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Jim Andris, Aug. 4, 2011..

The First Walk for Charity in St. Louis, Missouri, Sunday, April 20, 1980 and first Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride, April 12-20, 1980

Credit for organizing the first gay pride parade—held in New York City on Sunday, June 28, 1970—is usually is given to Craig Rodwell, founder of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. On that same weekend there were marches in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. St. Louis, however, did not manage to organize a similar demonstration until nearly a decade later, and when it was finally put in place, and quite successfully, at that, it was called not a gay pride march but a Walk for Charity, held on Sunday, April 20, 1980. In fact, St. Louis organized not only a successful public demonstration, but also a whole week of activities sponsored by various supporting community organizations: the first St. Louis Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride of this size to be held in public and with the official sanction of the City of St. Louis. However, pride activities in St. Louis and in other Missouri cities had been held for a number of years during the 1970s in the context of various concerns and organizations.

Events Leading up to the Celebration

The Magnolia Committee held its organizational meeting on Nov. 20, 1979 in Glenda Dilley's apartment on Magnolia Street. "I had the biggest apartment in the building, but it was in the basement," she laughed. Cea Hearth was born Glenda Dilley. Glenda Dilley was president of the Columbia, Missouri organization, Gay Lib when on Feb. 21, 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that the University of Missouri was required by the First Amendment to allow Gay Lib to meet on University property. As a result of this decision, a Gay Pride Weekend was held at the University of Missouri Columbia on Sept. 29-30, Oct. 1, 1978. Glenda received a masters degree in education in 1979 from UM Columbia, and moved to St. Louis to start her professional life. However, she continued to pursue her activist interests there, using the pseudonym Adrienne Rae for public demonstrations and actions during the 1979-1980 period.

In an Aug. 10, 2010 interview with Jim Andris, Cea Hearth explained about the rationale for selecting members for the Magnolia Committee. The Committee was comprised of "emissaries from all of the other gay groups in town, … plus some few people from [minority] organizations other than gay." According to Cea, the funds raised were shared among all the organizations, gay and non-gay so that the Walk for Charity would be seen as "more a part of the outer society," "not too threatening," and "more inclusive." Calling the demonstration a "walk" rather than a "march" was also seen as less threatening. According to Cea Hearth (Adrienne Rae/Glenda Dilley):

"we gathered funds from all of those different gay bars. We put a little jar up, and I suppose they gathered funds in some of the community organizations as well, and we just, whatever had to be done, we would figure out who could do it, and how it should be done, and someone had to go to the mayor’s office, I remember, and so we needed some people who were able to use their real names and were able and willing to do that, and I don’t remember who the noble souls were now who did do that, but we had got everything we needed to have and just went forward with it. And April 20, we chose that date, partly because it was Earth Day, partly because it was—y’know, my birthday was the next day, April 21—just cause we thought we would."

In 2003 Lisa Kohn interviewed Jim Thomas extensively about the events leading up to the 1980 St. Louis Celebration of Gay and Lesbian Pride. Jim had graduated from Oberlin in 1979 and moved to St. Louis later that year when a possible job connection in NYC fell through. Jim had a supportive community at Oberlin, and set about to build a similar situation for himself in St. Louis. Jim had first become a regional organizer for the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights which occurred on Oct. 15, 1979 and would found the successful newspaper, The [Lesbian and] Gay News Telegraph in 1981.

When Jim first came to St. Louis, he found two religious organizations Metropolitan Community Church and Dignity, a Catholic group, but ended up aligning himself temporarily with the Gay Academic Union (GAU) in St. Louis. He sketches the involvement of the Gay Hotline first with Metropolitan Life Services Center, which folded in 1978, and then GAU for a short time around 1980. He decided that a pride celebration in St. Louis would be a good idea, and began organizing a group for that purpose.

