Touching Up Our Roots

Atlanta Magazine 50th Anniversary of Atlanta Pride issue

Atlanta Magazine Atlanta Magazine October 2020

THE 90S

The greatest advance in the 90s is the arrival of protease inhibitors in 1996, making AIDS a chronic condition and not a death sentence.

For me AIDS hit in 1991, when I knew about 25 men who died that year. After working out at the Colony Square gym, I sat in the atrium often crying uncontrollably, fearing I would lose my mind, although I am HIV negative.

Finally one day I heard a voice, "Dave, you've lost your mind, don't worry about it anymore. There's no way you can stay sane through this. Just do what you have to do for those you care for." Thus I took focus off myself and onto those who needed help.

Drag queens were on our front lines, headlining the bread and butter fundraisers we needed admidst stingy government assistance. Count Diamond Lil, Bubba D Licious, Charlie Brown, and Greg Troia's Armorettes as our heroic troupers.

Ironically the greater visibility AIDS gave us created a renaissance in the arts. Actors Express exploded here founded by two gay men Chris Coleman and Harold Leaver, and set a new bar both for theatre excellence and no holds barred depictions of g**s and le****ns (earning the nickname "Actors Undressed" for serious eye candy).

The pinnacle of the Express saw the debut of the musical "The Harvey Milk Show" in 1991 by Atlantans Dan Pruitt and Patrick Hutchison, which later became the showpiece of the Cultural Olympiad during the 1996 Olympic Games here.

The Olympics coincided with a vast and welcoming LGBTQ center at Center Stage Theatre on West Peachtree, overseen by Julie Rhoad, who now runs the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt headquartered here.

At Seven Stages Theatre, playwright Jim Grimsley stoked the burgeoning scene, world premiering his surreal meditations on gay life "Mr. Universe" and "Math and After Math", along with an adaptation of his novel "Dream Boy."

Part time Atlantan Elton John and the homegrown the Indigo Girls perform what seems an impromptu jam in Piedmont Park for our first AIDS walk in 1991.

In 1993 the beleaguered Theatre in the Square in Marietta becomes the flash point for right wing nuts, when T**S stages gay playwright Terrence McNally's "Lips Together Teeth Apart", which only mentions g**s in passing. Still the Cobb County Commission passes a resolution informing g**s and le****ns they're "incompatible with the values of Cobb County" (counties have values?!) and cuts off funding for the arts to boot.

Well, Native Atlantan Pat Hussain and her partner in crime Jon Ivan Weaver seriously object and assert that if that's how they feel, no Olympic events should occur in Cobb County. Creating Olympics Out of Cobb and mobilizing hordes of volunteers, their David defeats the Olympic Goliath, and Cobb is bereft of Olympic glory in 1996.

Tragically following the Olympic Park bombing, fanatic Eric Rudolph targets the le***an owned The Otherside on February 21, 1997, and although no one dies, the attack gradually puts the Otherside out of business.

A happier ending awaits Q***r Nation, when Lynn Cothren and others organize boycotts of Cracker Barrel restaurants, as they fire all their LGBTQ employees, including cook Cheryl Summerville who has no customer contact. Cheryl ends up on Oprah and featured in the documentary "Out At Work." Moreover activist Carl Owens organizes our folks to buy small stock in Cracker Barrel and eventually forces them to stop firing us, and get back to work.

After what feels like forever, Cathy Woolard is the first out person elected in Georgia, to the Atlanta City Council in 1997. In 1999 Kecia Cunningham becomes the first openly le***an black woman elected to the Decatur City Commission.

In 1995 Presbyterian minister Erin Swenson makes world history when she is the first mainstream minister to transition and keep her ministry,
"for the first time in Christendom" as our enemies would have it. Coinciding is trans woman Shelley Emerson leading the women's group Fourth Tuesday, and also being the cover girl for Atlanta Magazine in a feature length profile. You go girls.

Completing a tumultuous decade is Georgia's own Supreme Court, which on November 23, 1998 at last overturns the 156 year old ban on so**my, in a heteros*xual divorce case no less.

