was out by that time. But for the first-time people were banding together. They were going to attack this problem as a group. Not as individuals but as a group. And bless their little lesbian hearts. They're the ones who led the charge, initially and to the strongest. They're the ones who said all this dislike that usually gay men and lesbians have, seeming to have for each other, aside. And they're the ones that first threw their arms around the HIV person. And they're the first ones who set up outreach programs. In Akron here and there were some people that as much as you would love to just dislike the person, there was still that quality about 'em. And I'll use this person's name because [it’s] the last thing he cares about, he could care less. His name is Vince. A lot of people don't even know him. But, he's such a pain in the ass and he's so obnoxious and all these different things and people would say 'why, why do you even waste your time talking to that guy?' And I'll say, because, he was the first one in Akron who stood up on the corner

147 Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019. 148 Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018; Kathy McGlone, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Terry Austin, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 5, 2018; Jerry Raker, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, January 24, 2019.

95

of Grace Park and was passing out condoms and saying 'there is a disease out there. You've got to take care of yourself.' A lot of times, then he'd say, you know, ‘can I have a quarter for the condom?’ Yeah. But yet, he had to buy them somewhere and it wasn't like the Health Department was passing out condoms to him [for] free.149 Jerry described the end of an era in Akron’s gay community, and the beginning of a new one, demarcated by tragedy. Whether Jerry’s recollection of Akron’s lesbian and gay communities coming together in the face of AIDS is true elsewhere, other narrators saw its impact here. Jill

Shamp specifically cited AIDS as an event that brought the community together, because if lesbians and gay men were not going to help each other, nobody else would. The AIDS crisis ultimately began the process of forging a larger national community as local communities and organizations joined national efforts. This in turn led to the organizing and organizations that would lead the marriage equality battles of the 21st century. 150

Akron’s queer community underwent significant changes in the decades that followed

World War II. In the 1950s and 1960s, those changes were made in very personal ways. Gay men and Lesbians came to terms with their identities, often lacking guidance from an older generation of homosexuals. As the 1960s wore on the lesbian community seemed to come together around music, sports, festivals supporting women, bars, picnics, and house parties. The same could not be said for gay men, who remained isolated, anonymous, and seemed to socialize almost entirely around the bar scene in Akron. A decade later, the gay men of Akron would take tentative steps towards a more interconnected community, while the lesbian community maintained itself and grew its regional networks. Homosexual life, both lesbian and gay, became more visible in the 1970s, but from my narrators’ perspective, that visibility did not come from the Stonewall riots, but somewhere else. Was it a new generation of queer youth who had elders

149 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018. 150Jill Shamp, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, October 31, 2018. On the AIDS crisis see: Barry Adam’s The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement and David Eisenbach’s Gay Power: An American Revolution.

96 to look to for the first time? Was it linked to the other social protest movements of the decade?

Was it something of the zeitgeist of the 1970s more generally that rocked American culture and norms? My narrators did not have an answer. But it was clear something had changed. Despite these changes, the communities remained separate. Women and men either chose not to associate, or bars actively segregated the communities. It was not until the AIDS crisis that events brought the two communities together into the beginning of what would become Akron’s

LGBTQ+ community today.

97

Conclusion

Akron, and Northeast Ohio is a queer place. Never quite urban enough for people who like the big city, and not quite rural enough for those who want wide open spaces. Instead, it is distinctly small town in its composition - for the most part - except for several partially rusting, partially renewed, formerly industrial cities all within an hour of each other. Much like the ideas of rural and urban encounter difficulty when faced with the reality that is Northeast Ohio, so too does the queer community not quite fit any of the molds. While some of the narrators were bombastic in their demeanor, none quite lived up to the urban stereotype, perhaps with the exception of Henry Goldring. Equally, none of them found living in the countryside appealing.

Overall, they fit most comfortably in the in-between spaces: suburbs, urban fringes, or right off the highway with access to Akron, Cleveland, and wherever else they might wish to go. My narrators consistently offered me descriptions of people, places, tactics, locations, and themselves that matched with those in George Chauncy’s Gay New York and in Colin R.