"the original conception was that the committee would be representatives from whatever groups wanted to participate. And so for instance, one of those groups was the National Organization for Women, as well as, I think by that time we probably had an Integrity chapter, which is the Episcopalians, although I dont know that for sure. Anyway, the idea was representatives from the individual organizations plus whatever individuals were interested. They would be an organizing committee that would handle overall PR for whatever happened, would organize an opening event for the week, and then a closing event, probably a march and rally. The original idea was to do this in June. There was a real conscious strategy that in the middle of those two events, those bookend events, the individual organizations would each do their individual activity. So the idea was to try to create a situation in which they would try to begin to work together but didn't have to give up their identity in order to do it. They could still preserve their own individual identity, and so it wasn't quite so threatening to get involved. [boldface added by author]"

Jim wrote an article in the first issue [June, 1980] of No Bad News that clarifies the origins and nature of this group. As regional organizer for the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Jim had been a part of the St. Louis Organizing Committee (SLOC) for that march. According to Jim "SLOC was succesful in mobilizing support for the march in a city which had no existing political or educational organizations." After the final meeting of SLOC, interested members continued to meet, about once a month, to explore the possibility of a continuing organization.

[Eventually, Iris, the St. Louis Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, would hold a first informational meeting of about 30 people on May 12, 1980 at the Metropolitan Community Church. The organization was to have three major goals of political growth, education and media advocacy. However, even before this meeting Iris was credited with helping with the Green and Yellow potluck dinner held at MCC on Thursday, April 17, as a part of the 1980 Pride Celebration. Jim Andris recalls that women from Iris were leading cheers during the Walk for Charity that Sunday.]

However, just as the organization of the continuation of SLOC (to be IRIS) got underway, Jim discovered that the Magnolia Committee, discussed above, already existed. He found that committee's focus to be the organization of a walk for charity in February, while his group's emphasis was on a week's activity in June, no doubt influenced by his knowledge of pride celebrations on the coasts and in Chicago. According to the No Bad News, June, 1980 issue:

"at the suggestion of MCC pastor Roy Birchard, an open meeting of 35-40 people was held January 27 to discuss how to accommodate both activities. After discussion, it was decided to combine the events into one celebration. Magnolia members pushed for an early date so as to include area college and university students, although others in the meeting wanted a later date to allow for better planning and coordination. A compromise date in late April was accepted."

The Celebration Committee was the result, and the combined effort would be for both a week's activity by various sponsors and a walk for charity as the culminating event. It may be more than an interesting coincidence that the weekend agreed upon for the 1980 Walk for Charity and Rally corresponded exactly with the weekend on which the 1979 Gay Pride Celebration presented by Washington University's Concerned Lesbian and Gay Students, especially since CLGS had a representative on the Magnolia Committee from its inception. The comedic drag trio, Sex Inc. gave a very successful benefit at Martin's VIP lounge in March for the Celebration Committee's activities.

Jim Thomas also recalls that while later St. Louis pride events were remembered to have started in 1979, that is not an accurate rendering of what actually happened. Rather there had been pride activities at Washington University in 1979, and a conscious decision was made along the way to see them as the first St. Louis pride activities, in order to coordinate with the historic Stonewall-related events of 1969. By contrast, Jim remembers that the real work of organizing a city-wide pride celebration occurred in 1980. No doubt, the substantial work of networking and community building that occurred in 1980, in which Jim Thomas played a leading role, is laudable. However, coordinated pride activities did, in fact, occur at Washington University in April of 1979, and in Columbia, Missouri in the fall of 1978. Before that, community organization occurred in St. Louis and throughout Missouri as a reaction to the Anita Bryant/Briggs Initiative anti-gay campaign launched in 1977. Understanding how the Metropolitan Life Services Center (1975-1978) evolved from earlier activist activity centered in the St. Louis Metropolitan Community Church (1973-present) will uncover still other roots of pride in St. Louis. [See Wilson (1994).]

When asked who the other individuals were in the Magnolia Committee, Jim remembered a man named Mark, but his last name was inaudible. There was a Mark who was president of Dignity in March of 1979.

Another source of information about the St. Louis Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride 1980 is the St. Louis Gay History Project. A small poster which may have appeared below one of the jars that was placed in various gay and lesbian related sites, mainly bars, lists other organizations to benefit from the proceeds from the Walk for Charity: Abused Womens Support Project, Gay Academic Union Hotline, Womens Self Help Center, Matrix, Inc., Ad Hoc Committee to Save Homer G. Phillips, Life Crisis Services Inc., and Karen House and Cass House of the Catholic Worker Community. A total of $1200 was raised.

