Archives April 2011

Atlas Savings & Loan

What with Tax Day in April, this month is all about money. So it seems fitting that we just received a donation of two stock certificates issued by Atlas Savings & Loan. Atlas was the first financial institution established by and for gays and lesbians in the United States.

John Schmidt, its chairman, along with ten gay directors, including two women, formed Atlas in 1980 in San Francisco. The savings and loan opened for business in November 1981 and identified the gay and lesbian community as its primary market. In August 1982 Atlas opened a branch on 18th and Castro Streets and by January 1985 had three branches in San Francisco.

By June 1985 Atlas began to suffer as a result of bad construction loans, joint ventures and shared loans with two other savings and loans. In August 1985 Atlas was declared insolvent. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board took control of the savings and loan in July 1986 and its assets were sold to Empire Savings of New York.

In September 1986 the Federal Bureau of Investigation began conducting an inquiry into allegations of wrong-doing by former senior management as part of its investigation into three other failed savings and loan associations in Northern California. A group of former Atlas shareholders sued John Schmidt and its auditing firm, Price Waterhouse, in 1989 claiming that they were misled as to Atlas’ financial condition. In 1990 Empire of America Bank (formerly Empire Savings of New York) was placed in conservatorship.

The majority of the Atlas Savings & Loan Collection was donated by Lester Bruno in 1997 with subsequent additions by Jim Van Buskirk, Roy Johnson, the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, and Donald Reed. The collection spans the years 1979-1990 and contains a small amount of business correspondence and records including bylaws, publicity, promotional materials, mailings to shareholders and stock certificates. There is good press coverage of Atlas through the years especially its opening in 1981 and its financial difficulties in 1985 and 1986. In addition there is a lot of memorabilia and giveaways with the Atlas logo.

The Atlas Savings & Loan Collection (GLC 48) is available for research through the San Francisco History Center, 6th floor, Main Library.

The images include: one of the stock certificates, a portion of the People magazine article on Atlas in February 22, 1982, a promotional piece with an item in Herb Caen's column, brochures, and a photo that appeared in the 1985 San Francisco Gay Pride Celebration guide.

Singing Leaves of Grass

San Franciscans had the pleasure of listening to attorney Daniel Redman bring forth Walt Whitman's pioneering expression of male companion love, as he sang the first chapter of Leaves of Grass before a mesmerized audience of nearly 80. The Library is celebrating 150 years since the publication of Whitman's Calamus Poems with an exhibition in the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center called "Paths Untrodden: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems and the The Radical Faeries". The exhibition, which runs through May 19, 2011, was curated by local researcher and historian Joey Cain. There are photographs of Walt Whitman and his contempories.

Daniel Redman sang passionately in a melody influenced by his Jewish roots. Some who were listening were reminded of Bar Mitzvah's attended in youth, while another commented Whitman's words seemed to be brought forth as Irish seafaring song. When Redman was asked
about recording his music, he mused on the possibility of different chapters of the long poem being sung by Queer people from other cultural backgrounds. He described LGBT life as being a diasporic culture, wherever we are is our Jerusalem........LGBT true home is in the heart.

Archives March 2011: Gay Bears

Lynn Ludwig Photograph Albums

When the temperature goes down, I naturally think of hibernating. And hibernating naturally makes me think of bears. Within the LGBT community "bear" refers to someone whose physical appearance closely resembles that of a real bear: hairy, strong and anywhere from heavyset to heavily muscled.

In August, Lynn Ludwig donated his collection of 41 photo albums and 200 photo portraits. Lynn's photographs document bear events, LGBT pride parades in San Francisco and his own family events. Frequently documented are the Lone Star Saloon, Eagle bar, and the street fairs for Folsom, Dore Alley and Castro streets.

The albums include portraits of friends and family. All of the albums are interspersed with Lynn's beautiful photographs of flowers and Northern California scenery. Occasionally there are badges from events that Lynn attended as well as flyers promoting those events. The time frame covered is 1988-1999. We see here a sample of some of the images that Lynn captured: a San Diego Bear Pride event from 1992; also a flyer from the ABC Convergence (Associated Bigmen's Clubs); and a lovely shot of the Painted Ladies in San Francisco. The Lynn Ludwig Photographs Collection (GLC 65) is available for research and browsing through the San Francisco History Center.

Queer Teachers: Out of the Past, Into the Future

With all the flack that teachers have been subjected to lately in the mainstream press, it is past time to give a shout-out to those who continue to brave the difficult challenge of educating our future generations. The first selection, "And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida's Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers," by Karen L. Graves is a blow by blow historical account of a witchunt that began in the fall of 1956 growing out of a climate fueled by McCarthyism and the cold war, an environment that fostered distrust and suspicion. This book is the story of 87 gay and lesbian teachers, the victims of that purge. Their responses to this persecution are as varied and complex as those folks who testified before HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Council. Count this book as one that puts our present day struggle into proper historical context.