Whew. We'll go even further in the 2000s.

The 70's

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MECCA
From The GA Voice (October & November Editions)

by Dave Hayward, Coordinator, Touching Up Our Roots, Inc.: Georgia's LGBTQ Story Project


Here's a "Greatest Hits" of our Georgia LGBTQ long march to freedom.

Feeling like one of the survivors of a slasher flick (sorry, folks), nevertheless I'm eager to spill the stories.

THE 70S

1971 - Arriving in October 1971, I instantly became a Yankee carpetbagger to the co-chair of the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, Bill Smith, who co-lead the GGLF with proudly bis*xual Judy Lambert. Judy took flack for supporting the GGLF, which lead to Georgia's first le***an group the Atlanta Le***an Feminist Alliance forming in 1972.

Fresh from co-creating the Washington, D.C. Gay Liberation Front in 1970, I thought Atlanta would be a fresh fun horizon, after graduating from George Washington University. Native Atlantan Bill Smith berated me "David! If you go downtown to Five Points and shout out Sherman's name, you will be torn limb from limb!"

Uh, Sherman, that Civil War general? Really?! OK, I'll gladly be reconstructed.

1972- The GGLF was a minority of a minority, and we were bodily ejected from two gay bars for promoting Pride. "We don't want any of that radical s**t in our bar!" the Cove's Frank Powell thundered, as one of our brothers went flying through the air out of the Cove's saloon doors.

Our political protest march was peaceful, and unlike the first Pride March in 1971, we persuaded "the city too busy to hate" to give us a permit to march in the streets. The GGLF's Berl Boykin told me that in '71 there were 125 marchers, "I know I counted them twice!", so they marched on the sidewalks and stopped for every traffic light. Also the Georgia chapter of the ACLU rebuffed the GGLF's call for help: "you are not a minority" they scoffed.

When we didn't burn Atlanta down again after 1972, the bars slowly came around, and we registered voters at Bulldogs and at the Sweet Gum Head bar by the end of the 70s.

Also in 1972 we celebrated our first openly gay anything, when Mayor Sam Massell named GLF stalwart Charlie St. John to the Community Relations Commission. The next year Bill Smith replaced him, so we had some seat at some table, along with Abby Drue, who was the first "out" person at City Hall.

1976 - There was Hell to pay for Mayor Maynard Jackson, the first black mayor of a major Southern city, as he declared Gay Pride Day that year. The Southern Baptist "Citizens for a Decent Atlanta" demanded his impeachment, and we picketed the Baptist church next to Phipps Plaza. Jackson stayed mayor, but in 1977 he fearlessly announced "Human Rights Day."

Perhaps we brought the Bible Belt out of bo***ge to gender conforming norms. At least we're not usually denounced from pulpits here now.

1977 - Native son Gil Robison invited candidates to speak to us, creating the LGBT vote, and he and friends founded First Tuesday, the first LGBT political action committee.

1978 - Our little engine was hijacked when alt right reactionary Anita Bryant became guest of honor at the Southern Baptist Convention at the World Congress Center, riding her "Save Our Children" (don't you love these names?)
crusade to rescind lgbt rights ordinances across the country. But we had our own Selma moment, as for the first time straight allies marched with us, like white allies did with civil rights activists in 1965.

And we raised so much money fighting Save Our Children that we started our second Atlanta Gay and Le***an Center. Thanks to our poster child Anita!

Le***an firebrand Maria Helena Dolan delivered her "I come to you today as a defiant d**e!" challenge at our rally at the World Congress Center, and we had thousands of people joining us in pandemonium.

1979 - Our little Mecca became the Southeast hub for the first National March on Washington for Le***an and Gay Rights in October that year.

ATLANTA CELEBRATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST ATLANTA PRIDE RALLY

by Dave Hayward, Coordinator, Touching Up Our Roots, Inc.: Georgia's LGBTQ Story Project, http://www.touchingupourroots.org

Atlanta is often touted as "the city too busy to hate." Indeed in the early 1960s metro Atlanta peacefully integrated, unlike cities like Birmingham, Alabama, known as "Bombingham" for violent reprisals against establishing equality for all people.

