You to our speakers to start meaning tonight we have with us dr. Bettina becker, a distinguished professor emerita, feminist studies, university of california, santa. She has taught for more than 40 years an activist scholar. She coled the Free Speech Movement uc berkeley in 1964 and the National StudentMobilization Committee to end and the war in vietnam. She played a leading role in the International Movement to free angela davis. But she was a member of the communist party. From 1962 to 1981, and she has been of the lgbt movement. The late 1970s and has published several, including the morning breaks, the trial of angela davis tapestry, the life, womens work, womens consciousness and meaning of daily experience, and a memoir politics how i grew up. Read and fought for free speech and became a feminist rebel, which was nominated for lambda literary award in 2006. We also have with us tonight dr. Estelle friedman. Shes the Edgar Robinson professor in u. S. History emerita at stanford university. She cofounded the program in feminist gender and sexuality studies. The recipient multiple teaching awards. She has held fellowships the National Endowment for the humanities, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the center for advanced study and the behavioral sciences. And she is currently a faculty fellow. Friedmans books on the histories of women president feminism and sexuality include no turning back the history of feminism and the future of women redefining rape, Sexual Violence in the era of suffrage and segregation. With john demaio. Intimate matters history of sexuality in america. She is currently writing about narratives of Sexual Violence, the 20th century, womens oral histories and, also codirecting a documentary films singing for justice about the San Francisco bay area. Folk musician and activist patrick foster, Bettina Becker and our crystal freeman. Thank you both so much for with us today or so honored to have you tonight. And im looking forward to hearing your discussion and your presentations. Thank you. Take it away. Thank you so much. So thank so much for having us today and for giving me the opportunity to discuss my new book, communists in closets queering the history, 1936 1990s i give huge thanks to the California Historical society for inviting me and director Francis Kaplan and Program DirectorJessica Williams and deep gratitude to Estelle Friedman for all of her time and energy. It is a joy to collaborate with her today after make an opening presentation, estelle will be in dialog with me and then we will also welcome questions and comments from all of you who are in this webinar. Thank you for coming. The first essential point, however, counter intuitive it may feel, is that the communist party banned whom it called degenerates from membership beginning 1938. Everyone understood that term to mean homosexuals. The ban became more explicit, more adamant over time. So that from the 1950s until the ban was ended in 1991, Party Resolutions sometimes used the most bigoted stereotypical language to describe us. At times it was indistinguishable from the most vicious homophobia on the right. This is the essential historical and political context for this book. Finding people was a challenge because they were often closeted as communist and then they were closeted as gay and lesbian. I was in archives for a decade, including many in california, the hormel lesbian and gay collection at the San Francisco public library. The one archive and the duplication. Lesbian archives are once said to us, and then many, many across the country. I was very, very careful naming people as gay, lesbian, nonheterosexual, and likewise was very careful about affirming membership in the communist party or close enough to what i call the communist left to be included. In telling their stories, i am also telling the story of communist. From the 1930 to the popular front against fascism to the late 1940s and fifties, during the height of the mccarthy repression in which thousands of communists and thousands of lgbt people lost jobs, their homes and many cases, their families, and were sometimes forced to leave communities. Others put on trial and imprisoned. Others brutalized by police and fbi and under constant surveillance. Others were beaten and gay, bashing. Some were killed. The partys on lgbt membership was not lifted until 1991, and the first serious resolution at a Party Convention affirming lgbt rights was not until 2005. This is very, very, very late. Most of the left had already way past that position. In the 1930s and forties, the communist membership was over 100,000. Its called for magazine. The new masses had a circular motion of the tens of thousands and its contributors included everyone. Michael gold to langston hughes, from Theodore Dreiser to William Carlos williams, upton sinclair, ernest hemingway, richard wright, meredith lesueur, josephine tillie olson, and many others, many of whom are placed today in the u. S. Literary canon. Likewise a black communist against you based in harlem was a Critical Force in organizing antiwar racist black feminist initiatives. From this point of view, the communist party may be viewed as a significant Political Force on the american left in spite of the partys homophobic 60 year ban in dividual queer members of the communist party made astonishing contributions to lgbt history and gay liberation, womens history and Liberation Union organizing antirape is just organizing black liberation. I provide extensive reference notes also to detail the cases of political or campaigns and events. The party people were involved in, especially for younger younger generations, who may not be familiar with that history. Queer communists were teachers, artists, poets, playwrights, journalists, social