Torchbearers and Front Runners: The Daughters of Bilitis and Women’s Rights

Torchbearers and front runners: the daughters of bilitis and women’s rights

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of History
Murray State University Murray, Kentucky
In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History
By Lyn D. Franks
October 2, 2011

Abstract

Postwar America rode the tide of victory into a time of peace, prosperity and patriotism during the second half of the twentieth century. Suburban affluence and new technologies held the promise of peace and stability for families set in a patriarchal mold. However, two World Wars had opened doors for feminine self-fulfillment outside the family home. Through the doors women had entered, they now found themselves ushered out. The reason for this shift became clear. Men who returned from the war needed work and families needed mothers at home. Furthermore, cold war politics fed on this rubric.

However, suburban affluence and structure did not begin to address lost autonomy found in a paycheck. Additionally, the single woman became a pariah in society among the married, as lesbianism usually was a suspected factor. This too became another political weapon for cold war politics. Yet, because of wartime autonomy and the progressive political ideologies touted in the first half of the twentieth century, a Pandora’s Box that contained the seeds of second wave feminism remained partial ajar.

Six years prior the publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystic, in 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) began a small lesbian club in San Francisco for the expressed purpose of creating a safe social space. This club branched quickly and spread to other cities. These nascent social clubs became increasingly proactive towards lesbian and women’s rights. By the mid 1970s, two southern DOB clubs arose (one in Tampa and the other in New Orleans) while the central organization slowly crumbled. Meanwhile, the New Orleans DOB club grabbed the falling torch of feminism, lesbian and gay rights and continued running with this torch well into the Reagan years and through the rise of the new conservative religious right.

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

Today’s psychologists and sociologists affirm that one in ten individuals identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or queer (LGBTQ). As in our modern world, this phenomenon holds true throughout recorded history. Terms such as “gay” and “out of the closet” were not in use during the mid-nineteenth century, although, “Nancy” was a common term for effeminate men, usually (but not always), used in connection with the homosexual male. Lacking a term for transsexuals during this same era, anatomical women, who possessed a male sexual identity, happily passed as men during the Civil War without needing label affirmation. In the early part of the twentieth century, the term “invert” was used as an umbrella to describe LGBTQ men and women. The term “lesbian” did not find wide use until the lesbian feminist era of the 1960s and 1970s. Connecting important points, ideas, and people throughout first and second wave feminism holds the key to understanding the feminist-lesbian struggle of the late twentieth century in the United States.

The term “lesbian”, rooted in Greek literature, comes from the Greek Island of Lesbos, where the poet Sappho lived circa 600 B.C. Sappho, an intellectual, instructor and poet, wrote love poems to other women. Religious fundamentalists, over the millennia, have destroyed much of her poetry. The few poems of Sappho that remain speak clearly to her love and infatuation with women. The term lesbian came into use in nineteenth century France, when “lesbianism” and cross-dressing became fashionable in elitist feminine circles. The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) penned a poem about lesbian intimacy between Delphine and Hippolyta in his work “Femmes Damées” (“Damned Women”). Baudelaire entitled another of his poems “Lesbos” which he published in 1857. In this work Baudelaire refers to “virile Sappho, the lover and poet.”

Late nineteenth century Paris saw a Lesbian revival. The penal code of 1791 and the Code Napoleon which followed had decriminalized homosexuality. Lesbianism, cross-dressing and androgynous style became fashionable. Upper class lesbianism, viewed much differently than male homosexuality, thrived. Known as the “Belle Époque,” this era, known for its relaxed ethics, allowed aged duchesses and rich elite women to wear male attire to Parisian salons. Overtly worn male attire could be subject to harassment by Paris prefect of police. However, under the cover of a cloak and worn on private property, Parisian society willingly overlooked this trend. However, sexual identity had not yet been explored nor understood. Heterosexual relationship with marriage as the natural end was the normative expectation.

In this relaxed moral climate, the city of Paris experienced a “beautiful era” or the era of the “Belle Époque.” Androgyny became a fashion statement within high society salons. Homosexual men attended these affairs in drag complete with wigs and rouge while lesbians wore tuxedos sporting monocles in front pockets. A revival of Greek literature accompanied this phenomenon. The recent discovery of original Sapphic writings in 1879 brought a resurgence of lesbian literature to the Parisian forefront. French writers and poets had recently laid the groundwork for this revival. Some of these writers, besides Baudelaire, included Gautier, and Verlaine. During this time of lesbian elevation, Pierre Louÿs published Songs of Bilitis in 1894. Louÿs claimed he had discovered the writings of the Greek poet Bilitis whom he claimed was a contemporary of Sappho. Louÿs book, an incredibly successful hoax, included an impressive fake bibliography. However, his book allowed for limited publication. The original English publication became available in 1926. By 1955, the “Front Runners and Torch Bearers” who are the topic of this paper, had adopted the name Bilitis as part of their official name.

These writers, all who were male, contributed, through their efforts, to a sense of classical affirmation within the lesbian community. In turn, lesbian literature written by lesbians began to flourish. The Belle Époque continued well into the twentieth century and lesbian literature continued to flow not only through lesbian French writers, but also through American lesbian expatriates who migrated into this community. Some of these American writers included Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein. Many of these expatriates sought an independent Bohemian lifestyle which Paris offered. Together, these women lived an empowering lifestyle benefiting both alternative sexuality and individualist feminism.

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century Paris serves as a turning point for lesbianism and feminism. Feminist individualism, at the very least, semi-free from patriarchal control, saw advancement in feminine autonomy throughout the Belle Époque. By the 1920s, Sylvia Beach wrote if “inverted couples could be united at the altar, all their problems would be solved.”

Ahead of her time, Beach was one of the few women to consider same-sex marriage. American women had received suffrage rights only in the same year. In the previous century, two types of feminism fought side by side for women’s rights. The first type was a “community feminism” which fought for women’s rights for the good of society and family. This type of feminism played upon the elevation of family, motherhood and womanhood in order to receive equal rights. Women, the argument went, needed the vote to counter the corrupt male influence of politics. The woman was the guardian of the family and would act on behalf of her children and societal good. The second type of feminism was an “individualist feminism” which looked to the elevation of personal female interest. Community feminism fit into a patriarchal system to one degree or another. A “Community Feminist” may have worked outside the home, but her family and husband still took precedence over any personal ambitions. As this paper will show, by the 1960s and 1970s these two views came into direct conflict as they merged closer together in the struggle for equal rights.

Concern over equal rights for women began at the same time as pronouncements of natural rights emerged form the Enlightenment period. The Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man, began the nascent question of women’s equality with that of men and their role in society. Abigail Adams, wife of the second president, John Adams, reminded her husband and others involved in early American politics who were participating in the Continental Congress to “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” Adams, understanding the recent struggle from monarchal hierarchy through the Revolutionary War, also understood the female struggle of patriarchal hierarchy. Adams also said, “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

Abigail’s son, sixth president John Quincy Adams and later a member of the House of Representatives, worked ardently against slavery. Adams, during his time in the House, worked with abolitionist Theodore Weld, husband of activist Angelina Grimké. One can easily speculate that Adams (with mother Abigail’s influence and Weld’s beliefs concerning women’s rights) may have been effected by these feminist views. Angelina and her sister Sarah Grimké were abolitionists and were early active first wave feminists. Sarah Grimké held to individualist feminism. Her feminist involvement includes the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention. Angelina struggled with the idea of community feminism holding onto individual feminism in particular aspects of marriage which proved difficult for her such as pregnancy and marital sex.

The Grimké sisters represented the older generation among the new generation of rising feminists. Included in this younger generation were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. Contemporaries with the Grimkés, they not only worked and learned from them, but also led the way as front-runners and torchbearers in the fight for suffrage, temperance and the betterment of society into the latter half of the nineteenth century and a few of this generation remained active into the twentieth century. In the middle of this battle stood the majority of women fighting for rights within the established family and community. Few women battled (as the futuristic Grimké Sisters had) for radical feminine autonomy and individualism.

Many activists from this new generation lived and campaigned for women into the twentieth century. At the end of the Civil War and the disappointing exclusion of female suffrage in the Fourteenth Amendment, many women took an active role through women’s clubs and organizations continuing in their struggle for the next 55 years. However, during the Civil War, many women found their way as individualist feminists as the war gave opportunity for newfound expression for heterosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals.

Scholars estimate that approximately 400 identifiable women fought in the Civil War under the guise of male identity. Women served during the Civil War in different capacities and for various reasons. Some women, such as nurse Clara Barton, served for what were clearly altruistic motives while others joined up for patriotic reasons such as those services requiring espionage. Others enlisted with lovers, beaus or husbands. Many scholars attribute women enlistment (under male aliases) to those seeking adventure, economic freedom and those desiring male white privilege. While these factors are plausible incentives for service, unanswered questions concerning deeper motivation lay on the table. The fact remains that most women of the war era did not participate nor serve in the war nor dare to dress in male clothing. Those that did dare to do so came from a different place of self-identity. Civil War Union veteran Albert D. J. Cashier known earlier in life as Jennie Hodgers and Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Private Lyons Wakeman, are two well-known examples of this phenomenon. Some who continued to live as male long after the war were probably by nature transgender. These soldier citizens did not necessarily work as activist feminists in the same role as Susan B. Anthony, but they were important because of their individualist queer lifestyle and female autonomy.

Contemporary with the older Civil War generation, (Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the aging Grimké sisters) a new generation emerged who would see the Nineteenth Amendment reach fruition in 1920. This younger generation continued to form women’s clubs and organizations affecting political and social change. Jane Addams is an important feminist among the feminists of this younger generation.

Born at the start of the Civil War, Jane Addams received the Nobel Peace prize in 1931 for her 20 years of work at the Hull-House. Addams died just four years later in 1935. Post suffrage activists, like Addams, began to use their new political empowerment to affect societal change. The Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago’s West Side slum area, took in immigrant settlers, sweatshop workers, pregnant single women, the unemployed and indigent. Addams worked with this population to bring about personal improvement for each resident.

Other progressive activists, contemporary with Addams, worked for improving similar conditions but emphasized individual causes such as labor unions and temperance. Socialism became an attractive alternative for many feminists seeking equality for all in society. Most socialists including St. Simon, Fourier, Marx and Engels were feminists, believing that all people must be considered equal. Marx believed that, “Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.”

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, homosexual communities found homes in most of the major American cities. For the purpose of this paper, Los Angeles provides a typical, yet (under the shadow of Hollywood) a not so typical venue for study. However, Hollywood came under constant public scrutiny because of its intense glamour, liberal politics and libertine morality, Los Angeles and California in general, created a culture-climate for the upcoming first generation of Torch Bearers and Front Runners of the mid-1950s. Glamour androgyny, sexual flexibility and discourse on communism and socialism caused an alarm among right-wing religious conservatives. Heavy handed police tactics were employed against many of Hollywood’s workforce.

California gave women the right to vote eight years before the Nineteenth Amendment had taken effect. Antisuffragists characterized suffragists as “unfeminine and sexual freaks.” A particular antisuffragist was quoted as saying, “Woman suffrage should be defeated because it tends to unsex society’ while another insisted, “Politics is a realm unsuited to the normal woman.” The following decades proved to conservative society that voting and political involvement had ruined womanhood, at least in California. All one had to do was to read the Hollywood tabloids, replete with stories of decadent progressive behavior among starlets who set a bad example for the Californian female population.

Church groups and women’s clubs continued to fight a slow losing battle against Hollywood culture. Gay director George Cukor named the late 1920s and early 1930s Hollywood’s “Belle Époque.” However, as the 1930s Depression set in, sexual freedom went underground in the “speakeasy culture.” Hollywood excesses became less tolerable during this time. The queering of the Prohibition culture, kept many of these speakeasies in business long after Prohibition’s end in 1933. Post-Prohibition nightclubs became a haven for Hollywood gays, straights, and the “sexually flexible.” Marlene Dietrich, William Haines, James Cagney, Fifi Dorsay and Mae West were a few Hollywood notables who gathered at these post-Prohibition nightclubs where gay entertainment was an evening staple.

Why were so many actresses bisexual or lesbian during this Hollywood era? Lillian Faderman, in her book Gay in L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians argues that many of the women who chose an acting career were already considered odd. They had already thrown off societal expectations of marriage, motherhood and housewife by embracing a career that required in-depth training. Those who embraced this ambitious bohemian lifestyle were seen as having masculine traits. Whether lesbian or straight these women were strong individualist feminists seeking their way in the world.

After a national Catholic boycott against the movie industry began in the mid-1930s, Cardinal William O’Connell, the archbishop of Boston, spoke out against human sexuality, but in particular homosexuality. In a speech to a Congress of Catholic Women the Cardinal said, “Just as there is something queer in being an effeminate man, it is equally queer to find a mannish woman. There is something abnormal in a woman attempting to dress in men’s clothes.” He concluded his speech by saying that the “modern pagan ideas [in the movies] shattered the ideal…that women’s first and principal place is in the home.”

Throughout the 1940s and World War II, these conservative pronouncements continued and the L.A. gay community retreated deeper into the Hollywood closet. Those who freely talked about gay private parties in the Hollywood scene lost jobs and opportunities quickly as Hollywood moguls scrambled to protect their industry. In the following decade and in this California climate, five women met and discussed starting a club. These women, during the McCarthy era, went against the grain of women returning home as homemakers after working during the war and lit the way for the future individual feminist of the late-1960s and 1970s. These five women never considered themselves Front Runners and Torchbearers for feminists or for lesbians let alone as leaders who paved the way for gay rights. The first and only goal for the nascent club was to provide a refuge for friendship and safety for its members. However, do not all great revolutions for change begin with camaraderie and protection?

Chapter 2: Historiography of the Daughters of Bilitis

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer studies have seen a surge in research and literature within the last decade. However, after the renaissance of gay literature during the height of the Belle Époque in Paris, and subsequent decline during the postwar periods as in the United States, organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) became publishers for various literary works, psychological and religious research, and other publications. However, most literature during the Belle Époque continuing through the early 1970s tended to be niche genre rather than mainstream. This is not to say that DOB literature became widely accepted, but rather DOB materials influenced wider cultural change than the writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century periods.