Another invaluable document found on the St. Louis Gay History Project was a letter crafted by an augmented Magnolia Committee on Valentine's Day, 1980. It gives so much insight into the successful integration of then Glenda Dilley's Magnolia Committee and Jim Thomas' budding Pride Committee, that it has been transcribed and is available on this website. This letter is also important because it reveals the participation of still more groups in the expanded and coordinated planning for the 1980 St. Louis pride activities. Integrity and Affirmation were then existing groups for gay and lesbian Episcopalians and Methodists, respectively. Brothers for Change was a group that may have contained some gay men and may have hosted communication between gay and straight men, as well as discussion of and action on other rights issues of the time. The Women's Eye was a lesbian/feminist bookstore. The St. Louis Organizing Committee may have been the group Jim Thomas formed.

Two other gay organizations that parcipated in some aspects of the celebration are Lutherans Concerned and Black and White Men Together.

A key name that crops up on some of the documents associated with the St. Louis Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride is that of Bill Spicer, who was secretary for the Magnolia Committee. It is Spicer's name that is on the parade permit. It is also clear from a letter from an April 4, 1980 letter from St. Louis Mayor, James Conway to Mr. William Spicer, Secretary, Magnolia Committee that Spicer was a central figure in establishing a productive working relationship between the lesbian and gay community and various City of St. Louis departments, including the Police Department, the Dept. of Streets (parade permit obtained Feb. 21), and the mayor's office itself. Bill Spicer is also identified as "a spokesman for the organizers of the march" in a piece by Geof Hobson, Staff writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch titled "Fear, Pride in Step in Gay March Here." He is the only person mentioned or quoted in the article to be identified by his full name.

The Magnolia Committee used St. John's Episcopal Church at 3664 Arsenal Street as a mailing address for correspondence between it and the City of St. Louis. A March 21, 1980 letter to Hon. James Conway, Mayor of St. Louis from the Magnolia Committee shows just how carefully thought out was this first demonstration of pride. It was by no means an uncontrolled, spontaneous display, but rather the result of months of careful planning, compromise, negotiation, and thoughtful consideration. In effect, it masterfully combines the request for rights and respect for the lesbian and gay community with a campaign to establish the community as caring and constructive. I have transcribed the letter here.

A Week of Celebration

The newspaper No Bad News in perhaps its first issue, June, 1980, gave very complete coverage of the April, 1980 Pride festivities. The article fills out and informs the following narrative.

A week of activities was eventually offered from April 12-20, 1980 and culminated in the Walk for Charity and Rally at the Washington University Quadrangle. Studying the Schedule of Events for this St. Louis Celebration of Gay and Lesbian Pride yields information about some of the groups that were involved. The Concerned Lesbian and Gay Students (CLGS) (of Washington University) sponsored a dance in the Holmes Lounge on Saturday, April 12. 150 were in attendance.

Club St. Louis (a member of the Club Baths Chain), with support from The Bowery, and Potpourri, sponsored an afternoon picnic near Steinberg Rink in Forest Park on Sunday, April 13. 250 people were estimated to have attended this hamburger and hot dog barbecue despite the cold weather. Jim Thomas remembers the picnic vividly:

"The week began in a very worrisome fashion. We had a picnic in Forest Park, which started out well enough, and then the temperature really began to drop, and I do remember nobody wanted to leave. We were all hanging out around the fires where we were cooking things. That came to an end, and that night we had seven inches of snow. But you know, it was April and that all melted away very quickly. The rest of the week went fine." [Three pictures of this event are in the No Bad News article.]

Midweek, on the evening of April 16, the Women's Group (of Washington University) presented two free films at the Gargoyle: "Daughter Rite" and "In the Bet Interest of the Children to approximately 100 people. Thursday, April 17, saw three groups cooperate to present a potluck dinner and performance at the Metropolitan Community Church building at 5108 Waterman. The other two participating groups for the dinner and performance were Iris and The Celebration Committee. According to No Bad News "extra tables were needed to accomodate the 90 people who came to enjoy the food and an extensive after-dinner theatrical reading by three members of Lutherans Concerned [B.F. added]."

On Friday The Women's Eye bookstore at 3644 Rosbury held an open house attended by 50 women, while CLGS also sponsored the film "A Very Natural Thing" on Friday evening to a standing-room-only, 200 person crowd, April 20 in Rebstock auditorium.

Apparently two committees split responsibilites for a full weekend of activities. The Celebration Committee sponsored a day of workshops on Saturday, April 19 at Forest Park Community College on a range of topics.