Johnson’s Just Queer Folks. They described a pair of communities divided by desire, culture, custom, and norms that came together in the face of a crisis. Where the story goes from there, I do not know, but it would be nice if someone found out. If there is one thing my narrators expressed over and over, it was that the community today does not appreciate the community from the past, in a way not dissimilar to the way veterans of the black civil rights movement feel.

In part, the AIDS crisis is to blame for this. We lost our elders in numbers that young queer people today probably cannot understand, and their absence has led many queer folks who came of age after the height of the AIDS crisis to feel as if they are the elders in the community. And numerically, that’s not far from the truth. While AIDS rarely kills in the United States anymore, and the LGBTQ+ community continues to grow in numbers and visibility, we are still in danger of losing our past. Our school books do not speak to it, our culture does not accept it, and while

98 these things are changing by the time every LGBTQ+ child has the opportunity to know where they come from I fear that we will have lost the stories that link us to a past that goes far beyond isolation and the bars. If I had another year to work on this project, that is where I would research.

As I started this project, I wanted to answer several questions: what did it mean to thrive in northeast Ohio during this time? How does Akron’s community change the way we understand New York and San Francisco’s gay rights movements? How do these findings affect the larger narrative and debate of what it means to be LGBTQ+ in America today and if we re- imagine our past, how will it change our present, and what does that mean for the metrocentrism of LGBTQ+ culture today? The answers to these questions have proved elusive for a variety of reasons however they also shed light onto the early years of Akron’s LGBTQ+ community and offer additional directions for future research.

What did it mean to thrive in Northeast Ohio under the conditions that my narrators described? In retrospect, I should have asked my narrators directly. However, lacking that opportunity now, a few answers are apparent from their stories. First, to thrive was to find a community of friends you could be open with about who you were and who you could celebrate your successes and mourn your failures with. Perhaps that circle included lovers and family, but those were not mandatory. To thrive in this fashion was difficult, especially before 1970, however, some narrators clearly found joy in their lives because of the community they found.

Second, to thrive was to contribute. Jerry Shedley recalled hard work as one of the community’s core values, “I'd say hard work. This was a blue-collar town. If you were identified as a hard worker, a lot of times people didn't necessarily go beyond that. But if they judged you as maybe being lazy, or a burden to society. Or less than…. It perhaps was not pleasant from the standpoint

99 that many times you're just ostracized. ‘Awe don't waste your time with them.’”151 To contribute to Akron’s queer community might mean a number of things, from participating in sports or cultural events, to volunteering your time with political organizations or AIDS efforts, to warning the new kid in the gay bar about the people they should avoid.

How does the history of Akron’s community change the way we understand New York and San Francisco’s gay rights movements? The stories that my narrators shared with me made me question several assumptions about the importance of the Stonewall Riots, New York, and

San Francisco. First, the narrators directly asserted that they had not heard of Stonewall, often for months or years, until well after it had occurred. Further, those who had heard of it, claimed not to have understood its symbolic power or value until much later. Perhaps they were outliers, and their ignorance of the events of Stonewall and the shifts that they portended was not shared by the community at large. Regardless, around the same time Akron’s lesbian and gay communities were changing rapidly, becoming more visible in the bar scene, more vocal in their communities, and more prolific in organizing events, protests, and marches. My narrators also challenged my perceptions of the speed of information for this era, and the content that flowed through national networks. Who would want to hear about a bunch of queers rioting in New York on the six o’clock news? While the Stonewall riots remain a powerful symbol in the gay community today, an act of rebellion and of creation rolled into one, my narrators challenged the idea that the riots were responsible for the shifts that the homosexual community in Akron experienced. If this is the case, if other causes explain the changes in Akron’s queer communities that have been ignored because of the highly visible nature of the Stonewall Riots, it could change a great deal about the way the national LGBTQ+ community perceives itself – rather than being the after

151 Jerry Shedley, interview by Max Monegan, Akron, Ohio, December 12, 2018.

100 effect of the Stonewall Riots, perhaps other communities in small cities and towns also have longer histories to uncover . This avenue for inquiry, as briefly addressed elsewhere, posited three possible directions: a new generation of queer youth who had elders to look to for the first time, connections to the other social protest movements of the decade, or something of the zeitgeist of the 1970s more generally that rocked American culture and norms. The impact of queer youth today is discussed at length in Mary Gray’s Out in the Country, and points to the strong possibility of youth activism in the past, especially given the general state of youth unrest in the 1970s. The possible influence of other social protest movements as a source for queer inspiration should also not be over looked. As discussed elsewhere, LGBTQ+ people experienced activist action in relation to other parts of their identities, and an intersectional approach to understand how other forms of activism may have prompted queer activism could yield additional understanding to the motivations of queer communities in the 1970s and beyond.

