Archives April 2012

 
















Bar Associations ...
lawyers, no ... lesbians, yes!

The library recently acquired the Grace Miller Papers. Grace was one of the owners of record for Tommy's Place and 12 Adler Place, two bars that operated from 1952-1954 and were frequented by lesbians. Grace is pictured at left, behind the bar.




The Grace Miller Papers include correspondence, subject files, photographs and a scrapbook. The subject files include flyers and announcements for a number of lesbian bars from the 1950s to the 1960s.

In September 1954, Grace Miller and co-owners Joyce van de Veer and Jean Sullivan became the subjects of intense public scrutiny as a result of charges against Tommy's Place for underage drinking, drug use, and perverted activity. Grace and Joyce were tending bar and were arrested for serving alcohol to minors. The collection contains a scrapbook with newspaper clippings from the time of the arrests, and Miller's trial and sentencing.

In Nan Boyd's book Wide Open Town, Reba Hudson describes the events surrounding the 1954 arrests and trial. "Tommy [Vasu] lost her license because of the arrests...but the person who actually serves the minor is the one who does the time. ... the two bartenders, they were the victims of this whole thing. Gracie went to trial right at the height of the publicity, that's really why she was convicted. ... Gracie was just a scapegoat because she went to trial when the anti-gay stuff was at its most hysterical peak." Jean was not arrested at all and Joyce got off with probation or a lighter sentence.

Boyd sets the Tommy's Place arrests and trial within the context of McCarthy era politics. She notes that the arrests happened immediately before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency's hearing in San Francisco in October 1954. The lurid headlines about the "thrill bar" served to link juvenile delinquency with sexual deviance, drug use, and prostitution. The San Francisco Examiner editorial shown here deftly (and frighteningly) sums up the thinking prevalent at that time. Although the writer misidentifies the bar as Tommy's Joint rather than Tommy's Place, it is clear that no evidence was really necessary to convict these individuals in the court of public opinion.

The Grace Miller Papers are available through the San Francisco History Center, 6th floor, Main Library. The photographs are available during the hours for the San Francisco Historical Photographs desk.

Radically Gay: The Life of Harry Hay

A wonderful new exhibit on the life and work of Harry Hay has just opened in the Jewett Gallery at the San Francisco Public Library. In celebration of the centennial of Hay’s birth, the exhibit illuminates his life, from his privileged childhood to his later years as a radical queer activist, using a wide range of photographs, letters, and personal items taken from the Harry Hay Papers. You’ve very likely heard of Harry Hay because of his work with the Mattachine Society in the 1940s and 50s, or with the Radical Faeries from the 1970s until his death in 2002, but there are less well known facts and curiosities from Hay’s life that the exhibition uncovers. The adventurous life of one of our first gay activists does not disappoint, from his camouflage skirt to the teleidoscope invented by his long-time partner, John Burnside, there’s a lot of whimsy in this exhibit to go along with the very important gay history. We’ll we don’t want to give it all away here, come see the exhibit, on view through July 29, 2012!