The Magnolia Committee sponsored a carefully planned afternoon Lesbians, Gays and Friends Walk for Charity from Maryland Plaza down Lindell Blvd. to Washington University and a rally at the Washington University Quadrangle. The finale of a packed week of activities was the COLOR FOR THE 80'S BALL at Carnegie's at 704 Lafayette sponsored by Lesbian/Gay Organization for Acceptance and Liberation (LGOAL). No Bad News reported that the much anticipated Ball had to be moved to the Gateway Hotel due to the fact that the State Liquor Board blocked the event, informing Carnegie's that they did not have the proper permits just three days before the event. Spirits were apparently not dampened, despite suspicions of harrassment, and 200 people enjoyed the dinner/dance at the Gateway.

A first-hand account by Jim Andris of these Sunday events is available that captures a lot of the excitement and color of the original event, including teachers in clown outfits and a caliope. One of the things made clear by Andris' account is the participation of Parents of Gays, Dignity, Iris, MCC, The Socialist Workers Party, Moonstorm and Gay Academic Union in the walk for charity, and there were many others. Also mentioned in the account is the keynote speaker of the rally, Larry Davis, the fact that a representative of the mayor's office spoke, and that Byron Davidson gave inspiring comments. The mayor's representative was Ellen Dunning (now Ellen Sweets). Cea Hearth in her then public persona of Adrienne Rae, played guitar and sang gay liberation songs to the crowd. She was dressed in KISS style makeup, with a big black and white star on her face. Also mentioned in the Andris account is a Bill that did some introductions, but his identity still needs to be confirmed.

The No Bad News account identifies the mayor's representative as Ellen Sweets, head of the local Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, and reports that a letter of commendation from Mayor James Conway was read. It also identifies Byron Davidson as the host of the KADI radio show "Gay Rap" [The actual name was "Gay Talk." ed.] and mentions that Dean Michael Allen of Christ Church Cathedral made remarks.

Reflection and Concluding Remarks

The No Bad News article contains several paragraphs of discussion on problems which emerged within the week. Some women were unhappy with both an apparent orientation towards the male and also the lack of support by men for some women's events. This is no small matter and needs to be studied, although that study is beyond the scope of this article. However, a few points are in order. The role of St. Louis and Missouri women in developing gay and lesbian pride activites is pronounced. Throughout the 1970s there was both strong cooperation between lesbians and straight or bisexual women, and disputes and arguments among them. Moreover, men, straight, bisexual and gay, came late, if at all, to an understanding or appreciation of these relationships.

Moonstorm was a women's collective with a strong record of activities and publication from nearly the start of the decade of the 1970s, and several other women's and lesbian organizations are a matter of record. To take just one example of how the study of these organizations and publications might be illuminating, issue #20, April, 1980 of Moonstorm contains two well thought out articles entitled "Lesbians—working with gay men?" and "Gay men—working with lesbians?" Here is a provocative statement from one of those articles:

"There are not many avenues for lesbians and gay men to work together in St. Louis. When Anita Bryant crossed Missouri, a gay coalition was begun that was comprised of almost all lesbians and a few gay men. This recent coalition for Gay Pride Week is primarily men, with a few gay women. Our biggest dividing line seems to be that gay men like to be around and deal with men and lesbians like to socialize with and deal with women."

And finally, no understanding of the growth of pride activities in St. Louis would even be halfway complete without a thorough understanding of the bar scene in decades earlier than the 1980s. GLTB people were so oppressed in earlier times that they had to create their own space to begin to develop their sense of pride and even right to self-respecting existence. Before the churches and denominational groups, the activist organizations, the political interest groups, there were the bars. Bars were our homes away from home, and sometimes, our only homes, before there were other alternatives. Whole histories could be written on women's bars, leather bars, the drag community, the baths, and the tearooms. To look even a bit askance at these developing venues instead of seeing each one of them as a crucible for emerging pride would be to fail to understand and appreciate the birth of the GLTB perspective in St. Louis. And let's not forget the opera queens either.

When did pride activities actually begin in St. Louis?

(This section added Friday, April 13, 2010.)

The Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride that emerged during the week of April 12-20, 1980 in St. Louis, Missouri emerged from a decade of growing pride and awareness. To be sure, the Walk for Charity and Rally conceived, constructed and carried out by the Magnolia Committee, were the first activities to have the official sanction of the St. Louis Police Department and Mayor's Office. Nevertheless, many pieces of the week long 1980 pride celebration resembled or had been fashioned from pride activities in previous years.