These ideas have not been discussed in any depth in the literature and may point to additional avenues of inquiry to broaden the focus of the field.

How do these findings affect the larger narrative and debate of what it means to be

LGBTQ+ in America today? If we re-imagine our past, how will it change our present, and what does that mean for the metrocentrism of LGBTQ+ culture today? To use Wayne Brekhus’ terminology, the narrators were overwhelmingly ‘chameleons’ – people who adopted queer cultural norms in queer places and ‘straightened up’ when they were living their public lives elsewhere. This was not true for all narrators; Jeff Bixby certainly qualified as a ‘peacock’ – putting his gay identity front and center in his presentation of himself. Katherine Schweighofer and Christopher Stapel’s work on rejecting metronormative constructions of the closet and

101 queerness points to another direction of investigation, and different ways of constructing the idea of homosexual identity.

While the narrators often used metronormative constructions as a starting point to describe themselves and others, they also in many cases were reacting against those same stereotypes. Many of their comments about themselves showed that they rejected the pairing of gender-deviant behavior and homosexual desire that metronormative queer culture demands through the tropes of the limp wristed flamboyant gay man and the butch lesbian. These rigid constructions elide the possibility of non-metrocentric queer identity, and especially rural queer identity. Jerry Raker joined the Marines to show how manly he was, and strongly associated his identity with masculinity, but also with loving men. Urban queer culture has become deeply entrenched in the social construction of LGBTQ+ identities, and significant work in a variety of fields would need to be done to challenge its hegemonic character. However, a more inclusive understanding of LGBTQ+ identity may open new avenues to acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, especially in locations where gender conformity is valued. As my student reminded me, many LGBTQ+ kids do not see themselves reflected in the heroes and heroines of the

Mattachine Society, the , and Stonewall. Conforming to gender norms, traditional interpretations of masculinity and femininity, and the idea of fitting into a community remain the core values of small towns, and given that queer youth today are presented almost exclusively with metronormative queer culture to tell them who they are, it is no wonder they continue to feel alienated at home, and that resistance to urban queerness remains high. If Wayne

Brekhus is correct, small town kids need more centaurs to look up to, rather than more peacocks, and the queer community needs to work towards a broader understanding of what it means to be queer so that we can continue to change hearts and minds towards acceptance.

102

Sources Consulted

Beemyn, Brett, ed. Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories. (New York: Routledge, 1997).

Berube, Allan, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: The Free Press, 1990).

Boag, Peter. Same Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

Brekhus, Wayne. Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Charlton, Thomas L., Myers, Lois E., Sharpless, Rebecca. History of Oral History: Foundations and Methodology. (AltaMira Press, Lanham, New York, Toronto, Plymouth, UK, 2007).

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay World 1890-1940, (New York Basic Books, 1994).

DeBlasio, Donna M., Ganzert, Charles F., Mould, David H., Paschen, Stephen H., and Sacks, Howard L. Catching Stories: A Practical Guide to Oral History. (Swallow Press, Athens, OH, 2009).

D’Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940-1970, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983).

D’Emilio, John, and Freedman, Estelle B. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 3rd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Eisenbach, David. Gay Power: An American Revolution, (New York: Carroll + Graff Publishing, 2006).

Fellows, Will. ed., Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998).

Frazier, Nishani. Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism. (The University of Arkansas Press: Fayetteville, 2017).

Frisch, Michael. A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. (State University of New York Press, NY, 1990).

Gray, Mary L. Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

103

Gray, Mary L., Johnson, Colin R., and Gilley, Brian J. ed., Queering the Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies, (New York: New York University Press, 2016).

