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Lavender Panthers was an armed self-defence group for the LGBTQ+ community in San Francisco, active from the summer of 1973 until the spring of 1974. Its leader was Raymond Broshears, a gay Pentecostal Evangelist preacher and activist. [1] [2]
During the 1970's there was a sharp increase in violence against members of the LGBT community. This “antigay street violence” [3] involved beatings, verbal harassment, and sometimes death. A case which ended in death and received national attention was the death of Robert Hillsborough in 1977. He was attacked by a group of teenagers due to his sexuality and his injuries resulted in him dying. [4] This violence followed the Homophile movement, which had occurred during the previous decade. During this movement many riots, protests, and demonstrations occurred, including in San Francisco, a city that was known for having a large gay community. [5] The homophile movement resulted in more visibility of LGBT communities. Areas around known gay bars or other queer identified experienced higher rates of assault. Police did very little in combating this violence. [6]
Safe street patrols, such as the Lavender Panthers, were groups that formed to combat the violence that was being experienced. Although there were laws passed and public speeches made by police, the violence towards gay communities still existed. [7] Most of these patrols took place during the 1970s, but the idea and creation of them persisted throughout Gay liberation. Some street patrols took a violent approach and others took more peaceful approaches. Peaceful tactics included the usage of whistles, a concept borrowed from the feminist movement. There was also variance in the amount of police involvement between different safe street patrols. Some, such as the Butterfly Brigade, had some police involvement while others saw the police as part of the issue. [8]
Lavender Panthers was founded in San Francisco in 1973 by Raymond Broshears. Broshears was a prominent member of the LGBT community and known for his work in Tenderloin, San Francisco. They were the first prominent safe street patrol in the Castro and Tenderloin. This area was particularly known for its trans and gay community. [3] The patrols involved members walking streets and watching for altercations. Weapons would be carried, including shotguns and bats. [8] The altercation that ended the group occurred in 1974. After witnessing a group throwing water balloons at gay community members, the patrol reacted with violence. Police were called and became involved with the interaction happening outside the Pendulum bar, directly leading to the groups end. [7]
Although the name Lavender Panthers sounds similar to Black Panther Party, a Black rights group active during the same period, there is no connection between these two groups. [9]
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, perhaps preceded only by Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities, and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.
The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term homophile, which was commonly used by these organisations. At least some of these organisations are considered to have been more cautious than both earlier and later LGBT organisations; in the US, the nationwide coalition of homophile groups disbanded after older members clashed with younger members who had become more radical after the Stonewall riots of 1969.
Queer Nation is an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, by HIV/AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group is known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of several gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. Similar organizations also formed in the UK and Canada. The GLF provided a voice for the newly-out and newly-radicalized gay community, and a meeting place for a number of activists who would go on to form other groups, such as the Gay Activists Alliance and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in the US. In the UK and Canada, activists also developed a platform for gay liberation and demonstrated for gay rights. Activists from both the US and UK groups would later go on to found or be active in groups including ACT UP, the Lesbian Avengers, Queer Nation, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Stonewall.
The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride. In the feminist spirit of the personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on coming out to family, friends, and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.
The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of drag queens and trans people, particularly trans women. The incident was one of the first LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the 1960s.
LGBT movements in the United States comprise an interwoven history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied movements in the United States of America, beginning in the early 20th century and influential in achieving social progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual people.
LGBT pride is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements. Pride has lent its name to LGBT-themed organizations, institutes, foundations, book titles, periodicals, a cable TV station, and the Pride Library.
Craig L. Rodwell was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967, the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors, and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City pride demonstration. Rodwell is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early homophile movement of the 1960s.
Halloween in the Castro was an annual Halloween celebration held in The Castro district of San Francisco, first held in the 1940s as a neighborhood costume contest. By the late 1970s, it had shifted from a children's event to a gay pride celebration that continued to grow into a massive annual street party in the 2000s.
Pride Week 1973 was a national LGBT rights event in Canada, which was held in August 1973. The event, which took place from August 19 to 26, was marked by LGBT-themed programming in several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. Programming included an art festival, a dance, picnic, a screening of a documentary and a rally for gay rights that occurred in all the participating cities.
Henry "Hank" Wilson was a longtime San Francisco LGBT rights activist and long term AIDS activist and survivor. The Bay Area Reporter noted that "over more than 30 years, he played a pivotal role in San Francisco's LGBT history." He grew up in Sacramento, and graduated with a B.A. in education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971.
Annual marches, protests or gatherings take place around the world for transgender issues, often taking place during the time of local Pride parades for LGBT people. These events are frequently organized by trans communities to build community, address human rights struggles, and create visibility.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has, among its many nicknames, the nicknames "gay capital of the world", and has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) was established in January 1962 in Philadelphia, to facilitate cooperation between homophile organizations and outside administrations. Its formative membership included the Mattachine Society chapters in New York and Washington D.C., the Daughters of Bilitis chapter in New York, and the Janus Society in Philadelphia, which met monthly. Philadelphia was chosen to be the host city, due to its central location among all involved parties.
Queens Liberation Front (QLF) was a homophile group primarily focused on transvestite rights advocacy organization in New York City. QLF was formed in 1969 and active in the 1970s. They published Drag Queens: A Magazine About the Transvestite beginning in 1971. The Queens Liberation Front collaborated with a number of other LGBTQ+ activist groups, including the Gay Activists Alliance and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
Raymond Broshears was a gay Pentecostal Evangelist preacher and activist who founded the Lavender Panthers, an armed self-defense group for the LGBT community in San Francisco, active from the summer of 1973 until the spring of 1974. He also helped organize the first gay pride march in San Francisco in June 1972 and founded the Orthodox Episcopal Church of God.