workers, and union and community organizers. This queer presence is an essential part of communist and radical history in the United States. Many historians and biographers, however wellmeaning, often employ euphemisms to avoid saying a word communist in relationship to the movements or they describe. And then others writing about communists, even in a very positive way, deny, raise their queerness. The reality, however, is that many of these histories are intertwined. We are so rich and. The lives were clear. Communist revolutionaries so precious. These are stories that should be held close to our hearts. And there are so many more people who need to be found. Their stories explain what this book is really just a small beginning. I am personally in the book when it is relevant, the context, knowledge of the subject was similarly a similarity of experiences. Ill just read you a little bit. The book opens this way. This is the first first opening page. I came out of the closet with confidence in 1965 as a communist. I had been a prominent leader in the Free Speech Movement on the university of california, berkeley campus. The previous year. Now, i was running for a position on what was called the rules committee that would govern free speech on campus. I thought the students should know my political affiliation, which at the time was only some illegal. I wrote an open letter to. The students on the berkeley campus. It was published on the front page of the daily cal. I was 21. The next day, a headline on the front page of the San Francisco examiner read butina admits it. Shes red and i won the election by a landslide. And then two pages later, theres two pages intervening and the two pages later, i say, i came out as a lesbian ten years after stonewall. It was november 7th, 1979. I fall in love with a woman and i was soaring with happiness. I was sometimes stricken with absolute terror. My sweetheart had no such terrors. He was thrilled to claim a lesbian identity and called up all manner of friends from her adolescents and young adulthood to proclaim it. They may have been more than a little startled, but most of them were supportive, swept up by her affirming enthusiast. Born and raised in north dakota, in a working class family whose parents were republicans and devout members of a lutheran church, she had somehow escaped of the intense and homophobia that i had absorbed in and around the communist left. This might Say Something about what the word radical means. It is also striking that kate did not internalize homophobia while i was saturated with it. The process of unlearning the deep layering of it in my consciousness remains ongoing. Even after all these years. So juxtaposed the two elements of my identity at that time, right in the beginning beginning, for our purposes today. Some of some of the start, some of the people whose stories i tell. I knew well others only in a peripheral way. And others not at all. Somewhere in the communist party who were in the communist party connected it in a central way. When i am not sure of a persons or party membership, i say so. So im very, very, very careful for our purposes. Today with the telephone society. I will begin by presenting a few of the stories of people who are primarily based in california. And then estelle and i will move around to more of the stories of people from other parts of the country. Harry hays. Obviously the place to start is dates to 1912 to 2002. I have the first slide there. There is harry hay with his lifetime poet harry hays on the right as looking at the screen in his lifetime, partner John Burnside is on the left and this is taken at the gay pride 25th anniversary of stonewall in new york in 1994. So harry hey, now we can move the slide, people. Ive seen it. Thank you, harry. Harry was the founder of the first gay rights organization, the United States. It was called the Machine Society in 1951 in los angeles. Who . Harry was a member of the communist party from 1938 to 1951, when he resigned knowing that his kids was incompatible with party membership. But even after he resigned, the Party Leadership in new york and a thoroughly spirited gesture expelled him to prevent him from ever being able to rejoin. Harry was a musicologist and erudite marxist scholar and screenwriter, the union organizer, especially a farm workers in his younger days in the Central Valley and outside paris, among many other activities, raised money in los angeles to help jewish refugees fleeing hitler. It was charismatic, funny and adored gay. And so he was in the world nevertheless wanting to join the party and knowing they would not allow it. He sought help from a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist circa 1937, advised him to marry a masculine like woman and assured him that he would be fine. Harry wooed a communist party member. He knew from the picket lines who he liked a lot and married anita paki in 1938. Then he was allowed to join the party. They were married for 13 years. Adopt two children and lived in echo park, a neighborhood in los angeles, well known for being a red enclave. Later in his life, long after his expulsion from the acp, he founded the radical fairies, an organization devoted to the joy of being gay. The of being alive and helping men to heal from all of the internalized selfhating homophobia generated by the dominant culture. I fell in love with harry listening to his oral history with historian damelio sitting in the archive room of the new york public library. There are two things i want to emphasize today about the machines society. The first was how it started. After all, it was the early fifties and homophobic were amendments. Harry had fallen in love with rudi gernreich, a jewish refuge aide from vienna, and