Hall, Simon. “Protest Movements in the 1970s: The Long 1960s” Journal of Contemporary History 43 no.4 (October 2008): 655-672. Accessed February 27, 2019. DOI: 10.1177/0022009408095421

Howard, John. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Johnson, Colin R. Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013).

Kerr, Daniel R. Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio. (University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst and Boston, 2011).

Kunzel, Regina. “The Power of Queer History” The American Historical Review 123 no.5 (December 2018): 1560-1582. Accessed March 6, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy202

Lauck, Jon K. The Lost Region: Towards a Revival of Midwestern History, (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013).

Lauck, Jon K. From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017).

Love, Steve and Giffels, David. Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron. (The University of Akron Press: Akron, Ohio, 1999).

Mason, Carol. Oklahomo: Lessons in Unqueering America. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015).

Meeker, Martin. Contacts Desired, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Rupp, Leila J. “What’s Queer Got to do with it?” Reviews in American History 38 no. 2 (2010):189-198. Accessed March 6, 2019. https://www-jstor- org.proxy.library.kent.edu/stable/40865341

Schweighofer, Katherine. ‘Rethinking the Closet: Queer Life in Rural Geographies’ in Studies in Urbanormativity: Rural Community in Urban Society, ed. Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas (Lanham: Lexington Books. 2014).

Shortridge, James R. The Middle West: Its Meaning in American Culture. (University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, 1989).

104

Souther, J. Mark. Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation.” (Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 2017).

Stapel, Christopher J. “‘Fagging’ the Countryside? (De) ‘Queering’ Rural Queer Studies,” in Studies in Urbanormativity: Rural Community in Urban Society, ed. Gregory M. Fulkerson and Alexander R. Thomas (Lanham: Lexington Books. 2014).

Stradling, David and Stradling, Richard. Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland. (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 2015).

Sull, Donald N. “The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire & Rubber and the Radial Revolution” The Business History Review 73 no.3 (Autumn 1999): 430-464. Accessed March 12, 2019. DOI: 10.2307/3116183

Thompson, Brock. The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2010).

Weston, Kath. “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration” GLQ 2, no. 3 (1995): 253-277. Accessed February 18, 2019. doi: https://doi- org.proxy.library.kent.edu/10.1215/10642684-2-3-253

Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 3rd ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York, London, 2015).

105

Appendix A: Conversation Guide

Section I. Biographical. In this section we want to know basic biographical information to create an accurate portrait of your life experience.

What is your gender, ethnicity, race, and age?

When and where we you born?

What was the extent of your education to this point?

What occupations have you had?

Were you ever married, and when?

Did you ever have any children? When were they born?

Section II.A As this concerns the person’s experiences during the 1940s - 1960s, and especially their understanding and recall of Akron and the gay community, these questions will establish the context for their recollections – what they recall and how they view the past and their role in it.

Where did you live during the period 1945 – 1969?

What do you remember most about the period between 1945 and 1969?

What would you consider being your fondest memory of the period?

What stands out as the most troubling thing you can recall about the period?

(If a woman) Describe for me what it was like being a (young – if they were) woman during this time period.

(If a man) Describe for me what it was like being a (young – if they were) man during this time period?

(If African American or other person of color) Describe for me what it was like being a person of color at this time?

What word or phrase would you have used to describe your sexual orientation at the time?

When did you first realize that you were were (answer from last question), how did that realization effect you?

Describe for me generally what it was like being a(n) (answer from orientation question) at the time?

Section II.B As this concerns the person’s experiences during the 1970s - 1980s, and especially their understanding and recall of Akron and the gay community, these questions will establish the context for their recollections – what they recall and how they view the past and their role in it.

106

Where did you live during the period 1970 – 1989?

What do you remember most about the period between 1970 and 1989?

What would you consider being your fondest memory of the period?

What stands out as the most troubling thing you can recall about the period?

(If a woman) Describe for me what it was like being a (young – if they were) woman during this time period.

(If a man) Describe for me what it was like being a (young – if they were) man during this time period?

(If African American or other person of color) Describe for me what it was like being a person of color at this time?