Our second book is an anthology edited by Nelson M. Rodriguez and William F. Pinar titled,"Queering Straight Teachers: Discourse and Identity in Education." These eleven essays are a jumping off point for a different kind of discussion, one that involves straight people just as much as queer ones. It relies on something that old school feminists used to call "conciousness raising." In this case, it just means waking up to the realization that heterosexism along with a preconceived and inflexible conception of gender, only serves to limit the opportunities for self-actualization and achievement for everyone.

The History of Queers and Cinema

This classic, "Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema," by Steven Paul Davies covers the basic ground, focusing on, but not limited to films made in the United States. From the closet days of the fifties: (The Wizard of Oz) through the ominous classics of the sixties: (The Killing of Sister George, Midnight Cowboy, The Children's Hour) up through the early 21st century: (Angels in America, Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica), he chronicles a progression of the best-known films, actors and directors who brought LGBT life to light on the big screen.

"Queer Screen: A Screen Reader," edited by Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street is an anthology, a collection of different writers presenting a compilation of articles about specific queer films and the issues surrounding them. Most of the contributors to this anthology are women and so it provides a distinctly lesbian perspective to the world of queer cinema.

"Queer Cinema in Europe," edited by Robin Griffiths takes us across the pond with another anthology examining queer identity in film. This book contains fourteen scholarly essays. Identities, aesthetics, queer bars and queer spaces and coming out stories in the cinema of Europe are some of the topics broached in this collection of predominantly male writers.

Archives January 2011

California Hall, San Francisco. January 1, 1965.

46 years ago an event occurred which served to coalesce the emerging LGBT community in San Francisco. Police harrassment of homosexual men and women was witnessed first-hand by straight men and women. They were appalled and were very public about their outrage.

In the mid-1960s members of the gay community and the religious community sought to find common ground. The Council on Religion and the Homosexual sponsored a fundraiser, a Mardi Gras Ball. Attendees included homosexual men and women along with local clergy and their wives.

Evander Smith was a San Francisco lawyer who along with Herbert Donaldson was retained by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Anticipating police harassment at the ball, Smith and Donaldson were asked to attend the event in case legal advice was necessary.

In fact the police did take photographs of attendees arriving and requested admission to the event on two occasions. The first was to examine whether the event was in accord with rules regarding liquor; this was standard practice and the police were admitted to ascertain that the event was in compliance. At a later time, the police asked for admittance again and were denied because they did not have tickets for the private event and could provide no reason to enter. As a result, four people were arrested: Evander Smith, Herbert Donaldson, Elliott Leighton and Nancy May.

The Hormel Center contains the Evander Smith -California Hall Papers. The collection includes case files on the legal defense of Smith, Donaldson, Leighton and May. The files contain a chronology of the events that took place, legal research on the laws pertaining to those events, notes on jury selection, materials concerning homosexuals and their treatment by authorities, clippings of newspaper coverage and cartoons, a few photographs of attendees and police, and some homosexual publications of the time. There are also copies of sermons or papers enclosed in Methodist Church service programs of January 1965.

Nan Alamilla Boyd's book Wide Open Town:a history of queer San Francisco to 1965 is an excellent history of the events leading up to and through this moment in San Francisco LGBT history. The Evander Smith/California Hall Papers are available through the San Francisco History Center, 6th Floor, Main Library.

Sexual Intimacy in US Prisons

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. According to the United States Deparment of Justice statistics, in 2009 there were 748 inmates for every 100,000 residents. Although in rare instances sexual contact occurs between males and females, the overwhelming majority of sexual contact in prison is between people of the same gender.

In Regina Kunzel's book, "Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality," she rejects the often asked question, "do prisons simply collect "perverts" or help produce them?" by substituting the theory that sexual expression behind bars is not an issue of identity. Kunzel stresses the difficulties for those prisoners exhibiting "gender non-conformity" and points out that power, pleasure and random circumstance are more responsible for the normative shift of behavior in a single-sex environment than any theories regarding whether or not an inmate identifies as gay.

Silja J.A. Talvi presents a less academic take on prisons in her book, Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System. Talvi's background as an investigative journalist, editor and activist is evident in this work. By referencing the actual experiences of women inmates she presents examples of sex between women that runs the gamut between furtive encounters to stable partnerships. In addition she deals with other inmate issues such as medical care, mental health, abuse and the specific situations of women who kill. This book encompasses both defeat and resistance, it reads as a compilation of survival strategies utilized by women who feel themselves to be "a nearly invisible group that has been dehumanized, forgotten."

Click here for more information about the Women Behind Bars Prison Project that Silja Talvi founded.

Archives December 2010

“Make the Yuletide Gay”

To celebrate the season, we thought it would be fun to highlight a few of the Christmas items in the Hormel Center’s archives.

The first is a photograph of the Mattachine Society Christmas social from about 1953. This image is from a scrapbook in the J. Gruber Papers. He was a member of the Society.

William Dickey wrote and printed many poems. The library's collection of his Poems contains several of his annual Christmas poems which were sent to family and friends. "Ornament" is a lovely example of his poetry and printing.

The last item is a photograph of Harvey Milk, Galen McKinley, and their dog Trick in the early 1960s. The photo is from the Harvey Milk Archives/Scott Smith Collection.

We wish you all a happy new year!