The Ladder, a monthly periodical published first in October 1956, continued publishing through August/September 1972. These periodicals contained short stories, articles, poetry, event announcements, photographs of gay-lesbian events along with reader feedback and contributions. However, by the summer of 1970, The Ladder no longer published in San Francisco. Hijacked to Nevada without support from all DOB leadership, the publication began a decline. By 1975, the DOB realized that retrieving the stolen Ladder from Nevada was no longer a viable goal. Barbara Grier, using the alias “Gene Damon” delivered a complete set of The Ladder to the Arno press in that same year. Sixteen years of editions became sixteen bound volumes. Grier wrote the introduction for these tomes. Jonathan Ned Katz of the Arno Press, a pioneer gay historian, acted as editor. Katz, author of Gay American History and Gay and Lesbian Almanac, included the DOB publications as part of the Arno Press series, Homosexuality, Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History and Literature.

Other DOB publications included the occasional pamphlet. As early as 1957, the nascent club began a statistical survey on homosexuality, becoming one of the first serious attempts on the topic. The pamphlet, Daughters of Bilitis Reveals Some Facts about Lesbians and Some Comparisons between Male and Female Homosexuals, Questionnaire Results, compared heterosexual and homosexual populations on subjects concerning education, career choices, income, social class and religion. The survey results, compiled into statistical charts, diagrams and tables, revealed equally normative lifestyles between the heterosexual and homosexual populations. Gender differences between males and females in areas of income and career availability ran concurrent with heterosexual trends.

Other primary sources from local DOB clubs are available in the form of newsletters and handbills that covered DOB sponsored events. Most of these newsletters and a few short monthly periodicals, published in the early 1970s, include the New Orleans Chapter’s Gay-LA: D.O.B. Newsletter. The contents of the July/August 1975 issue, discussed in this paper, represent commonalities found in other chapter publications. The Dallas DOB chapter also published a newsletter in the early 1970s. This newsletter preceded the Dallas Chapter’s publication of their DOB’R, another newsletter. Philadelphia and New York formed two of the earlier satellite DOB clubs in the 1960s, both producing local newsletters in the same decade. Only a few copies of these surviving newsletters are currently available for examination.

Additionally, other large city clubs elected to publish pamphlets and small magazine type periodicals. These clubs published during the first half of the 1970s as well. The short-lived Tampa DOB published briefly in the mid-1970s. This paper examines the Tampa DOB’s first publication of Daughters, A DOB Publication, A Lesbian Magazine, volume I, number I dated July 1975. The New Orleans DOB chapter published a newsletter approximately at the same time as the Tampa chapter published its first magazine. Both periodicals present similar articles of interest. This paper discusses both publications in Chapter 4, as Tampa and New Orleans present a unique regional perspective to the Daughters organization.

Other DOB clubs publishing magazines in the first half of the 1970s included the Boston DOB, which first published its bimonthly periodical, Focus in 1971 and continued publishing into the 1980s. One of the first local clubs formed from the central organization of the Daughters of Bilitis located in San Francisco emerged from San Francisco. This organization published their magazine, Sisters, from 1970-1975. In New Jersey, another early forming DOB club, published Lazette from 1971-1975. In keeping with the central organization in San Francisco, these clubs adopted the same themes and published articles closely related to those found in the national publication, The Ladder. These themes included feminism, gay rights, social events, literature, book reviews and social-psychological research on homosexuality. These themes, originating from the first club of the late 1950s and early 1960s, carried importance throughout the successive two decades as they continued the earlier work of the first club. This cohesiveness is amazing considering that the dissolution of the central organization had occurred while some of the nascent clubs began production and distribution of their newsletters and periodicals especially those originating from the southern clubs. A few copies of letters acquired from the LGBT Historical society in San Francisco are included as primary source documents relating to the New Orleans and Tampa DOB clubs. These communications, found in the Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin papers, document club business and foundational information between the acting leadership of the two southern clubs and Lyon and Martin.

Before the larger explosion of satellite DOB clubs, with their accompanying publications and interest in feminism, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Meanwhile, The Ladder had been publishing individualist feminist articles for the past seven years. Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystic to challenge the status quo role of homemaker and mother. The “mystique” Friedan questioned was the unspoken dissatisfaction felt by most women of her era. This ‘mystique,” or the mystery of the sacred female in nature, allows womanhood special elevation without male privilege and rights. Friedan described this “mystique” as confining, demeaning and limiting. In her book, she views this “mystic” as a systematic design intended to keep women from developing their full human potential. According to Friedan, under this system, women live lives that prevent knowing who they really are. Under the “feminine mystique,” women are valued for their femininity, sexual passivity, submission to male authority and nurturing nature rather than for their abilities to excel in areas outside these domains.

Friedan, a community feminist, did not intend to subvert the family. She believed that women’s liberation, gained while juggling children, husband and career, was most desirable. She considered most lesbian women to be men-haters who eschewed husband and children for career an independent lifestyle. A dilemma brewed. Single women wanted an opportunity for self-actualization and yet they did not fit into Friedan’s framework. Some women agreed with Friedan’s assessment concerning women and the feminine mystique but framed it differently. Enter, the Daughters of Bilitis.

The Daughter’s of Bilitis originally formed their group in 1955 to provide a safe social outlet for like-minded lesbians. These single young women were employed and acutely aware of discrimination in the work place. Discrimination in the work place was one thing, however; possible arrest and hostility over sexual orientation was quite another. In the late 1950s, the lesbian priority was to create a safe space for lesbian expression. Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique in answer to the question of expanding female roles outside the home. Heterosexual feminine expression within the family circle never left its elevated position. Lesbian expression deviated from normative feminine expectation and expression. At best, lesbians, perceived as individualist feminists, found limited welcome by some heterosexual feminists. Nevertheless, as the DOB found safe space and as their membership increased, the rights of women became a natural concern.

In 1963, Friedan did not perceive lesbians as possible allies let alone the frontrunners and torchbearers for early second wave feminism. While the reactionary policies of the postwar McCarthy era helped cultivate the era’s own demise, a new environment conducive to creating The Feminine Mystique arose. Lesbians had long understood that a suburban lifestyle with modern appliances did not insure a satisfied life, although postwar society assured women that this lifestyle held their highest good. The lesbian need to self-support and her degrees of felt societal isolation made this truth self-evident. Nevertheless, Friedan viewed lesbianism (and male homosexuality) as an aberrant behavior.

Friedan’s perception of homosexuality as deviant behavior came from the sexual psychological theories of the 1940s and 1950s and her own ideas concerning the feminine mystique. Many psychologists and psychiatrists believed until as late as 1973, (when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of mental illness) that homosexuals were defective and dysfunctional individuals. This belief, mixed with Friedan’s idea that homosexual girls and boys are victims of the feminine mystique, kept Friedan from welcoming lesbians later into The National Organization of Women (NOW). Friedan supposed that too much “mothering” was involved in the raising of children. Women who had limited options for success poured an inordinate amount of time and talent into children that in turn led to immature adults with a lack of personal commitment to education and work. She believed that this resulted in more “feminine sons” and “sexually aggressive daughters.” Furthermore, Friedan held that adults affected by this environment were incapable of living in meaningful committed relationships and any same-sex relationship could only be compulsively sexual in nature.

As a result, when lesbians (of the DOB in particular) attempted to join NOW events, divisions ensued. Lesbians who attempted to integrate found themselves labeled as the “lavender menace.” This paper gives further details concerning the second Congress to Unite Women (a NOW event), which was held in New York City on May 1, 1970. Lesbians took this occasion to bring a new visibility to their involvement in the women’s movement. The second Congress to Unite Women was a watermark for the lesbian struggle for feminist space. Friedan, who attended this conference, wrote in her epilogue for the second edition of the Feminine Mystique, published in 1974, that NOW, as other movements of the decade, had become the victim of extremists. At this time, a leader of a black organization warned Friedan that, “It’s fruitless to speculate whether they are CIA agents, or sick, or on a private power trip, or just plain stupid, if they continually disrupt, you simply have to fight them.” Meanwhile, Friedan kept to her belief that these women hated men and had brought an agenda to NOW, an agenda bent on converting women to lesbianism. In reality, the lesbians and their allies who joined NOW believed that sexual orientation was an integral part of women’s rights and this particular issue was central to the feminist fight against a patriarchal society. The colorful “disruptive” demonstration at the New York conference helped create new diversity within the organization. Chapter 3 of this paper gives further details on this event.

Clearly, Friedan did not yet grasp the concept of diversity. However, by 1997 Friedan had come to accept a more diverse community. In her introduction to her fourth publication, Friedan discusses Hillary Rodham Clinton’s concept of the “village” community and the value of diversity, which was very different from Friedan’s earlier model of the isolated suburban “feminine mystique” family of the sixties.

By the 1990s, working families out of necessity depended on others outside of the immediate family. Friedan’s vision of the community feminist had finally merged with the concept of family and community diversity. After more than two decades of viewing lesbians as exclusive individualist feminists, Friedan shared her paradigm shift on homosexuality in her 1997 introduction. She wrote, “The recent campaign to legalize same-sex marriage shows the powerful appeal of lasting emotional commitment even for men or women who depart from conventional sexual norms.”

This paper explores the centralized DOB and its satellite local organizations founded in varying U.S. cities and in particular, it focus on the two late coming southern DOB clubs in Tampa and New Orleans. The New Orleans club is of special interest as the lesbian frontrunners in this city carried the DOB torch well into the late 1980s. The national organization had become defunct over the twenty years prior; however, the New Orleans club kept the name because the DOB had become synonymous with lesbian opportunities and events. This particular club formed in the latter part of 1974 and early 1975. Vicki Combs led the early club but soon relinquished her role (due to health issues) to the club’s secretary/treasurer, Sharon Dauzat. Located through Facebook, Dauzat has proved an invaluable resource for information regarding the New Orleans DOB. Dauzat, with other club members managed to keep the New Orleans club active well into the late 1980s. According to Dauzat, many of the past members have moved on and others whom she knew well have died. The New Orleans club, explored in depth through the eyes of Dauzat, comes to life in Chapter 4.

In the era of the closet lesbian, books, periodicals and literature provided the main source of lesbian information and entertainment. When asked for a listing of popular prose enjoyed by New Orleans club members, Dauzat responded with the following list. Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness made its way to the top of her list.

Hall’s fiction became the most significant lesbian novel of the twentieth-century. Hall (1880-1943,) known for her literary trial over content obscenity pertaining to her book, The Well of Loneliness, lived in England but became part of Paris’s left bank scene without becoming one the British expatriates. While Hall’s previous mainstream writings proved successful, The Well of Loneliness, proved controversial as the book openly deals with a lesbian couple making a life together. The book published on July 27, 1928, upset segments of British religious conservatism resulting in an obscenity charge and trial in November of the same year. Hall’s book ends on an unhappy note as the main character relinquishes her partner to a male suitor in order to allow her to live a “normal life.” As she releases her beloved she cries out to God, “…we believe; we have told You we believe…We have not denied You, then rise up and defend us. Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!” These sentiments resonated with the lesbian community in New Orleans as it resonated in other gay communities throughout the twentieth-century and even into the LGBTQ communities of the twenty first century. 38

The second title recommended on Dauzat’s list is The Children’s Hour. In 1934, playwright, Lillian Hellman published the Children’s Hour, a three-act play. Later in the same year, the play, produced and directed by Herman Shumlin, opened on Broadway at Maxine Elliot’s Theatre, to critical acclaim. However, due to the play’s lesbian content, the production did not find acceptance in Chicago, Boston and London. However, The Children’s Hour played successfully in France under the title, The Innocents that won French acclaim. Two years later the work became a screenplay under United Artists. In 1952, the Coronet Theatre reproduced this play. In 1961, United Artists released the movie once more staring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine.

The scene, set outside Lancet, Massachusetts features a converted farmhouse that serves as the Wright-Dobie School for girls. Friends since college days, Martha Dobie and Karen Wright serve as the schools headmasters and educators. The story line includes a mix of the headmasters’ love for each other, a vindictive young student named Mary Tilford, other students who are under varying degrees of Tilford’s control, a fiancé, angry scandalized parents, and an eventual suicide.

The fact that the New Orleans DOB club chose this play as a must read comes as no surprise. Aside from the plays thematic content, Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans and raised by her southern Jewish family. Her grandfather, Bernard Hellman, held the position of quartermaster in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Additionally, not unlike the Hall novel, one of Hellman’s main characters marries a man instead of choosing to stay with the woman who loves her.

Furthermore, this play also raises issues concerning classroom bullying and harassment, including harassment because of perceived sexual orientation. At the same time, these themes frame in a rather complex emotional venue. A controversial work in the first half of the twentieth-century, this play still resonates within twenty first century American social issues. Yet even in this last decade, community theatres across the United States that have produced this play have at times, met with local resistance and warnings.

Furthermore, in 1952, before the reintroduction of the Children’s Hour at the Cornet Theatre in Hollywood, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) called upon Hellman to appear before the commission. This experience led Hellman to seek production of the Hollywood Cornet Theatre version, in part, due to the play’s content of secrets, lies and malevolence. The backdrop of McCarthyism set the play in an entirely different light due to the current political environment, which included backstabbing. This 1952 version also received acclaim.

Another southern New Orleans DOB favorite was Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café written by Fannie Flag. According to Dauzat, both the book and the movie were club favorites. The scene, set outside Birmingham, Alabama in the small town of Whistle Stop brings the issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation to life in two periods simultaneously. The former scene set during the Jim Crowe era and the later scene extant to the mid 1980s brings forth virtues of courage, perseverance and individual independence within a setting of community cohesion. The main character of the later period, Evelyn Couch, found a sense of self-worth and purpose from listening to stories of the earlier Whistle Stop era. Although the culture in Jim Crow Whistle Stop holds to southern normative standards for race, class, gender and sexual orientation, a strong sense of community pride and kindness overcomes much of community prejudice. For example, this tolerance shown is due in part to the community’s ability to look past a lesbian relationship and see a committed, loving couple who in turn help to bring kindness and prosperity to the town of Whistle Stop.