There are anecdotal accounts of pride marches of considerable size in the early 1970s. One account reports that in 1971, Chuck Charleston, a bartender at the Red Bull in East St. Louis organized several cars full of demonstrators in cars with signs that drove over the Eads Bridge and down Market Street to Forest Park where "hundreds of people" gathered around the cannon. Another account by Jimmy Hawkins, owner of the Red Bull, maintains that all the bars got together and marched down Washington Ave. with a police escort. It seems likely that these accounts are rooted in some actual events that need to be better documented to be taken as fact.

The Students for Gay Liberation at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville held a remarkably diverse series of activities in Gay Awareness Week April 29-May 3, 1974. In addition to attracting the nationally recognized figures Franklin Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the Washington University Lesbian Alliance, MCC's Carol Cureton, and two SIUE professors, Hugh Barlow and Pat Murrell, were represented there.

One aspect of pride activities in the 1970s was day-long or two day-long series of speakers and workshop sessions on various topics. The St. Louis Chapter of Dignity was quite active in the middle 1970s, sponsoring a day of workshops and speakers by national and local Dignity leaders both in 1975 and in 1976.

Various speakers and pride activities were sponsored by the Metropolitan Community Church under the leadership of Carol Cureton during the years 1973 to 1978 and by MCC's secular spawn, the Metropolitan Life Services Center. Rodney Wilson has documented several of these activities. Most notably, on June 9, 1977—two days after Dade County's sexual orientation protection ordinance was defeated in a ballot initiative led by Save Our Children—"MCC hosted St. Louis' Second Annual Gay Pride Rally. Several national and local leaders in the community spoke to over three hundred people assembled, including Troy Perry, founder of MCC. What is also interesting about this fact is that apparently there was a "First Annual Gay Pride Rally" in 1976.

The Save Our Children movement, led by Anita Bryant, mobilized the gay community and brought together many of its dispirate elements as never before. Ironically, during the same time period, a legal drama was playing out in Columbia Missouri, where on June 8, 1977 the U. S. Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit decided that the University of Missoury must recognize the student group Gay Lib as a legitimate group and allow them to meet on university grounds. The U. S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to this case on Feb. 21, 1978, which lead to a pride march of sorts in Columbia, Missouri on that day, and then a weekend of pride activities Sept. 29-Oct. 1. This weekend was certainly some kind of template for pride activities to come.

Finally, one pride celebration that is arguably essential for what happened in 1980 in St. Louis is the weekend of pride activities sponsored by Washington University in 1979. The materials from this conference/symposium format event demonstrate a high level of collaboration and coordination between various gay and lesbian organizations, Dignity, Integrity, Gay Academic Union, MCC, The Women's Eye (a bookstore), and others.

Looking at all these events of the 1970s, it becomes clear not only what a debt did the Celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride in 1980 owe to them, but also just how much did that event extend pride celebrations in St. Louis.

References

Andris, Jim, "Even Alexander the Great," No Bad News. July, 1980.

Andris, Jim, Interview of Cea Hearth, August 10, 2010.

Andris, Jim, "Main article on the 1978 Columbia, Mo. Pride Celebration," online http://www.siue.edu/~jandris/history/h78.1.html

"Celebration of Lesbian, Gay Pride Is Successful Community-Builder." No Bad News, June, 1980, pp. 1, 8, 9.

Conway, Mayor James, Papers. University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University.

Darnell, Ian, "Re: Oral History Project," email to Steve Brawley, cc: Colin Murphy forwarded to Jim Andris, Sept. 26, 2011, topic, early gay pride demonstrations in St. Louis.

Hobson, "Fear, Pride in Step in Gay March Here." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. [Somewhere near April 20, 1980.]

Kohn, Lisa, Interview of Jim Thomas, Dec. 1, 2003.

Moonstorm, Issue 20, April 1980. 12 pp.

St. Louis Gay History Project, online, Steve Brawley, webmaster, http://www.stlouisgayhistory.com

Thomas, Jim, "St. Louis Activist Group for Lesbian, Gay Rights Founded ." No Bad News, June, 1980, pp. 1.

Wilson, Rodney C. "The Seed Time of Gay Rights: Rev. Carol Cureton, the Metropolitan Community Church and Gay St. Louis, 1969-1980." Gateway Heritage, Fall 1994, pp. 34-47.