NORTHWESTERN GAY LIBERATION
In my quest to find Gay Liberation pioneers who were active outside of major metropolitan centers, I discovered Maher Ahmad, who co-founded the Northwestern University Gay Liberation in 1970 in Evanston, Illinois. Called simply “Northwestern Gay Liberation,” the group modeled itself after the Gay Liberation Fronts that sprung up around the world during this time. Maybe they lifted their name from Chicago Gay Liberation, which we have written about previously.
While his time in the movement was fleeting—he likened it to “I looked at this ship, sailing, sailing down the river, and I waved goodbye, knowing that it would reach a further shore at some point that needed me”—his life was not limited. We spent a long part of the interview talking about the slow death of his life partner from AIDS. There were tears.
—August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project
“When I started adolescence, I realized that I was physically attracted to men. This was 1962. They would say horrible things about gay people. We had no role models. It was a taboo subject. There were three popular opinions: you were a criminal, and you should be locked up; you were insane, and you should be in a mental institution; or you were an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and you should be cast into Hell to burn forever. I first heard the word ‘homosexual’ from my brother. I asked him what it was, and he said, ‘It’s a guy who has sex with other guys.’
I wanted to learn more. I went to the library and went to the card catalog, which was housed in wooden file cabinets that were massive, like 40 feet wide. There were lots of little drawers with 3x5 index cards that contained information about the books: key words, subjects, and titles. I found the H drawer, pulled it open, looked up ‘homosexuality,’ and wrote down the various call numbers of the books. I went to the stacks to find the books, to find out about myself, and I couldn't find the books. I showed the cards to the librarian and told her I couldn’t find the books in the stacks. She looked at me and said that those books were in a locked case. I said, ‘Never mind.’ It’s not like the books were pornographic.
Before attending Northwestern University, I heard about the Mattachine Society, a precursor gay activist group before the gay liberation movement. When I got to Northwestern, I decided I was going to go to their meetings. I looked up the meetings and attended. I found that the people were very brave and honorable, but they were secretive. They used pseudonyms even amongst themselves. I was very dissatisfied with this. Mind you, this was two years before the Stonewall Rebellion. I met my first boyfriend at the Mattachine meetings. This was my first sexual experience.
When Stonewall happened, everything changed. It was the fall of my junior year, and I saw an ad in The Daily Northwestern that said if you are interested in joining a gay liberation movement at Northwestern, call Bill. The advert had a phone number. I called the number, and it turned out to be Bill Dry, who I had known but did not know was gay.
So we got together, and we started our gay liberation group. One of the first things we did was write a letter to all of the university's department heads, announcing our group's formation and stating our goals. Among the goals were having some recognition from the university that it had gay students and having some kind of opportunity at the school for gay students to have social activities. It was an extraordinary thing for 20-year-olds to write. We also distributed leaflets around the school.
We started having meetings and quickly realized we needed recognition as an official student group. I do not know why, but they immediately approved us as a student group. We applied for funding and were told to ask for more because you always get less than you ask for. We decided we needed $67 a month and asked for $670. We made the application, and astonishingly, the student government gave us the entire $670. We later found out that the chairman of the committee was a closeted gay student, and I can presume that he was the one who made the argument to give us the full amount we requested.
One of the first things we did was organize a dance for gay people. One person in our group named Duncan—Duncan was one of the many people who died from AIDS—knew the leader of a very popular blues band called The Siegel–Schwall Band. He said, ‘I think I can get Corky Siegel to play at our dance.’
We charged $1 to join the dance and filled the gymnasium with people who wanted to see Corky Seigel. It turned more into a concert than a dance for gay people. However, what happened was we got even more money from people attending and we got news coverage. We had news stations come and interview us. It was a great deal of fun and the publicity was great to have for our fledgling group at Northwestern.
We started having more serious meetings and discussing what we could do as activists. We discussed what it was like to be gay and to be closeted and to have secrets and to be afraid and all of the oppression that was heaped upon us because we were gay. We gave each other strength, courage, and solidarity. To get direction, we went to meetings of women’s groups because it was the age of women’s liberation, and they gave us a lot of direction about how we should organize.
We organized a serious action against Chicago’s biggest gay bar called the Normandy. The Mafia either controlled the bar or someone paid off the police for them to stay open. The Normandy didn’t do much to make it pleasant for gay people because gay people were limited to select bars. There were no other choices. The Normandy also did not allow dancing. They needed a dancing license to allow dancing and they never applied for one because they had a captive audience.
We decided to present the Normandy with a list of demands. The list included getting a dance license, fixing the air conditioning, which never worked, stopping pushing drinks on people, which they did all the time—you constantly had to be buying drinks or they would tell you to leave—and our biggest ask was to allow Black and Brown people in. They would require three forms of ID for Black and Brown people to allow them in.
Four or five of us met with the owners. We were these scruffy, 1960s, almost hippie kids. The bar owner certainly looked like he was a member of the Mob. He was overweight and had a pinky ring. They agreed to meet with us and hear what we had to say. We read them our list of demands, and they laughed at us and said, ‘Get out of my fucking bar.’ We told them that if they did not agree, we would boycott their bar, and he said to go ahead and get out of his bar.
We decided to boycott on Friday and Saturday nights when they had big crowds. We immediately encountered a problem when we couldn’t get the Chicago or Northwestern group members to demonstrate because they wanted to party. Only about six of us were willing to protest on a Friday or Saturday night.
Duncan told us that he knew people in the International Socialist Group, and he said that he would ask them if they would be willing to thicken our ranks by demonstrating with us. They were straight, but that did not matter. Just like that, we had 25 people with us, and we became an obvious, effective presence.
We were filled with enthusiasm. When people passed the bar, they would turn around and just leave. We completely stopped business that first night. On the second night, a police car pulled up with two police officers, and we all thought we were going to get arrested. The cops exited the car and asked us what we were doing. We told him we were having a demonstration. They asked us if we knew the rules, and we said yes. They got back in their car and left. We were totally amazed. We went back a second weekend and killed their business.
They decided to talk to us. We told them to meet us at Northwestern in Kresge Centennial Hall. This is an image that is brightly burned into my brain. There were fluorescent lights. It was at night. There were six of us there, and these two big guys dressed in their silk suits with pinky rings. They gave in to our demands except for allowing Black and Brown patrons. Once they got a dance license, business exploded.
After that, we decided we were going to have a demonstration in the Loop in Chicago, and I don't know, we just got a bunch of people and a bunch of signs, and we just marched around the Loop saying, ‘We're here. We're queer. Get used to it,’ and shouting slogans. It was not focused the way that our demonstration at the Normandy bar was focused, but it was, it was a very heady time. We called it gay liberation, and that's what it was. We were liberating ourselves from this oppression, from this isolation, from this self-loathing, from this fear, by getting together and feeling the power that we had to change people's minds about what they thought of us, and also to change our own minds about what we thought of ourselves.”
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