As the community finds the ability to accept a lesbian couple, Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison, as they bring up a child, this tolerance of lesbianism allows the community at large to accept and protect the black community to a larger degree than most southern towns. The town of Whistle Stop may take issue with the black community, transient folk, and the town’s lesbian leader, Idgie, at times, but ultimately these “others” find protection in the town’s citizens from outside intrusion. This utopian idea of community diversity brought hope to those living in the real southern world where acceptance of diversity is limited at best. However, the fact that this book climbed to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list and remained there for 36 weeks extended hope that cultural diversity did gain ground along with concurrent sales. Indeed, Flagg intended her book to further these particular political ideals. Fannie Flagg hails from outside Birmingham, Alabama in a suburb known as Irondale where the original Whistle Stop Café did business. Using this region for her inspiration, Flagg wrote her book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. Her familiarity with the people and places gave life to the book’s plot and lent credibility to movie production.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, published in 1987, came at the end of the active New Orleans club. The movie version, Fried Green Tomatoes, debuted in 1991 under Act III productions. According to Dauzat, past members and other friends flocked to theatres as this book had been a favorite. Part of the filming occurred in a town just north of Macon, Georgia where an extant Whistle Stop Café (thanks to the set crew) still serves fried green tomatoes along with other southern favorites. The cafe has become a favorite tourist destination. Nominated for two Oscars, this movie inspires women to embrace strength and courage and it inspires men to act nobly outside stereotypical patriarchal expectations. This movie is relatable not only to southern lesbians and feminists but to women of all classes, races and generations.

The fourth book on the New Orleans reading list, Six of One, written by Rita Mae Brown, is set on the Mason-Dixon Line between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Brown, born just three miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line in Hanover, Pennsylvania, took inspiration from her own roots to write Six of One. Her fictional storyline includes people, places and events from her early life including her mother Julia Ellen Buckingham Brown.

Best known for Ruby Fruit Jungle (Brown’s bestseller) and originally published in 1973 by Daughters Press (DOB owned,) Six of One opens a window on Brown’s own milieu. She captures the diversity, squabbles and unity (but only when threatened from outsiders) of the small town of Runnymede, Maryland, not unlike her childhood town in Hanover. The northern area of Runnymede possesses Union sentiments while the south side of the town identifies with the Confederacy even though the Civil War has been over for more than 40 years.

Southern DOB members may easily claim an affinity with Brown. Brown, biracial, lesbian and southern, earned scholarships to the University of Florida but she believes that she “got kicked out over integration.” Chris (last name unknown), a founding member of the short lived Tampa DOB, reported in a letter written to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon that she had been recently turned down by the graduate school of Rehabilitation and Counseling at the University of South Florida. According to the letter, an anti-gay faction on the campus may have influenced the Rehabilitation and Counseling department’s decision. She continued by writing that she had hoped “to be the first self declared lesbian to be accepted in graduate school” at South Florida.

Chris’s disappointment occurred in 1975, while Brown’s rejection occurred in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. Whether “Chris” continued to advance in graduate pursuits, one may only guess, however; Brown showing her tenacity, moved north to explore other educational options. There, she found acceptance at New York University albeit with a caveat that she attend a remedial speech class to remedy her thick southern accent. This Brown identifies as, “cultural imperialism but effective for advancement.”

While in New York, Brown became an active member in the New York DOB chapter and additionally become involved in NOW. By the late 1960s, Brown along with other lesbians (many who were New York DOB members) began to feel excluded from the New York NOW organization and elected to resign and join the newly formed Gay Liberation Front (GLF.) Susan Brownmiller wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine where she quoted Friedan’s comments concerning NOW’s issues with the “lavender menace” problem. This article spurred the former NOW “lavender menaces” into action. Brown appeared at NOW’s second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970, along with two dozen others, with intent to disrupt and then re-organize the conference. By the end of the weekend, NOW had not only accepted the “Radicalesbians” (their newly self-appointed name,) but had passed a resolution of affirmation and inclusion. Chapter three of this paper explores this occurrence and includes further details.

Within three years, Brown’s books became best sellers. When the Tampa DOB’s first edition of Daughters published in July 1975, Brown’s artwork and catchphrase, “An army of lovers shall not fail” appeared on page one. Her 1973 successful work, Rubyfruit Jungle, did not keep Brown from working with less prestigious projects.

Brown credits her readers for her successes. For example, when Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) emerged from publication it boasted no book reviews or advertising yet it became an award-winning novel. Dauzat lends credibility to this phenomenon. When asked how these publications became favorites, Dauzat replied, “You can say that in our group, we read something and then suggested it to the rest of the girls. I also had input from the group ahead of me…wow, did they live a rough and interesting life! My sweet friend Charlene was in that group, about 7-10 years older than us.”

Today Brown still consistently produces books for Random House. Living on her farm in Virginia with her partner of thirty plus years, Brown looks after her horses, foxhounds and the occasional fox. She also serves as the master of the Oak Ridge Foxhunt Club and occasionally serves as Visiting Faculty to a requesting English department.

While Virginia and Louisiana are located at opposite ends of the Southern sphere, southern commonalities still join these southern sisters. Lesbians living in New Orleans today still lionize Brown. Located near the French Quarter on Decatur Street is a nightclub and lesbian bar by the name of Rubyfruit Jungle.

Departing from southern lesbian literature, the New Orleans DOB reading list includes Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas came from the generation prior Charlene and served as role models for the postwar generation. Stein and Toklas were American expatriates in Paris during the Belle Époque. They joined other young American and French writers and artists, many of whom were looking for artistic freedom. In the case of Stein and Toklas, they looked for artistic freedom and societal tolerance of their same-sex relationship. Most of the lesbian American expatriates came from wealth; Stein and Toklas were no exception to this rule. Stein arrived in Paris in 1903 and in 1907 met Toklas. Toklas immediately moved into Stein’s home at 27-rue de Fleurus where they lived together for the next forty years.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas published in 1932. In this book, Stein creates an amusing story of herself seen through the eyes of her partner Toklas. The irony of her writing is of course, that no one can write another person’s autobiography and Stein does not. Stein writes about Stein by conflating her own life into the life of Toklas. Nevertheless, Stein includes nearly thirty years of colorful bohemian life on Paris’s Left Bank. Stein collected art during her lifetime and many of her acquisitions came from her colleagues Picasso and Matisse. Through her personal friendships with these men, Stein had insight into the Parisian world of art and included this insight into the “autobiography.”

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is the most accessible of all Stein’s work. Stein, known for her stream of consciousness writing style (not unlike the style of Virginia Wolfe,) generally presents as an arcane read. However, Stein’s less complicated writing style and her lack of word-games found in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas have not changed Stein’s conceptual catawampus. Clearly, Stein presents her work through the voice and interests of Toklas even though ultimately the book is about Stein. Perhaps Stein wrote in this manner as a literary prank or perhaps she presented her work as an allegoric representation of the oneness of her relationship with Toklas. Either reason is sufficient for interest in this book. Interestingly, Toklas long outlived Stein. She died a couple of months before her 90th birthday in 1967. Many, from the younger generation of lesbians and artists, were aware of the older generation of expatriates who still thrived and in New Orleans; Charlene was one among this younger generation.

The last and most recent addition on Dauzat’s book list is Ann-Marie Macdonald’s Fall on Your Knees. Dauzat mentioned that she discovered this novel on the “Oprah’s Book Club” list “about six to eight years ago.” Dauzat shared this book with those who she has kept up with over the last decade. MacDonald’s thematic melting pot of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, legalism, incest and cultural difference creates a bizarre and disturbing read. The storyline issues leave the reader gobsmacked, even as the storyline themes remain culturally diffident in today’s society.

MacDonald, a Canadian writer, has created the Piper family who also are Canadian. The Piper family begets four generations of twentieth-century dysfunction incorporating the above themes. MacDonald, throughout her chapters, holds out hope to the reader that the next page will bring healing and resolution to a broken family. While leading the reader on, MacDonald ends with little answers to many questions with no familial healing. However, she does answer the multi-faceted definition of “other” with the clear message that all of us are in some ways “the other.”

The theme of “otherness” generally beckons to the LGBT community as a means of self-examination. Yet, this book may resonate with anyone who has struggled with exclusion due to race, class, gender, sexuality, religion or ethnicity. MacDonald’s work proves engaging, intense and intricately woven. In her review, Rita Mae Brown summarizes one possible answer to the familial question of Fall on Your Knees by pointing out, “that sisterhood is powerful—but not exactly as we thought it would be. It’s a bit like performing the Stations of the Cross to rock ‘n’ roll.” The concept of powerful sisterhood manifests in the success of DOB bonds. Dauzat’s close relationships with DOB sisters have extended into almost a half century.

Used as a secondary source, author Marcia M. Gallo’s book, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, chronicles the activities of the DOB from the club’s formative days until the organization’s demise in 1978. Gallo’s book, published in 2006, acts as an excellent comprehensive secondary source. Her book won the Lambda Literary award in 2006. Gallo currently teaches U.S. History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Another significant secondary source, found in Lillian Faderman’s book, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers comprehensively documents the twentieth-century evolution of lesbianism. Her latest (Faderman-Stuart Timmon) work, Gay in L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians definitively documents the history of lesbianism in sixteenth-century Spanish southern California through the late twentieth century era in Los Angeles. A third source from Faderman, To Believe in Women, What Lesbians Have Done for America- A History, covers crucial background concerning early lesbian-feminism. Gallo incorporates much of Faderman’s research from Odd Girls and To Believe in Women into her work, Different Daughters.

Neil Miller’s Out of the Past, Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present is another secondary source, which proves an indispensible resource for anyone needing critical background to gay and lesbian history. Miller has written this text in global time-line form and it is useful as a quick reference guide. Covering over a hundred years of gay and lesbian history, culture, and politics Miller touches on subjects from the Plains Indians, Oscar Wilde, homosexual life in Nazi Germany, the Belle Époque Paris to the modern gay and lesbian movement to name just a few. Miller is the former editor of Boston’s Gay Community News. He has won several awards for his work.

Cotton’s Queer Relations by Michael P. Bibler has proven useful in addressing the history of southern homosexuality. Bibler, lecturer in American Literature at the University of Manchester in England, argues that queerness in the South, long understood throughout southern circles as viable, yet addressed mostly in ambiguous code, remained definitively elusive. However, Bibler has opened the door to clarity on this topic through an analytical study of Southern literature. Focusing on the creativeness of southern authors such as William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Lillian Hellman, Bibler makes a compelling case for tangible (and to some degree) accepted homosexuality.

As discussed earlier, books and periodicals have remained the mainstay for gay communication. While verbal discussion would have served the LGBT community well during the last half of the twentieth-century, gay related topics continued to be socially unacceptable for confabulation. Therefore, fiction, nonfiction and research became the most common method of societal communication. The Daughters of Bilitis understood this concept well as they continued to publish The Ladder, books and newsletters over a period of thirty years leaving a treasure trove of LGBT history in their wake. In this wake, a unique paper trail of feminist theory and activities written during the McCarthy period endure from the early DOB. These lesbians blazed through this era as the Torchbearers and Frontrunners for women’s rights.

Chapter 3: The Torchbearers and Front Runners

On a September day in 1955, in San Francisco, a woman by the name of Rose Bamberger decided to start a secret club for women. She invited five of her friends to join who eagerly said, “Yes!!” Then, she phoned two more. She called Phyllis Lyon and her partner of two years, Del Martin. Rose told them that her “club” would provide a secret society for lesbians, “Would they like to join?” she asked. In later years, Lyon stated that she and Del excitedly said, ‘yes,’ because at the time they knew only a handful of other lesbians and now through Rose, they would immediately know five more.

At their first get-together, the eight decided on a name. The name needed to be covert, not obvious. The year 1955, during the height of McCarthyism, being “outed” as a homosexual proved worse than being “outed” as a communist. A common tactic of the House on un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an organization of political fear and intrusion, utilized the branding of individuals as “homosexuals”, if demands for confessions of communistic activities were not forthcoming. In either case, the stigma of “communist” or “homosexual” meant the ruin of individual lives. The newly formed club, keenly aware of this risk, looked for a subtle and innocuous name. The brainstorming gave birth to the Daughters of Bilitis. Bilitis, a mythical female who seduced the celebrated bi-sexual Sappho of the Isle of Lesbos, came from “Songs of Bilitis,” a collection of love poems by Pierre Louys. The friends decided that the name, the Daughters of Bilitis, conveyed a feel of ambiguity and safety, sounding perhaps like a woman’s lodge or perhaps a Greek poetry club. The pronunciation of Bilitis replaced the “li” with the double “ee’ sound, in place of the “itis” sound which the Daughters thought sounded more like a disease.

This club gave its members space for a safe social outlet. The women became tired of the police raids in the gay bars in San Francisco and by May of 1955, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board cracked down on gay bars. A need arose for safer places to socialize. What began as a benign social group grew over the next three decades into a powerful political tool, which focused on education, research, and legislative reform, without neglecting the original purpose. None of these eight women could conceive the future growth and impact of these seeds planted during their first meeting. As the days and years went by, membership and purpose increased along with visibility, and the women became increasingly vocal. These women carried on through the “red scare” and the “cold war” period during a time when others, including those of past heterosexual women’s groups for political change, dared not. This paper argues that the Daughters of Bilitis carried the torch for the women’s movement through the dark days of McCarthyism and through the limited political atmosphere that transpired during the Cold War period. The Daughter’s acted as a bridge between the war years and immediate postwar feminism. These feminist embers raged into a bonfire by the late 1960s. The Daughters acted as an important piece of the radical feminism puzzle and played a major role in defining early feminist theory.

So on that September day in 1955, the stage setters began to set the parameters of the DOB script. They created a special pin for members to wear. The pin, in the shape of a triangle with sapphire blue and gold colors became the identifying symbol. The club opened only to women over the age of twenty-one and the age limit was religiously enforced. The new bylaws clearly stated that any gay girl that applied must be ‘…of good moral character.’ They chose for a club shibboleth, “Qui Vive” which means “on the alert.” On specific occasions, the bylaws made allowance for men to attend at appropriate occasions. One of the more exclusive rules, found in the bylaws, concerned the more masculine women. Such women could join but found wearing masculine attire unacceptable. This dress code proved restrictive in early days and by the late 1960s, fell out of disuse with the influx of hippie women and the influence of psychedelic culture. However, in the mid 1950s, the requirement to dress properly, wearing skirts, blouses, dresses and heels became the normal club attire.