What word or phrase would you have used to describe your sexual orientation at the time?

When did you first realize that you were were (answer from last question), how did that realization effect you?

Describe for me generally what it was like being a(n) (answer from orientation question) at the time?

Section III. Specifics of the LGBTQ+ community in and around Akron.

When did you move to the greater Akron area, why?

How would you describe the LGBTQ+ community in and around Akron, generally?

Did you live in the city itself, the surrounding cities like stow & Cuyahoga Falls or in the surrounding rural areas?

City / surrounding suburbs

Thinking about your time in Akron, what was it like to be (orientation) in urban or suburban places?

What were your perceptions of non-urban places, as an (orientation)?

Did you know anyone who lived outside of the city?

Do you recall anything they said about their experiences in rural areas?

Did you see them frequently in the city, or only occasionally?

Do you recall how far they might have traveled?

Do you recall if they have any meeting places, or ways of staying in touch outside of the city?

107

Non-Urban Places

Thinking about your time living near Akron, what was it like to be (orientation) in a non-urban place?

What were your perceptions of urban places, as an (orientation)?

Did you go to Akron, or another city, frequently or only occasionally?

About how far did you travel, or how long did it take you to get to the city? What kind of transportation did you use?

How would you describe your non-urban community generally?

How would you describe the rural LGBTQ+ community?

Back to Everyone

How would you describe your connection to the LGBTQ+ community during that time?

What would you say were the values of the community?

What did the community value?

Where did people in the community congregate, especially outside of the bar scene?

How did homosexual people know where they could meet each other?

How did people in the community communicate or stay in touch?

What common signs and signals indicated that a location was a gathering point for the community?

How did LGBTQ+ people identify each other?

Did you imagine a larger lgbtq+ community beyond the Akron area? If so, how would you describe it?

Did you, or anyone you know, ever use the personal ad or connection section of a hobby magazine, travel guide or similar publication?

Why did you or they choose to use that service?

Was it successful in putting you or them in contact with other members of the LGBTQ+ community?

Did you or they establish long term relationships with anyone through the service, romantic or otherwise?

Did you or they save any of the correspondence you had with anyone, regardless of whether or not you met them, or even wrote them back.

108

Appendix B: Northeast Ohio Map

109

Appendix C: Notes on Northeast Ohio Bars

Sites in NE Ohio D = Listed in Dameron Guides, G = Listed in Gold, ⊘/✔️ Akron City Directory, ✅A History of Akron Gay Life

Sample: 1. Name - City, Address, D or G, ✅(years from Akron Gay Life) a. ⊘Years not found b. Listed owner in Akron City Directory i. ✔️Years found under owner c. Second owner .✔️Years found under owner

Akron-Canton a. Bars i. Akron Cafe - Akron, 532 E. Market, 1965 - 1980 1. Anthony F Granata, after Lincoln is closed ii. Beef Eater - Akron, 53 Mill St. ✅1968-1973 1. Michael Greenburg iii. Becomes Mother’s - Akron, 53 E. Mill St; D1970, ✅1974 1. ⊘60-69 iv. Beer Barrel - Akron, 399 E Cuyahoga Falls Ave ✅1954-1959 v. Cadillac Cafe - Akron, 46 S Howard; D1965-68, ✅1954-59 1. Spiro Astaroff, Theodore Nukes, Matthew Kotney • ✔️56-57 2. Theodore Nukes, S.E. Atsaroff • ✔️58-59 3. Theodore Nukes, Mrs. Helen Miller • ✔️60-63 4. Theodore Nukes, Nick Lardakis • ✔️64-65 5. ⊘66-69 vi. Chat Noir - Akron, 46 E. Market, ✅1969-77 1. Raymond Memer 2. Abe Katz purchases in 1970 vii. Eli’s - Akron, 15 S. Howard, ✅1960-67 viii. The Hayloft - Akron, 77 Adams Street, G, ✅1976-79 1. Becomes Adams Street Bar ix. Hi-Hat - Akron, 31 N. Howard, ✅1960-67 x. Lincoln Bar - Akron, 28 S Howard; D1965-68, ✅1948-65 (13 S. Howard in AGL) 1. Molly Illitch (mgr.) • ✔️56-57

