City Asks San Diegans For Help With History Of Local LGBTQ Community

Last year the San Diego city Council approved the launch of a study into the history of the cities LGBTQ community. Because so much of gay life was kept in the shadows, history hopes to document people, places and events that gave strength to the community through its hidden years. Now San Diego has released a first draft of its LGBTQ historic context statement and it pulled into public sessions to get feedback on the report joining me is Charles Kaminski board member of the lambda archives which has created and preserved San Diego LGBTQ history. What kind of information is included in this context statement? If both people and places? There are people, places, and events that occur in San Diego. Not everything is included because there is so much history to tell. But quite a bit of information from the 60s, 70s and 80s is included. You have studied the cities LGBTQ history , with their best is there anything in this report that was new to you? You give me more credit than I deserve in terms of knowing a lot about the history of San Diego, particularly the LGBTQ community. I found one or two things in the report that were a surprise to me. There was a writer who wrote a book back in the 60s, I guess you would call fiction at that time, called the song of the loon, if you are a gay male growing up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s of my age that fiction novel name should be familiar to you. I did not realize that he lived and worked in San Diego. He wrote it under a pseudonym. That was a surprise to me. As this continues, probably more surprising pieces of history will be uncovered I hope so. There is also, for example, don't know much about post-World War II, but there were places where serviceman and individuals who left the service and came back the San Diego because they liked it so much started to explore their sexuality. Most of that occur downtown and back there was a men's service club where according to the report, gay men would borrow uniforms so they could meet serviceman who were in attendance at those clubs. All of this secret history. That is correct. UCSD establishment in 1960 came the same year that SDSU became part of the Cal State system. Why is that important to LGBTQ history? You have to remember what the 60s were like the we had the Vietnam war, the protests over that, women's liberation, and you have black power. The evolution of the 60s also brought in the gay movement with the riots in Stonewall, the Black cats and the Compton cafeteria riots. What you had was students and faculty members coming in who no part of that venue of those efforts to provide equality for many more individuals. They brought with them their sense of protest and quality standards, in that timeframe students began to come out of the closet, professors started to urge courses related to women's rights or gay rights and that became pivotal from the academic side and many individuals stayed in San Diego and became the early leaders and pioneers of community groups The report lists lots of locations significant to LGBTQ history, I am wondering , is it challenging to find the exact locations, the addresses, of where people lived and where books were published and various other events? I would say that back in the 70s, if you look at some of the early very articles that were published, and we had one published started in 1970 called the prodigal. If you look at that particular periodical and others eastbound PO Box addresses rebound initials of names with a first name and a less initial. Trying to identify where those items either occurred or published or produced, or where someone lived is somewhat problematic. For example, there is a well-known activist in San Diego, Albert Belle, we cannot find his address, so we don't know really how to go about doing that. I have a vignette story where my husband knew Albert Belle in San Francisco and you had here so I had him drag out his old address book from San Francisco and all it says is his address in San Francisco but not his address and San Diego. What you think is missing from the historic context statement? What I have noticed is our alphabet LGBTQ is quite extensive a lot of the information in the draft focuses on the lesbian, gay communities. I believe and I cannot speak to them, but I hope they attend the sessions is that the transgender community and a [ NULL ] community and the bisexual communities attempt workshops because I feel those are some gaps we need to fill in this report. Also people of color, the African-American experience, to let -- the Latin American experience, they were forming small sub identification groups and I would like to hear more information about that. Do you know how this report will be used moving forward? My understanding is this becomes a framework for planning documents and framework. Went to heaven identities that this identification of sites and resources, someone who is interested in development or planning, planning issues communities in San Diego, can refer to this so we can hopefully avoid what happened about a year and half ago the destruction of the Michael Carey house which was not identified as a possible significant site and a developer was entitled to proceed with this project and that house was loss. So this report will hopefully prevent actions like that future. There are going to be to public sessions on the LGBTQ context statement the first is at the Balboa Park club ballroom and I have been speaking with Charles Kaminski board member of the land archives and Charles, thank you so much. Thank you Maureen.