They decided to organize and run their new club like a business and chose officers to run the new club accordingly. Lyon and Martin, the oldest out of the eight women, were aged thirty-one and thirty-four, respectively. Del Martin became the President, Noni Frey took the Vice-President position, Phyllis Lyon acted as Secretary, RoseMary Sliepen held the office of Treasurer, and Marcia Foster took the position as Trustee. The Daughters, formal in framework, never left its first purpose of providing social interaction for the members, even when political change and legislation became the priority. The next order of business, for the newly formed DOB, consisted of announcing their existence to other gay groups.

The following month in October, DOB notified the main male gay organization, the Mattachine Society, of their nascent club. Another group that received notification from the Daughters included ONE, Incorporated and along with the notification, DOB took out a subscription to ONE, Incorporated publications. ONE, Incorporated, open to all sexes, naturally opened its arms to the DOB.

The first priority for the Daughters, which continued to be a priority over the years, was to work for Lesbian integration into society. For this reason, “normal” female clothes were required. Just a year later in 1956, Rose Bamberger, who had come up with this club idea in the first place, quit. Her vision for the Daughters only allowed for social interaction. Dances, picnics, bowling outings, discussions, music and dinner dates, and other social activities embraced her vision for “her” club, but Del Martin beheld the vision differently. She saw DOB as an educational organization designed to build self-esteem among the Lesbian population. She wished to remove lesbian stigma by being open to “all” and to work with other homophile groups such as those listed above. Because of the political climate of 1956, teachers lost their licenses in California for being a card-carrying Communist or for being a suspected gay. Martin wanted the club to address these issues. A strong desire to fit into society almost led the Daughters to consider adding a tenet into their statement of purpose to include, “we are against communism.” However, this idea only remained a thought. Strong attitudes toward civil liberties prevailed.

The four tenets (in short) that made up the mainstay of the Daughters of Bilitis purpose statement included the following: 1.) Education of the sexual variant, with particular emphasis on the psychological, physiological and sociological aspects. 2.) By promoting public acceptance and understanding of the sexual variant through discussions and educational literature on the homosexual theme. 3.) Participation in research projects by duly authorized and responsible psychologists, sociologists and other such experts directed towards further knowledge of the homosexual. 4.) By working for legislative change and due process of law while investigating penal codes as it pertains to the homosexual and achieving an equitable fairness in court cases involving this minority group.

The next step towards implementation of this last tenet allied DOB with the American Civil Liberties Union. Lyon and Martin perceived the value in joining with the gay men’s groups in order to form solidarity in the political world. Ten years before the feminists used the political trademark, “the personal is the political,” Del and Phyllis had already used the future adage. The second integration, radical for the 1950s, involved racial integration. The DOB began to include blacks and Latinos into their organization. As early as 1963, DOB elected a black woman as National President. Known as Cleo Glenn, her real name was Cleo Bonner. Bonner met Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in 1960 at a small gathering of lesbians in Oakland. Bonner worked for Pacific Bell at the time and she lived in a committed relationship with a white woman. Bonner, as many women in the Daughters of Bilitis, used pseudonyms to protect jobs and family. While generally lesbians had much to lose in society, black lesbians in a relationship with a white woman had more to lose against such a stacked deck. The demonization that Blacks and Latinos had felt for years now fell on the leftist and gay communities.

The Black community at large had used “respectability” as a virtue in their favor for years. Black women’s clubs between 1880 and 1920 strove to adapt to societal white norms. White women, before and after gaining suffrage, presented themselves as the moral rocks of society. What these groups understood, was not lost on the Daughters of Bilitis. Oppressed minority groups understood that respectability equaled equal status and citizenship. Desiring to improve the lesbian image in society, the Daughters strove to engender respectability from society whether through dress or behavior. Some lesbians hoped that by improving personal image, rights would follow suit. The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the DOB advanced similar “respectability themes.” Both black and lesbian women projected images of immorality in the minds of heterosexual, white Anglo-Saxon and protestant society, images that both black and gay women sought to change. Both groups desired to stand as empowered women alone, without acting as auxiliaries for male dominated groups. Most of all both the NACW and the DOB worked to imbue their women with self-esteem.

Dress codes played a deeper role for the Daughters than merely fitting into society. The “dress code” reached beyond lesbianism and proved effective concerning future feminism. The prewar working-class lesbian wore pants only after work at home or perhaps in a gay bar. During WWII, many women wore pants to work according to job demands. The threatening position of women in pants, because of the war, lessened. Postwar fashion, however, dictated a return to skirts and dresses.

Not only did the postwar period affect the fashion world, but as men returned home, a push for family values also occurred. Companionate marriages had been encouraged during the first wave of feminism for placating the newly college educated and working women. These women had tasted independence and felt little need for spousal support and domination. Now after the war, women and men were encouraged to live together in mutual intimacy and understanding, returning to the early values of companionate marriage. However, by the late 1950s, some women again wondered why spousal dependence or inter-dependence should hold such importance.

Of course, lesbians during the postwar period did not care about gender-appropriate dress nor did they care about companionate marriages. The butch lesbian merely returned to wearing pants in more private settings. During the late sixties, hippies brought a change in male and female fashion with the unisex look. At this point, DOB began to relax the women’s dress code although many lesbians had argued for this relaxation for years. Feminists seized upon the idea of the unisex look. Allowing heterosexual women the comfort of donning pants once again became symbolic in the feminist struggle against the dictated “women’s place.” Skirts were part of this “place’ and the wearing of pants stepped on male privileged toes. The choice of wearing comfortable clothes had been an exclusive male right. With this freedom came a new paradigm that pants did not create a lesbian out of a straight female, but did create equality between the sexes and a psychological freedom for more women.

While some Daughters desired more self-expression, the organization in the late 1950s and early 1960s preached conformity. In 1957, playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote an anonymous letter to DOB. Included in the letter, Phyllis Lyon found $2.00, a request to receive as many back issues of The Ladder, the Daughters of Bilitis official magazine, as possible, and a promise of sizable future support and advice. The author of this letter, Lorraine Hansberry, a straight black woman wrote the following praise:

I’m glad as heck that you exist. You are obviously serious people and I feel that women, without wishing to foster any strict separatist notions, homo or hetero, indeed have a need for their own publications and organizations. Women, like other oppressed groups of one kind or another, have particularly had to pay a price for the intellectual impoverishment that the second class status imposed on us for centuries created and sustained. Thus, I feel that THE LADDER is a fine, elementary step in a rewarding direction.

Hansberry continued with observation and advice concerning the conformity controversy:

As one raised in a cultural experience (I am a Negro) where those within were and are forever lecturing to their fellows about how to appear acceptable to the dominant social group, I know something about the shallowness of such a view as an end in itself… [O]ne is oppressed or discriminated against because one is different, not ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ somehow.

However, Hansberry made it clear that:

…as a matter of facility, of expediency, one has to take a critical view of revolutionary attitudes which in spite of the BASIC truth I have mentioned above, may tend to aggravate the problems of the group [and that while I have learned to ignore feelings of discomfort] at the sight of an ill-dressed or illiterate Negro. Social awareness has taught me where to lay the blame.

Hansberry continued her letter with hope that one day ‘the discreet’ Lesbian will not turn her head on the streets at the sight of the ‘butch’ strolling hand in hand with her friend in their trousers and definitive haircuts” and added, “[B]ut for the moment, it still disturbs.”

Hansberry signed the letter “L.H.N.,” or Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff. She had married Robert Nemiroff, a white male friend in 1953. Hansberry authored the award-winning play, A Raisin in the Sun.

While Hansberry’s letter, which Lyon published in its four-page entirety in The Ladder, spoke of organizational and personal conflict between self expression and cultural integration, a new day of liberation would dawn in the late 1960s. On that future day, “The Establishment” and presiding culture came under question, personally and politically. Lesbian dialogue, related to integration or radicalism during this time, helped to plant the seeds of change that would affect not only those in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) community, but also other communities to include, race, class and gender.

In the early days of the Daughters of Bilitis, there were those lesbians who desired to keep the club a “club” and less of an organization, especially a political organization. Lesbian space for social activity led some women into membership. This need for lesbian space eventually gave way to the radical lesbian feminist idea of ubiquity during the so-called second wave of feminism. Reminiscent of the early pioneer days of women’s rights, the radical lesbian feminist sought not to obtain the rights of males, but rather to obtain separatist institutions where women could work together. Early feminist Jane Addams had argued, and others along with her, rather than to join men in their brutal and corrupt patriarchal system, women were better off starting new alternatives exclusively for women.

Another source of exclusive lesbian latitude existed in the form of The Ladder. The Ladder, DOB’s connection source for lesbians and potential members also provided revenue to help sustain the Daughters financially. Subscriptions and sales of the magazine reached across the nation and circulated through college and university campuses, alternative bookstores and gay bars. Through the influence of this publication, DOB chapters tripled by 1958. In that year, local chapters formed in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, an incredible feat for a group consisting of only eight lesbians three years prior.

The Ladder also served as a vehicle to conduct research. As early as 1957, The Daughters of Bilitis decided that psychological and sociological research on behalf of gay and lesbian populations were to be encouraged. The Ladder included questionnaire pages, designed by researchers, to carry out investigations concerning sexual behavior and lifestyles connected with sexual orientation. An example of such research pertained to lesbian women versus the general population of women as related to family, jobs, health, relationships and mental stability. The study also compared these statistics with the Census Bureau of 1957.

Other studies, researched through The Ladder and that later came back to haunt the “future feminist movement”, argued if these “women loving women,” (in other words not loving men) remained celibate, could they by definition be called “lesbians?” This argument had its historical roots in Victorian attitude towards sexuality, which argued that sexual appetite (and burden) arose from the masculine. Many men and women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries engaged in same-sex romantic love, sans the sexual aspect. Some women did act upon their same-sex attractions. Most men accepted and even encouraged such relationships, believing that all love that occurred between women was merely pure, innocent, charming and lacking sexual implication. This attitude of “purity,” used successfully for over one hundred years in the women’s movement, now appeared pernicious. It exploited the paradigm of women existing as the moral rocks of society. Historian Lillian Faderman compared these nonsexual romantic relationships to that of the “women loving women” phenomenon of “lesbianism” during second wave feminism. She validated these relationships of second wave feminism with a comparison of the Victorian era perspective of sexuality. Faderman offered this viewpoint:

It is likely that most love relationships between women during previous eras, when females were encouraged to force any sexual drive they might have to remain latent, were less physical than they are in our times. But the lack of overtly sexual expression in these romantic friendships should not discount the seriousness or the intensity of the women’s passions toward each other—or the fact that if by “lesbian” we mean an all-consuming emotional relationship in which two women are devoted to each other above all else, these ubiquitous…romantic friendships were ‘lesbian.’

One of the earlier studies researched androgyny. This 1957 study on the attributes of the sexual characteristics of male and female, in both sexes, created havoc among the feminist of the 1970s. The radical feminists and the radical lesbian feminists did not accept the idea of corrupt male influences within themselves.

Meanwhile, most lesbians of 1957 contented themselves with the “butch” and “fem” roles that corresponded to the masculine and feminine roles of heterosexuality. This is not to say that the debate on these roles and on androgyny had not yet begun. In addition, one of the largest areas of controversy to come pertained to a clash over “lesbian” identity between the lesbians of the 1950s and early 1960s with Second Wave Feminists. This argument stemmed from whether lesbianism originates as a genetic condition, or if lesbianism originates as a lifestyle choice. The younger generation subscribed to the latter. The older lesbians had worked hard most of their lives to be accepted into the heterosexual world. Acceptance for who they were and what they contributed to society had been hard-earned gains with family, friends and co-workers. These older lesbians felt that this new generation of “lesbians by choice” would cause a backlash from society that still viewed homosexuality as immoral. However, this concept acted as a key for the radical lesbian feminist who believed in sexual choice. This conceptual key opened the door for “separatist ideal” to reproduce during second wave feminism. A statement from a feminist, who had been an activist at the time, summed it up in with the following words: “It’s so strange, you know, in the early seventies, one day half the women’s movement came out as lesbians. It was like we were all sitting around and the ice cream truck came, and all of a sudden I looked around and everyone ran out for ice cream.”

In the early stages of lesbian organization, a nascent social consciousness began to awaken. This awareness soon began to take root in the feminist movement resulting in a mad dash towards that “ice cream truck.” The following excerpt gave indication of the Daughters of Bilitis intent:

As homosexuals we share the dubious honor with males of being “the last of the minority groups.” As Lesbians we are even lower in the sand hole; we are women (itself a majority/minority status) and we are Lesbians: the last half of the least noticed, most disadvantaged minority. There is no room here for any other cause. We have the biggest bag to carry and we need a good many strong shoulders. Get your head out of the sand hole and help with this very urgent, very needful battle.

McCarthyism era of persecution had inadvertently helped foster self-awareness and identity in at least some of the Daughters of Bilitis. The organizational skills that these daughters had acquired over their first decade brought needed tools into the feminist movement. Women like Rita Mae Brown from the National Organization of Women (NOW) supported Del Martin and other daughters desire to merge time and energies into the feminist movement.

Not all of the NOW women welcomed lesbians into their midst. Feminist Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and co-founder of NOW had warned women early in the movement of the “lavender menace.” This fear arose from a perceived lack of credibility between NOW and public image. Friedan, and those who agreed, believed that allowing lesbians to work with straight women confirmed the fears of those outside of the organization that lesbian influence dominated NOW. Thus, the tenuous cause of promoting independence of woman would be lost. Brown had written an essay called, “Take a Lesbian to Lunch.” Told never to use the word ‘lesbian’ again at a NOW meeting, Brown looked for other options, but felt that she had no other place to go. Not long after her association with the Gay Liberation Front and the new lesbian interest within NOW (most for just the sexual experience or “choice”), there began a climate of change. However, dissatisfaction began to occur with lesbians in GLF and NOW. Brown appraised the situation in these words, “We are no longer willing to be token lesbians in the women’s liberation movement nor are we willing to be the token women in the Gay Liberation Front.”