110

2. Molly Illitch, Chas Nakos • ✔️58-59 3. Molly Ilitch, Mrs. Carolyn V Nakos • ✔️1960-61 4. A F Granata • ✔️62-67 5. ⊘68-69 - Closed Due to urban renewal rt 59 xi. Various - Akron, 1339½ E. Market 1. The Dugout ✅1965-66 2. Market Cafe - Akron, J.D. Tappan; D1970, ✅1967-70 • ✔️68-69 xii. The Old Plantation - Akron, 417 Kenmore Blvd. G, ✅1979-82 xiii. Rene’s - Akron, D1965-68 Marne Hotel, ✅1966-67 1 N. Main St. xiv. The Marne Hotel - 281 S. Main 1. ⊘60-61 2. J E Strain, “Marne’s Bar” • ✔️62-63 3. C Ferrell • ✔️64-65 4. ⊘66-67 - No Marne Hotel listed xv. Rene’s 1 N. Main St ✅1966-67 1. Anthony Gesier xvi. Becomes Moulin Rouge - Akron, 1 N. Main St. D1970, ✅1968-71 1. ⊘60-67 2. G. N. Malek • ✔️68-69 xvii. Robin Hood - Akron, 83 Exchange; D1965-68 1. ⊘60-69 xviii. Robinhood Grille 837 W. Exchange; D1970, ✅1962-65 Robinhood Lounge in AGL 1. Gus Fakos, John Lucas • ✔️56-59 2. Nathan &. Thos Maroon • ✔️60-63 3. Joseph Braunstin • ✔️64-69 xix. The Sahara - Akron 990 E. Market, G, ✅1979 xx. Satan’s Den - Akron, 351 W. Market G, ✅1974-5, 1976-85 xxi. Stage Coach Inn, 259 E. Market - Akron G, ✅1978-80 xxii. The Village - Akron, 549 W Market, ✅1969 xxiii. Mustanger - Canton, D1970 xxiv. Boobies Why Not Club - Canton G xxv. Tiki - Canton, 606 NW 12th St D1965-70

111

xxvi. Old Flame - Canton, 131 (Tuscargas/Tusgaras in Dameron, but I assume they mean Tuscarawas); D1965-66 xxvii. The Scorpio Club - Canton G xxviii. The 540 Club - Canton G xxix. The Dining Car - Canton G b. Baths i. Akron Steam and Sauna - Akron G 1. ⊘60-67 2. 5 N. Martha avenue. • ✔️68-69 ii. Club Akron - Akron G 1. ⊘60-69 c. Theaters i. The Astor Theater in Akron Ohio 131 S. Main Street, ✅ 1. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/147226751/ 2. ⊘60-61 3. Aaron Moses • ✔️62-69 @ 281 S. Main ii. The Main Theater d. Bookstores i. Avenue Bookstore in Tallmadge Ohio G 1. ⊘60-69 ii. Studio Books in Akron G 1. ⊘60-69 e. Gay friendly Churches i. Akron Metropolitan Christian Church - Akron, 3300 Morewood. G, ✅1979- present (2009) 1. Rev Stan Roberts, Troy Perry ii. Cascade Community Church - Akron, See a. G, ✅1978-present (2009) 1. 131 S. Main➡️ 241 Wheeler➡️ 356 S. Main➡️ 475 W. Market➡️ 1190/1196 Inman St 2. Rev C. Shawn Farrell 1978-82, Leo Wenneman 1982, Karl A Sefman 1982-present (2009) f. Cruising Locations i. Grace Park - Akron, ✅1950 - 1980

2. Youngstown-Warren a. Bars i. Ann’s Bar - Warren, 126 Pine SE; GD 1965-70 ii. Cosmic Dreams - Youngstown G iii. Troubadour Lounge - Youngstown G iv. American Club - Youngstown, US Hwy 422 b/w Youngstown and Girard; D1965-70 v. Sokol Club - Youngstown, 912 Hillman D1965-70 b. Theaters i. The Gay 90s Club in Youngstown Ohio G

112