rudi took up harrys call for managing. Then the two of them went to the venice beach and specifically to the area it was populated by gay men. They circulated a petition called the stockholm peace pledge. This was a Global Initiative to prevent any further use of atomic weapons and a pledge this in opposition war broke with the men. He and rudi also told them about the idea for marashi. And we reported that the of signatures on a petition and very very little positive response to the idea of a gay civil rights organization. However they did get a few and that was enough to begin holding their first meetings, launching the organization. Aris vision for machine was very radical and the main point about it is, and i of quoting from the book, just say the main point was he named gay, gay people, queer as being a cultural oppressed minority. And he thought the wording paralleling to the communist partys idea of African Americans as being a naturally oppressed minority. And so he spent a good deal of time and the rest of his of his life trying to find a theoretical explanation for why, under so many Patriarchal Society is the suppression of homosexuality was a historical society. Thats a very marxist question. It was a very marxist way of approaching things that he was and he was never fully satisfied with what he found. I got through it in the chapter to show you how erudite the scholar he was. The second significant story about. Marashi thats very important is that one of its early members was, a man named william dale jennings, he had gone into a public restroom, los angeles, and was propositioned by another man, a proposition he refused. However, the man was an Undercover Police officer and they arrested jennings anyway. This was a very common practice to entrap gay men and was used by the police all over the country. The usual outcome was a plea bargain so that the victims name would not be what would be kept out of the press while at the same time a conviction stood on his record. Harry convinced jennings to plead not guilty and to demand a jury trial. This was and this tactic straight out of his knowledge of the way of communist members. But trying to defend themselves and slither across where they used every constitutional right they could think of or invent in order to try to defend themselves. Harry had a heck of a time finding jennings, a lawyer who was going to defend what he did. And there was a jury trial and jennings was found not guilty. Harry rudy, dale jennings. Everyone in madison did their best to get some of press coverage of this unprecedented victory, all to no avail. Even the communist newspaper, the peoples world, of course, refused to mention it because it was so homophobic. However, words spread through the Gay Community via word of mouth and in short order managing membership swell. The irony however was that as it swelled numbers, it became far less radical. The revolutionary oasis harrogate originally envisioned. And thats why madison became mostly a social work meditation and lost that sort of radical edge that it originally had. The next queer communist story i would like to share. I have a slide, please, of the lowell being denny the third, and you see him here with his beloved cat hunter, and thats lowell. And he is living in hawaii now 2020. And this photograph of he he very generous lay shared with me. I just love it. I love the picture of the cat. You can you can perhaps see that probably has a very good sense humor, which he does. Thank you for the slide. Okay. Ill go on with this story. I had the pleasure of interviewing lowell several times over zoom, and since then we have our extensive email correspondence. Lowell now lives on the big island in hawaii. He is an ardent trade unionist, an excellent writer with his own online blog and is an occasional columnist for the peoples world. At time, he reached out to me. He was chair of the communist party in hawaii, a position he no longer holds. He emailed me seeing a film in which i was interviewed, and coincidentally, while i was working on this, lowell was born in st louis in 1967 and came to Southern California with his mom where he attended school. Later he returned to saint louis and graduated from washington. It was there that was first introduced to marxism by two different professors. Wonderful. Id been in the government, the czechoslovakian government. Dubcek prior to the soviets invasion in 1968, lowell was fascinated engaged, felt a sense of solidarity and purpose with his introduction to marxism as a queer African American man. Both danny was about the founding members of queer nation San Francisco in 1990. This was a radical left political formation that was grounded in Community Engagement to oppose, often with direct action, homophobic and discriminatory practices in bars or local against gays and lesbians. The group also encouraged people to come out through the political thinking, focused on importance of visibility, educate people against homophobia. Lowell told me that many of us queer activists would have joined communist party were it not for its so many identify themselves as marxists and revolutionaries. His roommate was a member of the french communist party. It was easier explained in the meetings of queer nation that he was first introduced to the writings of so many women of color, including gloria anzaldua, bell hooks and jim jordan. More 500 people were involved in queer nation. We said that white men predominated, but there was a people of color caucus, of which he was a member. There was also a lesbian caucus. The aids epidemic was still much in evidence. The direct actions that lowell described to me, and many of which he participated in were fun. Sometimes hilariously funny, especially, i think, in retrospect i