Brown’s friends within this group took action at the second annual Congress to Unite Women, held at a Manhattan school. In May 1970, on the opening night of the congress, these women made a surprise appearance. There were some three hundred women that night, sitting in a large auditorium, waiting for the start of a panel discussion. Abruptly the lights went out. When the lights came back on, the auditorium walls bore posters with slogans such as: “TAKE A LESBIAN TO LUNCH; SUPERDYKE LOVES YOU; THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IS A LESBIAN PLOT.” Seventeen women, wearing lavender T-shirts that said “Lavender Menace” showed their contempt for Betty Friedan’s cliché, took over the stage. The “Menaces” had successfully taken over the evening meeting and the discussion panel while inviting the audience to take part. During the last session, four resolutions put forth by the “Lavender Menaces” found support through congressional members. A list of the four resolutions is as follows:

1. Be it resolved that Women’s liberation is a Lesbian plot. 2. Resolved that whenever the label “Lesbian” is used against the movement collectively or against women individually, it is to be affirmed, not denied. 3. In all discussions on birth control, homosexuality must be included as a legitimate method of contraception. 4. All sex education curricula must include Lesbianism as a valid, legitimate form of sexual expression of love.

The following year saw more support for lesbians in NOW. Gloria Steinem, Susann Brownmiller and Flo Kenney threw support behind all women whether heterosexual or homosexual within the NOW organization. At the September 1971 national NOW convention, the following resolution passed:

Be it resolved that N.O.W. recognizes the double oppression of lesbians; Be it resolved that a woman’s right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own life-style; and Be it resolved that N.O.W. acknowledges the oppression of lesbians as a legitimate concern of feminism.

In spite of the success of the “Lavender Menace” lesbians, Betty Friedan still wanted little to do with them in “her” organization. She led successful political coups to avoid the election or reelection of lesbians in New York NOW. Continuing her war on lesbian women, in 1973, Friedan informed The New York Times that lesbians, sent to infiltrate the women’s movement was part of a CIA plot, in an effort to discredit the lesbians and the government. Despite Friedan’s fears of Lesbian destructiveness, the radical lesbian feminists appeared so far left that Friedan’s heterosexual feminist women seemed quite the social bargain. The angry radical lesbian feminists had given a comparison of different feminist thought and “mainstream” feminists now appeared reasonable. Finally, in 1985, Friedan confessed publically that some of the hardest-working women in NOW were in fact lesbians. However, true to form and missing her own point, she added, “For most women surely… [the demand for equal rights] had nothing whatsoever to do with lesbianism.” Either what Friedan missed, intentionally or ignorantly, was the fact that lesbians and straight women had worked together to secure senatorial passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. This Amendment remained alive for fifty years by a handful of women, many of whom had lesbian orientations. (Today, if ratified, the ERA would become our Twenty-Eighth Amendment.) It is also instructive to note that lesbians showed heterosexual women, by example, how to move more comfortably out of traditional female jobs and into jobs traditionally reserved for males. This in itself encouraged heterosexual women to seek employment outside the home, even though at times working outside the home at the expense of family life led to feeling of guilt and ambivalence. After the fight for the ratification of the ERA amendment yielded thirty-five of the needed thirty-eight states, younger feminists’ moved toward the fight for “choice” in legalized abortion and jumped into the fray of Roe verses Wade.

Even with Friedan fighting against them tooth and nail, these radical lesbian feminists had come a long way in gaining acceptance and visibility. Only thirteen years prior, the DOB held their first national convention, May 27-30, 1960, in San Francisco. Conducted at the Hotel Whitcomb at 1231 Market Street, during Memorial Day weekend, the convention drew two-hundred registered women. Billed as “A Look at the Lesbian,” the weekend’s program included scenic tours and social pleasures. The keynote speaker, Attorney Morris Lowenthal spoke on “The Gay Bar in the Courts.” Some of the speakers misrepresented themselves in order to obtain a speaking slot at the convention. DOB had drawn on resources from “gay friendly” clergy. Unfortunately, to lesbian dismay, some of the pastors used the opportunity to preach hell-fire and damnation. An Episcopal priest told the women to either change or live celibate. Fortunately, after the clergy, things looked up as the next speakers represented the ACLU. Finally, the Daughters of Bilitis distributed the Sons of Bilitis SOB awards. These male appreciation awards were given to men who showed by action, belief in male and female equality.

The women in attendance cracked their closet doors open just by attending the events. In doing so, these lesbians gained a new identity and began to reject societal stigma. The Daughters opened this meeting to the public and registration cost $12.50. Keeping with the traditional mandate of Daughters dress code and integration into public life, casual on-lookers would not have recognized this as a lesbian affair. Nevertheless, the event included police whose duty was to ferret out women in men’s clothes. Evidently, these women, if they did wear men’s clothes, presented a dire threat to the citizens of San Francisco. These days signify importance to early gay rights. This DOB convention met nine years before the Stonewall riots in New York City. Convention attendees showed great courage in the face of possible danger. Started just five years before, in a small quiet setting devoid of unsafe gay bar scenes, the women presented themselves in a public venue. If for no other reason, this San Francisco convention generated historical importance, because the lesbians showed courage in the face of danger. The following year a new DOB chapter began in Chicago whose emphasis included an outreach to the black community. The DOB had great success with integration of members within the chapters. The 1962 DOB convention, held in Hollywood, California, began two scholarship programs for deserving Lesbian women known as the Baker Scholarships. The first award went towards a collegiate or university program of study. The second award given went towards a course of study at a technical or vocational training institution.

This San Francisco convention was the first of the biennial conventions, which continued in different cities until June of 1970. In June of 1970, the New York chapter held the last of the DOB national conventions. The DOB publication, The Ladder, separated from the national organization and ended publication in 1972. Also at this convention, DOB decentralized their national approach; however, DOB continued to operate in the form of local chapters until 1977 when other gay rights groups gained momentum and the Daughters began to fade.

Midway through the active DOB’s timeline, San Francisco held the 1966 biennial convention. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a four-column article about it and the headline read, “San Francisco Greets Daughters.” The convention received much media attention and in two years, Shirley Willer, who became national president at this convention, helped establish new DOB groups in Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Dallas.

Times were changing. To compare how much change had occurred, just a year before in San Francisco, the DOB along with the gay men’s organization Mattachine, put together a Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH). In order to raise funds to support the nascent CRH, the committee members organized a New Years Ball. Police raided the party using tactics that were reminiscent of McCarthy days. Floodlights and photographs splayed in an attempt to disrupt the attendees. One police officer told a minister, “We’ll uphold God’s laws if you won’t.” Fortunately, the police harassment backfired and in response, more Protestant denominations began to reconsider past stances on gays in the church.

By the late 1960s, the DOB organization began to decline. The inner organization experienced turmoil within the ranks. Among the members, new college educated lesbians clashed with older working class lesbians and the DOB, compared to other contemporary organizations, seemed conservative. The Ladder stopped publishing in 1972.

At a DOB dance in New York in 1971, police raided the event and charged the organizers with selling liquor without a license. Normal protocol required only a small fine. This time the DOB no longer hoped for just a small fine and peace. DOB, along with Gay Activist Alliance members, demonstrated and met with the mayor to air out complaints of police harassment. Another consideration of importance, related to DOB demise, resulted in the over-all change of gay activist tactics arising from the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City. An attitude of we “aren’t going to take it anymore” began to invade even the prim and proper Daughters.

The first anniversary of Stonewall gave birth to the first gay pride parade in New York City. Over five thousand people marched from New York’s Greenwich Village to central Park. Two hundred members of the newly formed Gay Activist Alliance GAA spearheaded the parade. The GLF and Lavender Menaces along with the two oldest organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis marched in the event. The New York Times, who had given little attention to the Stonewall Inn riots the year before, printed the event on page one. The New Yorker reported it in “The Talk of the Town.” The Village Voice had this to say:

They stretched in a line, from Gimbels to Times Square, thousands and thousands and thousands, chanting, waving, screaming—the outrageous and the outraged, splendid in their flaming colors, splendid in their delirious up-front birthday celebration of liberation…

They swept up Sixth Avenue, from Sheridan Square to central Park, astonishing everything in their way. No one could quite believe it, eyes rolled back in heads, Sunday tourists traded incredulous looks, wondrous faces poked out of air-conditioned cars. My God, are those really homosexuals? Marching? Up sixth Avenue?

Times had changed and with the change came a new militancy and radicalism, found in not only the gay community, but also it also brewed in the feminist movement.

While Stonewall brought LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered) groups together in ways never seen before, smaller demonstrations had occurred, only with less media attention. In 1965, for an example, one of these smaller, yet important events took place on the White-House steps. Cuban President Fidel Castro’s government began to make plans for placing homosexuals into “camps.” Using the opportunity to gain support (as other civil rights groups had in the past) by using comparisons of Nazism and Communism to American freedom, ten gay rights picketers showed up in front of the White House. The next day twenty-nine showed up in front of the United Nations. To make a point concerning “American freedom,” one protestor’s sign said, ‘Cuba’s Government Persecutes Homosexuals, U.S. Government Beat Them to It.”

As the Daughters of Bilitis morphed, splintered and faded in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the purpose of the organization continued in individual members carrying on with “splintered” interests. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon left DOB for NOW at the end of 1970. Martin, along with many other angry radical feminists, had her day (like other feminists) directing anger towards the opposite sex. However, her anger toward the opposite sex in this case happened to spew toward the gay men in the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO). NACHO, while recognizing women’s liberation as a valuable movement, did nothing (in Martin’s opinion) towards ending sexual discrimination of women within their own organization. Women’s views often lost importance in favor of male ascendency. In the December 1970/January 1971 issue of The Ladder, Barbara Grier printed Martin’s opprobrious “goodbye” to the homophile and gay liberation movements, “If that’s All There Is.” In Martin’s final goodbye, she wrote:

[F]ifteen years of masochism is enough. I will not be your ‘nigger’ any longer. Nor was I ever your mother. Those are stultifying roles you laid on me, and I shall no longer concern myself with your toilet training. As I bid you adieu, I leave each of you to your own device. Take care of it, stroke it gently, mouth it, and fondle it. As the center of your consciousness, it’s really all you have.

Martin, like so many feminist sisters before her, took the high moral road as it related to sexual superiority. After the radical lesbian feminism of the 1970s, the 1980s evolved with less angry lesbians. The 1980s saw a return of teamwork among homosexuals of both sexes and many LGBT groups grew as offshoots of the 1970 organizations such as the National Gay Task Force, ACT UP and Queer Nation.

After committing herself to the NOW cause, Del Martin began to write. She and Lyon collaborated on Lesbian Women, which first published in 1972. The following year, Martin published her second book, Lesbian Love and Liberation. Her hallmark book, Battered Wives first published in 1976. The first book to detail the extent of spousal and family abuse, this book remains a classic sociological study on abuse, and still holds relevancy in university classrooms. In 1987, Martin earned a degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

The final demise of the Daughters of Bilitis came in 1978 with the resignation of San Francisco chapter president, Nina Kaiser. The chapter turned over what remained of their funds to the San Francisco Women’s Centers and to the Feminist Federal Credit Union. All DOB files along with twenty-three years of cards and letters from around the nation and the world, Ladder sales, conference history and furniture from the offices of Martin and Lyon, were donated to the LGBT Historical Society. During the twenty-three years of DOB existence, the organization had given birth to twenty chapters. The Daughters witnessed the 1973 Roe verses Wade decision guaranteeing women the right to choose an abortion. The same year, the Daughters watched as the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the list of disorders. Hard work from the Daughters in the arena of research had finally paid off. Then in April 1981, Phyllis and Del received a package marked “FBI” at their home in San Francisco. The package contained sixty-four sheets of paper. The papers contained information on the DOB and past memberships from the mid- 1950s until the mid-1970s. However, much of the gathered “intelligence” from the reports and records lost meaning by heavy black ink and it had taken the government over a year to comply with the couple’s request to receive this information. The couple experienced emotions of awe and indignation. Martin exclaimed, “I think it’s incredible that the government would waste so much money on such nonsense.” However, times had changed since the days of government surveillance and future vindication and honor awaited the couple.

In 1990, Lyon and Martin received the ACLU of Northern California’s highest award for courageous advocacy on behalf of civil liberties. In later years, Martin joined the group, Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC). The OLOC currently bestows each year, the Del Martin Old Lesbian Pride Award, which is “[given] to a Lesbian seventy years or older whose life and work has influenced and will continue to impact the lives of Old Lesbians.”

Forty-nine years after Rose Bamberger called to invite Phyllis and Del to join her club, the phone rang again. This time Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbians, had placed the call. Kate asked the two if they would agree to be the first couple to get married in San Francisco. Again without any hesitation, they said, “Yes!” Kate’s call came on February 11, 2004. They arrived at City Hall the next day just two days before Valentine’s Day, their original anniversary date. Martin and Lyon’s committed relationship had lasted for fifty-one years. Two years before, the couple had registered as California Domestic Partners. Entering City Hall, Del and Phyllis were surprised at the lack of opposition. They were sure that someone from the anti-marriage camp would have rushed to file an injunction preventing the marriage. However, the courts closed that day in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12. As a result, the marriage took place without controversy. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom gave the newlyweds a copy of the United States Constitution and a copy of the California State Constitution. Following the ceremony and much celebration, the Olivia travel company (famous for their lesbian cruise line) treated Martin and Lyon with a free cruise out of Boston. Del, eighty-three years old and Phyllis, seventy-nine, packed their bags and honeymooned. The honeymooners completed their cruise and then the marriage ended. On August 11, 2004, the California Supreme Court ruled that Mayor Newsom had overstepped legal bounds in allowing gay marriage in the city of San Francisco. All same-sex marriages became invalid. Fortunately, later the California Supreme Court decided to allow same-sex marriages in the state of California and Del and Phyllis were married once more on June 16, 2008.

Previously, on November 10, 2005, over two hundred women and men joined at Olivia Headquarters in San Francisco to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Daughters of Bilitis and to celebrate a birthday for Lyon who turned eighty-one that day. Former members of the DOB united that day. The history of LGBT rights over the last five decades stood out as outstanding testimony to Daughter achievement. Historian Marcia Gallo along with her partner attended the gala that day. Gallo had this to say, “The very space in which the party took place was testimony to their work: a women’s business like Olivia, which caters specifically to lesbians, would not have been possible without them.”