As the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Atlanta is called the cradle of the civil rights movement, and the adopted home of legends such as the late Reverend Joseph Lowery, Andrew Young, and our current United States House Representative John Lewis. Women such as Coretta Scott King and Turner Broadcasting's Xernona Clayton also played pivotal roles in our nation's long march to freedom.

Unique among Southern cities, Atlanta was lead by a coalition of black and white progressives, shepherded by Atlanta's Mayor Ivan Allen and by Georgia's Governor Jimmy Carter, who of course went on to become President Carter in 1976, to name just a few folks.

For LGBTQ people, freedom was and is a long time coming.

Before the Stonewall Inn riots in June 1969 in New York City, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution ran smear pieces about "driving the perverts out of Piedmont Park", and the two papers advocated police pogroms against gay men.

In this hothouse climate, Fulton County Solicitor General Hinson McAuliffe (a deacon in the Baptist church, no less) spearheaded an August 5th, 1969 raid on the Ansley Mall Mini Cinema showing of Andy Warhol's ho******ic comedy "Lonesome Cowboys." Our own Abby Drue, the CEO of the Ben Marion Institute for Social Justice, was entrapped in that raid and recalls the police interrogating her "Does your husband know where you are?" Well our dear Abby didn't answer that question.

The good news is that shortly after the Gestapo tactic raid, a standing room only meeting at Emory Village's New Morning Cafe lead to the founding of the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, as GLF groups sprang up across the country. My late friend and mentor Berl Boykin told me that Atlanta native the late Bill Smith insisted on calling it the Georgia GLF to cover the entire state, and legally incorporated the GGLF, not something normally done in the late 60s.

Like Atlanta at large, the GGLF was an alliance of folks, like native Atlantan the late Lendon Sadler, a man of color who grew up on Auburn Avenue and was a major force in Pride. Women such as the radical activist Vicki Gabriner and bis*xual Judy Lambert championed Pride, and Judy was co-chair of Atlanta Pride with Bill Smith, while her husband Phil was an avid participant in the GGLF.. Thus bis*xual folks were front and center even back in the day.

Although we didn't have the language for it in 1969, Atlanta native the late Paul Dolan became our first non-binary and gender non-conforming poster child in his alter ego as Severin, performing what he called "cosmic drag" in an evening gown and a bushy black moustache (said to have inspired Fred Schneider and the B-52s in Athens). In 1994 Severin was depicted in the 25th anniversary Pride exhibit in the Seagrams Building in New York City, although he was billed as an "unknown protestor."

According to Phil Lambert and retired University of West Georgia professor Ara Dostourian, the GGLF mounted a rally in Piedmont Park for the first anniversary of Stonewall the end of June in 1970. When I asked Berl Boykin why they didn't have a march, he said they were afraid only a handful of people would show up. Even in 1970 there was a terror of being out and openly gay, especially in the Deep South and the Bible belt.

Nevertheless the GGLF persevered for Atlanta's first Pride march in 1971, and Berl swore "there were 125 people, I know, I counted them twice!" Sadly our "city too busy to hate" refused a permit for the march, and the 125 had to march on the sidewalks and stop for every traffic light. Even our natural allies like the Georgia chapter of the ACLU bailed, telling Berl no, we won't help you get a permit, because "you are not a minority."

Happily ever after, the late Charlie St. John, Georgia's first openly gay political appointee, and others obtained a permit for the 1972 Pride march, the first march in the streets. There were about 500 people in the march and the rally in Piedmont Park.

I know because I was there, You can see the pictures at HOME | Tour
https://www.touchingupourroots.org/

Gay History Archive | Touching Up Our Roots | United States
Dave Hayward is one of the core collective that produced the 1972 Atlanta Pride, and has the dubious honor of being thrown out of two gay bars for promoting the 1972 Pride. He has helped produce every Pride since, and with Berl Boykin founded Touching Up Our Roots, Georgia's LGBTQ Story Project, in 2002.

Party on Pride.