Culminating this chapter with the above creates a perfect ending. However, eventually lives and chapters both conclude. Del Martin passed away August 27, 2008 at the age of eighty-seven. Her partner Phyllis Lyon of fifty-five years survives her. Kate Kendell, who arranged the first short-lived marriage just four years earlier, reported that Martin died after a broken arm worsened existing health problems. Martin’s contribution has helped allow freedoms and rights, for both the lesbian and heterosexual women, not available fifty years ago. Therefore, all women everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Del Martin and the brave women of the DOB.

Chapter 4: The Rise of the Southern Daughters

The New South of the twentieth century experienced more than just the class and race issues of the previous century. Gender manifested itself as another issue alongside race and class. With the rise of urban expansion and the decrease of agricultural opportunities, young females flocked to new southern towns looking for job opportunities, and found sexual expression and recreation. Paychecks symbolized economic and social freedom. However, the social freedom quickly opposed previous Ante-Bellum norms. This chapter examines these changes in gender expression and the rise of the two southern Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) chapters located in Tampa and New Orleans. These two clubs typify most of the other national clubs yet bring a unique perspective to feminist and gay accomplishments gained at the end of the DOB era with a distinct local southern flavor.

Sexuality mixed with race, class and gender affected the southern political and the economic systems. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the women’s movement slowly turned toward other social issues including more autonomy in the work place and in family life. This paved the way for greater equality, for women and eventually, limited lesbian expression by the 1970s in the New South.

In Chapter 2, this paper examined lesbian Southern literature as it ranked in importance to the New Orleans Club. Inspecting cultural expression through literature brings understanding to the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LGBT) construct in the New South. Although the central organization of the DOB no longer published their national magazine, The Ladder, by the mid 1970s, chapters published local versions of the former. These publications reveal cultural paradigms of local lesbian and feminist groups. The Tampa and New Orleans chapters represent two classic examples of these types of paradigms by highlighting the local while retaining the national.

This chapter examines the history of twentieth century Southern lesbianism, the Southern history of the DOB and lesbian activities involving art and culture. In doing so, it sheds light on the New Orleans DOB organization by looking at the role the club played in the lives of their members and the affect their club had on non-member lesbians. During the first half of the twentieth century, when changing sexuality and gender norms did not transform easily in the New South, a climate finally emerged where the tenuous birth of the Daughters of Bilitis did occur.

The history and birth of sexual modernity in the South, throughout the first half of the twentieth- century, occurred on a long rocky road of intransigent antebellum values. This history, integral to understanding the slow rise in lesbian visibility, reveals this evolution. At the start of the twentieth century, suffragists ran the last leg of their race towards voting rights. As the Nineteenth Amendment passed ratification in 1920, great cultural and economic changes began to take place in the New South. For middle class women these changes came in the form of higher education and vocational training. With the vote came political empowerment especially for political clubs and women’s clubs that concerned themselves with social issues. An interesting phenomenon had occurred during the fight to the ballot box. Both suffragists and anti-suffragists acquired organizational and administrative skills as well as societal proficiency that differed from what ordinary homemaking offered. After the Nineteenth Amendment passed, ironically, the former anti-suffragists became voters and the suffragists turned their attention toward forming the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first proposed in1923. A spirit of feminine cultural freedom, differing from Southern paternalism, emerged.

Many young Southern women flocked to the cities in search of job opportunities, adventure and romance while their elders feared societal demise and the loss of white womanly virtue. The older generation became concerned that the woman’s place as the moral familial guide would soon be lost and the southern society they believed in would soon crumble. Emphasis, for the young female teen, had shifted from familial duties on the farm to pay checks that allowed for a lifestyle of fashion, make-up and entertainment. Flappers in the 1920s caused most adults great angst as this lifestyle flew in the face of the South’s white patriarchal traditions. The average age of the flapper was fourteen. The flapper wore short hair and donned a short skirt. She smoked and danced with wild abandon. These autonomous new values threatened the older white middle class. The same worried about the loss of patriarchal control resulting in societal chaos. Worse yet, this new lifestyle set the stage for sexual freedom and sexual expression. At the heart of this concern lay the fear that the young white female would soon become like the young black female, which is to say, sexually unrepressed and immoral degenerate. White supremacist femininity required careful cultivation as this tenet had always been the cornerstone of Southern respectability.

During the interwar years, adolescent girls who exercised social and sexual autonomy became a threat to the hierarchical family and the paternalistic government. Challenging a long revered social order was not without consequence resulting in the possible loss of reproductive ability. If the young heterosexual female incurred such condemnation and repercussion, then how much more condemnation and repercussion lay in store for the lesbian who by nature challenged all paternal and hierarchical systems?

However, World War II had planted seeds of sexual and personal freedom. By the 1940s, eugenics and sterilization began to lose luster and purpose (at least where white women were concerned.) In the light of Nazi Germany, as sterilization lost acceptance as a viable societal solution, the ethos of the woman’s right to her own body began to germinate. In two more decades, these seeds bloomed into reproductive rights issues and abortion. Meanwhile, the concern over female teen sexuality took a subtle change during World War II.

A blurring of normal sexual activity and deviant behavior began to emerge on the eve of the war. Young women, dating service members, with the intent of finding romance and recreation, caused sociologists and psychologists to rethink teenage sexual activity. Professionals in the early 1940s blamed the immoral girl for corrupting the innocent soldier who only followed natural sexual urges. By the middle of the decade, these same professionals reframed this dating into recreational fun and romance as a viable channel towards marriage.

During this era, a concern emerged that repressing natural heterosexual tendencies, through well meaning parents, might cause adolescent stagnation in normal sexual development. According to some professionals, this repression led to “queer people, with all kinds of mental instabilities and quirks revealing “even more clearly the vagaries of their behavior.” Lesbianism in the 1940s, explained as incapacity to realize femininity, represented one such queer twist. Fear over the “queer” may have contributed to wartime laxity towards heterosexual physical activity. This “laxity” towards sexuality did contain limitations that barred intercourse during dating, and encouraged complete sexual satisfaction only within the framework of marriage. In the following decade, a greater crackdown emerged against the gay and lesbian community. Along with the psychiatric diagnosis of “mental instability” for the gay and lesbian, additionally, there entered the governmental accusations of communism during the Cold War period of the 1950s. These two concepts intertwined, heightening public awareness of heterosexuality as a collective national strength. In this climate, the Daughters of Bilitis organization quietly emerged.

However, mostly this climate produced a female heterosexual frenzy towards marriage, family and normalcy. Unintended consequences resulted from societal pressure to meet “Mr. Right.” Young women, fearful of becoming “spinsters” aggressively pursued young men, which resulted in a perceived loss of male dominance, which again threatened the Southern system of paternalistic hierarchy. Furthermore, femininity demanded that young women take responsibility for sexual control within the relationship, not aggressively encourage sex before marriage.

This terrible fear of “spinster” status of the late 1940s and 1950s drove the “over-forward girl” in her hunt for a groom. Incomplete transition to feminine heterosexuality left a young woman labeled as a “sexually immature” failure or a mannish lesbian. Conversely, these seeds of sexual empowerment, planted in these young adults, continued to grow in the following decades and made room for independent women, “spinster” or married. However, when girls in the New South insisted on this type of autonomy over love interests, the older generation feared their loss of feminine normalcy, which was integral to “the southern way of life.” The girls’ actions put at risk racial segregation and male dominance.

In this era, contempt ruled the day for the “spinster.” Mab Segrest, a southern lesbian author, writing on Southern Gothic literature in the late 1970s, compared the “patriarchal state of normalcy” with the “southern freak” or the grotesque as revealed in Southern Gothic literature. Anything outside its place in the hierarchal scheme of white male privilege transforms into the freakish or the grotesque, which the writings of such authors as William Faulkner or Carson McCullers also make evident. Female protagonists who did not marry or females who showed strength and independence often portrayed the grotesque or the “less than” character within these authors’ works. Yet, Segrest argues that the hatred, misogamy, racism and homophobia found in the patriarchs, reveal themselves as the real sideshow of the freak and the grotesque.

In spite of spoken validation of the white privileged heterosexual male, there remained unspoken same-sex intimacies as revealed in the literature of southern plantation fiction. Michael Bibler in his book, Cotton’s Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936-1968, argues that through the study of southern authors, including William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Lillian Hellman, a strong case can be made for homosexuality as a fact of nature embedded into the construct of hierarchical power structures. Unlike Segrest, Bibler understands these author’s characters in the light of queer equalitarianism among not only the planter class, but also among blacks and whites of the same-sex but perhaps not the same race.

DOB expansion occurred lastly in the South and it occurred almost simultaneously with the demise of the national DOB organization. By the mid 1970s, only two cities in two Southern states claimed affiliation with the National DOB organization. One chapter organized in New Orleans, Louisiana and the second chapter organized in Tampa, Florida. The New South, known for feet dragging, struggled over the years with diversity, race, and cultural change. Lesbian organizations of any kind operated in the face of fear. Lesbian and Gay groups with “new agendas” for obtaining civil rights were rarely welcomed.

So the question remains, what allowed New Orleans and Tampa to form semi-public clubs? One plausible explanation for the New Orleans chapter might be Louisiana’s long history of diversity. Louisiana, known for deep traditions and roots, has retained diverse cultural heritages stemming from French and Spanish influences that predate statehood. Natchez and Chickasaw Native Americans, Cajuns and Creoles, Blacks and Whites kept colorful cultures alive and separate and yet, at times mixed. Acceptance of diversity set Louisiana apart from other Southern states, especially the other states located in the Deep South. While New Orleans lesbians never met with full acceptance and at times met with brutal realities, they experienced tolerance slightly more in New Orleans than lesbians in other Deep South settings did.

The statement, “The personal is the political” proved an apt catchphrase for the New Orleans DOB members. The politics of same-sex dance and “butch” dress became rallying points for political involvement. When asked to describe members political ideology and political involvement, Sharon Dauzat, who once led the New Orleans Club, replied, “Uninvolved because they were young.” She continued, “We tried to get people to vote democratic, write letters and get rid of the police chief.”

Dauzat addressed these political and social conditions extant to Louisiana in the 1970s. According to Dauzat, New Orleans Police Chief Louis Giarousso proved formidable against the LGBT community during this decade. He routinely billy clubbed and arrested “butch” women. Dauzat described him as “…tough, very tough.” However, during this time, the New Orleans DOB found an ally with district attorney, Harry Connick Sr. who supported the city’s DOB activities. In turn, the DOB supported Harry Connick Sr., and “yes,” Dauzat answered, “Harry Connick Sr. is the father of Harry Connick Jr. the famous singer-musician.”

Florida, on the other hand, long known as a southern tourist destination, began attracting vacationers to the northern part of Florida since 1870. A plausible factor for the establishment of a DOB chapter in Tampa relates to Northern economic interests that began locating in Florida, during World War II. World War II brought a migration of people from different regions to provide labor for new industry and military installations throughout the state during and following the war bringing an influx of cultural diversity. Citrus growers experienced expanded production during the war and the creation of wartime military evolved into the aerospace industry following the war, which also brought in an equally diverse population. Perhaps this influx of cultural diversity allowed for the formation of a DOB club in Tampa. By the 1970s, Tampa had become a busy metropolitan city. Unfortunately, no former members have been located to interview from this club. When asked if she (Dauzat) or other members were aware that a Tampa DOB club had existed and formed during the formation of the New Orleans club, Dauzat replied, “no,” that she was not aware of a DOB in Tampa.

Both Southern DOB chapters had short lives as part of the central DOB organization. Both began to build membership as the National organization commenced to unravel. The Ladder, highjacked by dissenting members, and taken to Sparks, Nevada, printed a new first edition by early summer, 1970. Regardless of this infighting, at the centralized level, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin continued to nurture the nascent Southern DOBs encouraging them as autonomous clubs. Unfortunately, after the collapse of the national and local San Francisco DOB clubs in 1978, a national political backlash that began in 1972 came to its apogee with a surge of right-wing groups and the politics of the Reagan and Bush years. By 1978, the early nurturing of the New Orleans DOB allowed this club to arise and meet these new conservative challenges.

Little information concerning racism exists for both Southern DOB clubs. Although rumors of racism in the Tampa and New Orleans Chapters have a few oral traditions for backing, some Southern gay and lesbian literature assures us that the “Southern White-Lavender” did not always extend welcoming words for the “Southern Black-Lavender.” Author Mab Segrest addresses this hypocrisy through Audre Lorde. Lorde, a black lesbian feminist poet and activist was born in New York City and raised in Harlem during the 1940s. She retained a strong belief in the empowerment of all women, embracing all women, of all race and creed and became frustrated with those who did not. In her frustration, Lorde wrote to white radical feminist Mary Daly:

The history of white women who are unable to hear Black women’s words, or to maintain dialogue with us, is long and discouraging…I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of their destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with a better hearing. This letter attempts to break that silence.

Segrest agreeing with Lorde added, “[T]his inability of white people to see or hear is not merely a Southern problem.” Lorde had ties with DOB leadership and with others who contributed to The Ladder. Barbara Smith, a black lesbian feminist who wrote for The Ladder, knew Lorde as a friend and as a peer. By the late 1970s, they founded Kitchen Table Women of Color Press to insure the acceptance of all women. For whatever reason, Lorde did not contribute any of her writing to The Ladder. However, her life as a black lesbian speaking from inside the DOB brought an awareness of her viewpoint.

Sharon Dauzat, who took over the New Orleans DOB shortly after its formation in the mid-1970s, gave a more optimistic report. When asked if her club successfully integrated those of diverse races, and to speak on general club diversity, she replied:

“Yes…six to ten out of 30- 40 women were identified as African-Americans, 3 out of the 40 were of Asian descent and there were a few who were hearing impaired. We had an open and diverse group. The group consisted of mostly middle class lesbians who were still living at home and just coming out. Their ages ranged from 18-35, but most were in their twenties. Some attended college while others worked. A couple of the members were bisexual. We were not yet familiar with the term ‘transgender;’ we only understood lesbians to be either ‘fem’ or ‘butch’ and a third of our members fell into the category of ‘butch.’”

By the 1980s, Dauzat reported that a lesbian couple (Susan Hanson and her partner “Leah”) tried to adopt an African-American child. In Dauzat’s words, “…they ran into crap, but they finally made it happen. They were the first DOB lesbian couple to adopt. This was a milestone. We had a celebration [for the couple and] the two year old baby.”

The available data for the Tampa DOB club does not address any racial tension or provide welcoming words for those of color. However, the Tampa group did print their own periodical, Daughters, A DOB Publication: A Lesbian Magazine and in the first issue, July 1975, they printed, “Gays Contest Military Rule.” In this article Sgt. Lenny Matlovich, a closeted homosexual, decided to make a career in the Air Force. Ashamed of being gay, Matlovich denied his sexually identity and “put down” others when the subject surfaced. Daughters quoted Matlovich as saying “…[how]his whole attitude changed with the gradual acceptance of blacks who were in the service with him. He enrolled in a race relations program and soon became an instructor. He began to feel as he taught of racial discrimination that homosexuals were discriminated against too.” As a result, Sgt. Matlovich “came out” while serving in the Air Force and the Air Force initiated action to have him discharged despite an unblemished twelve-year career with earned medals. Sgt. Matlovich challenged the military’s right to ban gays. The article continues with the story of Commander Lawrence Heisel. Heisel, a 1955 graduate from Annapolis was the first commissioned officer to fight an automatic discharge for homosexual conduct. The Bureau of Naval Personnel contended in the mid 1970s that, “Homosexuals would be open to blackmail. Heisel [replied that] an admitted homosexual cannot be blackmailed.”

In contrast with the social uplift programs of the southern DOB clubs, Bibler’s book, printed in 2009, centers on the grotesque form of absurd sexual violence, which he incorporates class, race, gender, sexual orientation and ageism. Yet, by no means does Bibler view homosexual relationships in Southern literature only through this lens. Bibler argues that southern homosexuality ironically has ties to hierarchy and patriarchy but at the same time, homosexuality proves to bring equanimity into relationships that normally demanded acquiesce. So perhaps people see only what fits into their own paradigm. Perhaps the two Southern Chapters of the Daughters of Bilitis understood the political incorrectness of racism in the national DOB scheme and made sure that it did not become open to the public eye. Finding proof of racism is a difficult task in using available southern DOB literature; however, other Southern Gay and Lesbian literature acknowledge racism as common. More research is required to understand more fully, what kind of welcome awaited the black southern lesbian in the Tampa and New Orleans chapters. Interviews with past DOB members that may have had different experiences and interpretations with race and class within these southern chapters may yet be possible.

Just prior to printing the first issue of the Tampa chapter’s July issue of Daughters, the organizers learned from the central organization in San Francisco that affiliation with the The Ladder and DOB as a national organization was no longer possible. The first reason lay with the fact that since the summer of 1970, The Ladder had been printing in Nevada without the blessing of the San Francisco leadership. Many DOB members belonged to local chapters, which possessed little knowledge of this rift. In a letter dated June 26, 1975, which was written to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, “Chris,” one of the four founders of the Tampa DOB and Daughters promised Martin and Lyon that they planned to disavow ties with The Ladder and DOB Headquarter at the next Tampa chapter meeting. Funds used for the publication of Daughters came from separate pecuniary resources, so fortunately a conflict of interest did not exist. Only the words “A DOB Publication” needed removal from future issues and the title Daughters remained while the Tampa chapter kept publication control.

Further communication to Lyon and Martin from “Chris” indicates a rift between local leadership within this newly formed club. “Chris” proclaimed “disgust” for organizations that allow members to do “all the shitwork” (concerning editing and publishing Daughters) and then quietly remove the “workers” from leadership positions when they are not around to defend themselves. “Chris” ends her letter lamenting her treatment at the University of South Florida where she had hoped for acceptance in the graduate program for Rehabilitation Counseling. She had “[tried] to be the first self declared lesbian to be accepted in graduate school.” Blaming voices outside the University of South Florida campus, “Chris” said, “I’m hesitant to call myself a lesbian feminist anymore.”

The Daughters publication, patterned after The Ladder, contained articles revolving around educating the lesbian and the straight population. Like The Ladder, Daughters acted as a forum for political paradigms concerning civil rights for minorities. The publications also acted as a social and cultural community calendar for the arts and other events of lesbian interest. Both magazines offered creative space for burgeoning writers, artists and poets. Short stories and essays, meant to entertain and educate, flourish throughout the editions.

The New Orleans chapter, while not publishing a magazine, did release newsletters and calendars. New Orleans Daughters formed their chapter August 25, 1974. A letter addressed to Martin and Lyons, dated January 23, 1975, laments missing a recent December visit from them. In this letter Vicki Combs, apologized and explained why she missed Martin and Lyons letter, which had informed her of their upcoming visit. Combs also sent official contact information to Lyons and Martin as she had taken the initiative in organizing the New Orleans club. The New Orleans chapter had elected officers, but in their nascent state had not yet fully organized, hence the misinformation.

When asked how she, Dauzat, personally got involved with the burgeoning New Orleans club, she replied that she had noticed flyers posted by Combs in local gay bars. Next, she observed a notice concerning the formation of a DOB group in Figaro, a gay periodical published in Metairie which is a suburb located in east New Orleans. This particular gay club met at St. Marks Community Center in New Orleans on North Rampart Street and opened their doors to the gay and lesbian community. At one particular meeting, Meg Christian (a member of the St. Marks club) booked keynote speaker Lynette Jerry. Jerry was the record album division CEO for the Olivia Company. This company also owns the lesbian cruise-line (Olivia Cruise Line) that Lyons and Martin honeymooned on years later. However, at this time, the Olivia Company distributed record albums into LGBT communities. Olivia brought in different lesbian-feminist artists to play during local gay and lesbian socials, introducing gays and lesbian to new recording artists and their music. Dauzat came to this St. Marks Community Center function where she met Combs for the first time. She described her as a “thin beautiful” woman and, like earlier daughters who came before her, she said, “yes!,” she would like to join the nascent DOB group.

The newsletter, entitled, “Gay-La, D.O.B. Newsletter”, informed chapter members of upcoming events and news concerning Vicki Combs. The second issue (August-September 1975) reported that Combs suffered two broken legs because of a motorcycle accident and had remained hospitalized for last six weeks. The newsletter continues with a promotion of an upcoming social function, “Rolling on the River.” (See Figure 3) Ticket prices were $6.00 per person and included The Commodore Band. Patrons were encouraged to bring their own liquor (BYOL).

As a result, of Combs’s misfortune, Dauzat, the secretary-treasurer, took over leadership duties for the New Orleans DOB. According to Dauzat, Combs went back home to her mother’s house to recuperate. Dauzat is not sure she remembers where Combs’s mother lived but thinks Combs came originally from Kentucky. She eventually returned and established a club meeting room with the help of Troy Perry founder of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in New Orleans. Soon after, the New Orleans DOB incorporated and obtained a tax identification number.

Unfortunately, the accident took its toll. Severed nerves caused the gradual loss of mobility in her legs. Other, medical issues stemming from the accident complicated her recovery. After Combs short return to New Orleans, she suddenly disappeared. Dauzat commented that, “Nothing got in Combs way…until she became too ill to continue…she [lacked] enough physical strength” Nonetheless, Combs essential work in founding DOB meetings at St. Marks and the Metropolitan Community Church in New Orleans cannot be overstated.

Today, there are hundreds of Metropolitan Community Churches located worldwide with a mission to serve the spiritual needs of LGBT community. In New Orleans, the DOB chapter also acted as support for MCC programs and activities in return for meeting space. This DOB chapter also promoted the National Organization of Women (NOW) meetings and socials, which included activities such as potluck dinners and women’s art festivals. Also included on the New Orleans chapter’s social calendar were regular community events of interest including community arts.

While on the surface it may seem doubtful that these two short-lived Southern DOB clubs, under the national organization, contributed in a major way to LGBT rights or societal acceptance, it is fair to say that changes in New South societal views on sexuality did contribute to the chapters’ ability to exist. Furthermore, Dauzat explained that the New Orleans chapter felt less restraint once free from the central DOB (after organizational demise occurred) and accomplishments were less challenging. Organizational autonomy led to greater freedom of local choice in activism. When asked how successful she felt the New Orleans DOB had been, Dauzat answered, “very, until 1989 when I left. However, the club remained constantly active until 1987. We had kept the party going with DOB extravaganzas where we dressed to the ‘nines.’ The last New Year’s Eve dance happened in 1987. Loretta Mimms tried unsuccessfully to continue club meetings and activities, and the club soon petered out.”

Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, the club experienced steps forward and steps backward on the road to societal acceptance. One of the first steps the New Orleans club took resembled a first step taken by the original DOB chapter. Playing on changing societal views, the club hoped for the right to engage in same-sex dancing, minus harassment. According to Dauzat, same-sex dancing fell into the legal category of the “lewd and illicit.” Of course at places like Charlene’s Bar (Charlene Schneider, owner), same-sex couples did dance together, but removing the legal terminology from the act fell short of success through the 1970s.

The late 1970s saw the nascent rise of the religious right. Anita Bryant began her campaign against the homosexual community in Dade County Florida. She fought against local legislation that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, pertaining to housing and job opportunities. This venue became the launching pad for national attention concerning Bryant’s crusade. LGBT communities in diverse cities rallied against her as she began her national tour.

Local DOB clubs led the way of protest against her speaking engagements and activities. On June 26, 1977, Bryant traveled to New York City where the New York DOB gave her a welcome in the form of a protest march. The New York club had held a “Gab and Java.” in order to discuss plans for Bryant’s arrival. Bryant’s Waterloo had begun.

New Orleans Pop Symphony had invited Bryant to perform with them during their 1978 summer seasonal series, known as the Summer Pops. The New Orleans DOB applied for and received a marching permit to protest Bryant’s presence. Dauzat feels that this particular march represented the apex of New Orleans DOB political activism. Dauzat reported that, “Bryant saw our few hundred marchers at the protest.” Bryant confirms on her web page about the New Orleans Summer Pops invitation and that she felt assailed, not only in New Orleans, but by “protest marches and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands [of protesters]…from coast to coast.” As a result, Bryant suffered the loss of career and eventually her marriage.

Dauzat explained that the New Orleans DOB’s main goal was to hold social activities that promoted acceptance among a diverse city population. They rented boats and held dances and picnics in an effort to normalize societal perception of gay and lesbians as contributing members of New Orleans society. Lily Tomlin preformed as part of DOB entertainment in the elegant Blue Room at the Roosevelt Hotel in April 1981. Dauzat reported that the DOB “bought the room out [that evening]” for Tomlin’s performance. As a result, the New Orleans DOB, known for their community events and entertainment, began to win community respect in the early part of the 1980s.

Dauzat stresses that these steps towards respect were only the beginning and that the DOB did not always receive a warm welcome. The gay bars, Charlene’s for example, worked cohesively with DOB members. Together they created community-centered events. However,

by the time the DOB launched the 1975 community social events calendars, most DOB members had tired of the New Orleans Gay bar scene. The bars represented a hiding place for the LGBT community, which proved helpful during the first half of the twentieth-century, but became less useful as a tool for activism. Most of the bar owners were leery of the DOB. They worried that the club members might bring trouble to their places of business. Alice Brady owned a gay bar named The Galley House and she felt (at first) that she needed to be careful with her DOB associations.

In some ways, the bar proprietors were correct. The DOB did not always receive community acceptance. Vandalism regularly occurred. Businesses refused service to the club including catering. However, Charlene’s bar supported the New Orleans DOB. Charlene (Schneider) was an active DOB member. Ellen DeGeneres played Charlene’s as a young an up and coming comedian. DeGeneres, however, did not seek membership in the DOB. Today, Charlene’s bar no longer exists and Schneider passed away in 2008 from cancer.

In 1979, a police strike forced the cancellation of Mardi Gras Parades. On Sunday February 25, 1979, Charlene’s and The Golden Lantern (a gay men’s bar) took to the streets as the “Krewe of Cancellation” and held a Mardi Gras Parade. The next day the DOB, courtesy Charlene’s had made front-page news as Schneider and Dauzat graced the front page. (See Figure 3)

The following year in 1980, police cancelled Krewe of Cancellation, and issued no parade permit. The New Orleans DOB organized the Mardi Gras Parade just the same without a permit and the police promptly broke up the parade. However, during the next year (1981,) the Krewe of Ishtar formed. This group of lesbians came together from different club including a few members from the New Orleans DOB. The Krewe of Ishtar was the first all lesbian Mardi Gras Parade organization. Besides parade participation, the LGBT community put forth extra effort in forming and attending Mardi Gras Balls. In all of these activities, Dauzat stressed that their DOB purpose “was to win NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) over.”

The 1979 Krewe of Cancellation consisted of a lesbian-gay alliance. The men and women had worked together through their respective bars, Charlene’s and The Golden Lantern. According to Dauzat, Schneider agreed to work with the gay men, however; like Del Martin, Schneider felt that the gay men’s organization cared little for women and lesbian rights.

Conversely, Dauzat claims that a special bond formed between many of the lesbians and gay men and that they worked well together on LGBT projects. Unfortunately, in the early 1980s too many of these “brothers” began to die from aides. Dauzat reports, “…that at first no one knew what was killing them.”

The South had slowly changed over a decade (1975-1985) of turmoil and violence over class, race, gender and sexual identity. Forty-years later the New South has yet to let go completely of Old South codes. Unfortunately, even today some Southern schools remain a breeding ground for hate and anti-diversity and, in this mindset, retain the old South tradition of the grotesque. However, after the Dauzat interview, a new appreciation for the New Orleans DOB long-term goals emerged and the original idea of a “short lived” DOB club quickly faded into the reality of a productive, politically perceptive club with an enduring spirit outliving the centralized DOB by over a decade.

Conclusion

Shortly after the Freedom of Information Act took effect in the early 1980s, (similar to the Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon’s experience) a different box arrived in response to another’s request for information. This time the F.B.I. had released its Hemingway file. Beginning in the 1960s, Ernest Hemingway began acting strangely. As his mental health gradually deteriorated, and as paranoia set in, many of his associates distanced themselves from him. His long time friend A.E. Hotchner noticed the decline. In 1959, Hotchner had accompanied Hemingway on a trip to Spain. Hemingway’s assignment was to write an article for Life magazine on Spain’s highest ranked matadors. For two days, they celebrated Hemingway’s 60th birthday in the summer of 1959. Hotchner described the summer of 1959 as “glorious,” and that, “Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.” However, by May of 1960, Hemingway’s life began to unravel.

First, according to Hotchner, cutting 530 words from a Life magazine article seemed problematic for Hemingway. He seemed distracted. Soon Hemingway was convinced that the Feds followed every move he made. He made a point to tell his friends that whenever he drove his car, the F.B.I. followed him. Furthermore, they bugged his car, his phone and intercepted his mail. They stole his bank statements and had access to his bank account. They followed him into bars and restaurants. His friends became concerned. Hemingway was no longer the Hemingway they knew. Depression had taken over; he looked awful, and he no longer enjoyed hunting. Writing became increasingly difficult. His wife felt deeply disturbed over his behavior.

Hemingway, soon hospitalized, endured electric shock treatments. On short releases from the hospital, and while heavily sedated, he twice tried suicide. His treatment did little to “cure his delusions.” He was sure his car and hospital room had been bugged. More shock treatments ensued. Hotchner tenderly asked Hemingway why he wanted to kill himself. Hemingway replied, “What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?” After a few more questions from Hotchner, Hemingway became convinced that Hotchner (like other “friends”) were pumping him for information and in turn, reporting the information back to the Feds. Hemingway never spoke to Hotchner again. Then, on July 2, 1961, as his wife slept, Hemingway removed his favorite shotgun from a gun closet and ended his life in his home in Ketchum, Idaho.

The F.B.I. file revealed that in the early 1940s, J. Edgar Hoover had placed Hemingway under surveillance. Hoover became suspicious of Hemingway and his related activities in Cuba. Even though Hemingway performed heroically during WWII, Hemingway’s lifestyle, writings, and tolerance of diversity threatened Cold War American policy. To Hoover, Hemingway’s life reflected possible communist support. Hemingway had lived among the Left Bank Parisian bohemians during the interwar years. Hoover needed little other reason to suspect Hemingway’s political allegiance. In the light of Hoover’s investigations, the once rough and ready Hemingway deteriorated.

It was in this environment, that the DOB grew. The F.B.I. also suspected the lesbians of communist activities and as demonstrated in Chapter 2, kept records of club activities. For the most part the burgeoning club remained ignorant of the ongoing investigations. Not until 1977, did the thought occur to the Daughters that infiltration had been an ongoing operation. In 1977, the San Francisco Examiner released a story concerning a CIA agent who had surreptitiously attended the DOB’s first national convention in 1960, the same year Hemingway became aware of the federal presence in his life.

After Martin and Lyons had received their box in the mail under the Freedom of Information Act, they were amazed at the amount of bungling which had transpired at taxpayers’ expense. The file revealed CIA agents, who resembled “Keystone Kops,” attempting to infiltrate DOB events and gain information. In 1956, misinformation contained in the file included a misspelled heading, “DAUGHTERS OF BELITAS.”

The agents often experienced frustration because of their own stereotypical attitudes and false images of lesbians, which often led to tainted information. Some agents had classified the DOB as a “ladies auxiliary” of the Mattachine Society. Unknowingly, other informants submitted false information concerning DOB event locations and activities. Martin shared that in 1957, the DOB attempted to form a local chapter in Los Angeles. While they were in LA, they distributed leaflets on various gay and lesbian issues. They distributed handouts such as “What To Do In Case of Arrest” as bar raids and arrests became a common scenario in the mid-1960s. Martin continued by saying, “The most hilarious part was that this same material had been sent directly to the director of the FBI by the Mattachine Society of Washington [D.C.]. The Mattachine Society invited Hoover to discuss the federal government’s policies.” Hoover, needless to say, did not respond.

Both Hemingway and the DOB ranked as possible threats to national security through the lens of cold war conservatives. Sadly, Hemingway suffered the loss of his mental health; while curiously, the Daughters continued promoting their agendas in ignorance. In the Daughters viewpoint, why would the government investigate their activities? Most of the founding women considered themselves conservatives. They were conservative in dress, manners and decorum. They saw themselves as law abiding political activists promoting civil rights. Their government promoted “freedom and justice for all.” In turn, they were promoting active citizenship by working through the American system to improve the lives of others. They had lived their lives as “the other.” They had nothing to lose. If the House for Un-American Activities (HUAC) had put any of them on trial for communistic activities with the threat of lesbian baiting, HUAC would have only fleshed out the truth—lesbians but not card caring communists. The term “Conservative progressives” described many of the members’ political propensities. Most of the members had grown up in the shadow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt politics. Federal bungling had protected the DOB, and once they had aligned with the National Organization of Women (NOW,) they found greater protection in numbers and in the organizations available political strength.

When the DOB members had realized the FBI and CIA activities, it seemed sad, yet, in many ways humorous. For Hemingway, the opposite held true. As a writer, Hemingway sparkled as a national treasure. He was a man’s man, a war hero and a lover of art. He moved in bohemian circles and yet, as the 1954 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, he moved among society’s elite. In his view, how could his country question his patriotism? With his writings scrutinized for un-American content, how could he continue to write? Unlike the Daughters, he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Loved and adored, Hemingway was not accustomed to living as “the other.”

The cold war Republicans, longing for a return to power after a period of long Democratic rule, used fear and religion as a stepping-stone to regain power. Suspected homosexuals, purged from federal jobs, outnumbered those purged over suspected communist activities. Evangelist Billy Graham lionized the cautious Americans who “[exposed] the pinks, the lavenders, and the reds who have sought refuge beneath the wings of the American Eagle.”

Nonetheless, the Daughters not only successfully hid beneath the wings of the American eagle (i.e. political system) but also melded into the feminist movement. The Radicalesbians brought a fresh truth to the feminist heterosexuals. The right over their own bodies and reproduction logically led to a woman’s right to find her sexual identification and self-expression. It is plausible that this eventual blending offered protection for lesbians in the feminine herd from judicial authorities. No communist organization ever came to trial, only individuals accused of progressive or socialist ideologies. Even though the DOB organization retained an “under investigation” status, no official charges were ever drawn. This administration may have pressured corporations and organizations to dissolve or fire personnel in order to conform to the national consensus. However, only individuals accused of “homosexual activity” ever went to trial. Accusations of “homosexual activity” against individuals in a courtroom setting proved useful for extorting confessions of communist activity.

Gay bars provided the most likely location for homosexual arrest. DOB clubs provided an alternative safe environment for social gatherings. Later, the New Orleans club worked for societal integration outside the gay bar scene through recreational community inclusion in the mid 1970s. The 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City brought new visibility to the LGBT community along with the need for basic civil protection based on sexual identity. There is no doubt of the importance that gay bars have played in LGBT history. However, the current state of this venerated icon may now be in its demise.

June Thomas argues in her June 27, 2011 Slate article, “The Gay Bar: Is it Dying?” that with gay couples celebrating marriage, society has become more tolerant and even welcoming. Yet ironically, after the New York State Senate approved same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian New Yorkers headed to the Stonewall Inn to celebrate. Thomas does not dismiss the importance of past gay establishments. She acknowledges the importance of gay bar history in passing down gay ethics, rules, and culture of LGBT life. However, Thomas reports that LGBT mainstreaming has moved many potential couples into the online dating services. Additionally, with the rise of same-sex marriage, and a rise in societal acceptance of the same, more gay couples now socialize in conventional bars and restaurants.

Traditionally, gay families existed before wedding cakes and gay families with children (natural and adopted) have been another step towards societal integration. Like the New Orleans DOB’s goal to bring positive lesbian visibility through community contributions, loving same-sex families have brought positive visibility to the LGBT community. As a result, states are beginning to sanction same-sex relationships. The fact that couples, like Susan Hanson and her partner Leah of the New Orleans DOB, fought for adoption rights in the 1980s helped pave the way for the twenty-first century fight for same-sex family equality.

However, spousal equality in same-sex marriages has come full circle on the feminist issue of labor division within familial structures. Some states, like New York, that allow gay marriage, at first demanded that one partner choose the title of groom while the other declare the status of bride. Within this framework, the issue of LGBT equality and woman’s equality conflates into a strange oleo. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg quickly straightened out this bizarre dilemma. Within 24 hours, he rephrased the applications to read, “Bride/Groom/Spouse A” and “Bride/Groom/Spouse B.”

This dilemma is not new. Until the rise of women’s equality, lesbian couples traditional fell into masculine and feminine roles. Under gay bar rules, women had to choose between butch/femme presentations. Those who refused to choose a sexual identifier found exclusion from the gay bar culture. In some bars, the restrooms were marked “butch” and “femme” which made life difficult if you identified as neither.

Then, there was author Gertrude Stein. Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas entertained many heterosexual couples in their left-bank Parisian home. However, Stein had set the gender rules for visitors early in her literary game. Gertrude’s main attentions fell toward the husband. If the wife tried to participate in an interesting conversation, it fell upon Alice to distract the wife from adding to the conversation. Writing on this particular practice, Sylvia Beach (Stein’s Parisian colleague) said, “Curiously, it was only applied to wives; non-wives were admitted to Gertrude’s conversation.” Perhaps Stein sought a type of equality between her married male associates through the cultural exclusion of wives in “man talk.”

Before the 1960s, no other pattern existed for committed partners in same-sex relationships. Furthermore, even though heterosexual relationships have moved away from stereotypical roles, there remains the myth that gay couples consist of an assertive and masculine individual and the other who by nature is feminine and submissive. On the other hand, gay couples, long the proponents of equality and civil rights, may have much to contribute to marriage relationships by helping different-sex couples find egalitarian ground.

While straight women, gays and lesbians have gained enormous ground since 1955, the question remains, will future generations continue the fight for greater equality and keep safe past gained ground? Women still are paid 77 cents to a man’s dollar. The UN Commission on the Status of Women reported on February 28, 2000 that globally, at least one in three women and girls are beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. The National Coalition of Anti-violence Programs (NCAVP) reported that bias motivated violence against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community saw a sharp rise by 23% between 2009 and 2010. Transgender women made up almost half of the percentage increase. Most of this violence, directed at transgender women, resulted in their murder.

Susan J. Douglas, feminist scholar, historian and current Communications departmental chair at the University of Michigan, speaks on the image of women as portrayed through popular culture and media. Douglas argues that since the mid 1990s, feminism has become a strange mixture of “embedded feminism and enlightened sexism.” “Embedded feminism” consists of traditional societal accepted feminism where women have gained empowerment through education, career opportunities and choice. “Enlightened sexism” consists of retro-sexual objectification of women leading to a hidden patriarchal agenda. This accomplishment has occurred through women buying into the idea of sexual empowerment through hyper-sexuality and consumerism. Meanwhile, most women who buy into this objectification for themselves and others fail to grasp current common inequalities in the job market, pay, and familial obligations. Douglas faults the portrayal of women in the media for this disparity. Corporate interests have capitalized on the “ugly, pudgy, unattractive” feminist image promoting instead a culture of sexualized women. In turn, this has catered to their own “bottom-line” and dominate male interests. Corporate America has successfully capitalized on an age-old fear of emasculation and in the process brought sexual subjugation of women back into vogue.

Today, feminism is not dead; however, LGBTQ issues receive greater media visibility. These issues include, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA,) Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT,) California’s Proposition 8 and same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, lesbians still shoulder responsibility for both movements and feminism remains an important lesbian issue (as well as a heterosexual issue) as glass ceilings, sexual harassment, and “the mommy track” all haunt today’s women.

Fortunately, from a historical perspective, great changes have occurred in a short amount of time. Tens of thousands of years of female subjugation passed by before women began to speak and receive attention. This occurrence has happened only in the last 200 years of Western Civilization. Yet, even after American women received voting rights, the lack of equal rights and personal fulfillment experienced by most women received little recognition until after the 1960s.

Feminist activist and actress Marlo Thomas has summed up her perspective on the cultural 1960s “women and place” paradigm with her observation in 1966, “I was convincing TV executives to produce my show That Girl, about a single girl living on her own and pursuing a career, they asked me ‘would anyone watch a show like that?’ The men at the network were afraid America wasn’t ready for a girl ‘living outside of a family unit.’” Thomas concedes that women, thanks to past feminist trailblazers, have come a long way since That Girl first aired, yet Thomas still believes that the feminist concerns mentioned above still demand attention.

Thomas helped start the Ms. Foundation for Women in 1973. The Ms. Foundation for Women established to seed other organizations that in turn helped other women. The funding first came from royalty sources such as Ms. Magazine and Free to Be… You and Me. Today with multiple funding sources, the foundation remits $4 million in annual grants.

Thomas trail blazed during Second Wave feminism with women like Gloria Steinman, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan. She now writes for the Huffington Post, “Huffpost Women” section. Her first article, “Passing the Torch…Who’s Going to run With It?” appeared July 31, 2011. Her question implores an answer. As she and other second wave feminists recede into their seventies and eighties, the question is pertinent. In her answer she writes,

So now, after all the marches and the consciousness-raising and the law changing, it’s up to the next generation to protect the hard-won rights of women everywhere. These rights have to be defended and protected with vigilance, or they [will] be chipped away. It’s no different than our democracy. We must be ever vigilant for both. A lot of women cleared a lot of tough brush in those wild to get us to a place of entitlement today. With hope in our hearts, we pass it on to the next generation with these words: Use it. Enjoy it. And grow it for the generation after you.

As Thomas, Steinem, Phyllis Lyons, Rita Mae Brown, Sharon Dauzat and others relinquish their torches to the next generation, who will be the frontrunners bearing them? As the LGBTQ community continues to embrace a diverse population, women’s equality must still intertwine with lesbian couples, bi-sexual women, female to male and male to female transgendered and women who identify as queer. LGBTQ equality alone does not necessarily address feminist issues, but must address them for the sake of their female members who endure gender discrimination.

The days of the Daughters of Bilitis may be gone, but women of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ageism, and the disabled all have cause to carry the torch of feminism. Protecting half of the world’s population offers protection to “others.” With this exemplar, their sons and daughters will rise and run with the torches and protect the trails blazed by the previous generations.

See original document below for notes and bibliography