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LGBTQ, Today in history

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

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Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

San Francisco, September 22, 1975

Sara Jane Moore

mugshot of Sara Jane Moore
Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Two Michigan guys and a mom

Two Michigan guys, strangers to each other, got out of two different beds on September 22, 1975. Neither imagined that someone was about to intertwine their lives forever. That someone was Sara Jane Moore. She got up that morning intending to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Moore put on baggy tan pants and a neatly pressed blue raincoat.  The 45-year-old mother of four packed a chrome revolver.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Oliver W Sipple

President Fort had addressed a conference at the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Outside was Oliver W Sipple, a 33-year-old ex-marine, twice-wounded in Vietnam. He  happened to be downtown that day and thought, “Why not stick around and see the President.” As the President left the hotel, Sipple was standing near Moore when he noticed her outstretched arm holding a revolver. Sipple yelled “The bitch has got a gun” and lunged at her. The bullet missed Ford and hit a cab driver who, fortunately, was only wounded.

With so much media around, a picture caught the moment: Sipple on the far left, Moore circled in red.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Hero

President Ford sent a letter to Sipple. It said in part,

“I want you to know how much I appreciated your selfless actions last Monday…. The events were a shock to us all, but you acted quickly and without fear for your own safety.

“By doing so you helped to avert danger to me and to others in the crowd. You have my heartfelt appreciation.”
Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Outed

Navy veteran Harvey Milk was openly gay and active in San Francisco politics, He saw Sipple’s bravery as an opportunity to demonstrate that a gay person could also be a hero. Milk contacted San Francisco journalist Herb Caen. A few day’s later, Caen wrote about Milk, Sipple, and Sipple being gay. The new component to Sipple’s life went national.

Being a gay ex-Marine who displayed bravery both in uniform and again as a civilian sadly changed the story’s arc. For many, it somehow tempered their view of that courage, even in San Francisco, a place more (but not completely) tolerant of gays.

On September 29, William Safire wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Sipple is guilty of committing heroism in public, and is trying to hold on to the last shreds of the privacy that was stripped from him as a consequence of his selfless act. He is probably under family pressure to go one way, and under peer‐group pressure to go the other, with publicity stakes fairly high. He will think twice before he does any good deed again.”

Until his brave act, Sipple’s parents did not know of is sexual orientation. Finding out, his parents disowned him and later when Sipple’s mother died, Mr Sipple told his son he was not welcome to attend the funeral.

Keep in mind that on September 19th, just three days before the assassination attempt, a three‐member panel of Air Force officers took 4 hours 27 minutes  to conclude that T.Sgt. Leonard P. Matlovich, gay, was unfit for military service.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Aftermath

Sipple sued the Chronicle for invasion of privacy. The Superior Court in San Francisco dismissed the suit. Sipple continued his legal battle. In May 1984 the California Supreme Court refused to reinstate his invasion-of-privacy suit. His lawyer said that Sipple would have been better off ”if he had let that woman shoot.”

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed

Death

Oliver W. Sipple death is listed as February 2, 1989. That is the day authorities discovered his body. He had likely been dead for a few days. He was 47.

Papers reported that he had received treatment for schizophrenia, alcoholism and several other health problems. He weighed nearly 300 pounds when he died. His apartment was in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, a mainly low rent district. By that time, Sipple’s days  consisted of getting up and going to a bar to drink.

On the wall of his apartment hung the framed letter from Ford.

President Ford, the man who pardoned the un-convicted President who’d broken laws as President, had never invited the man who saved his life to the White House. Some conjectured that that failure was due to Sipple’s sexual orientation. The President said his letter had been enough.

 

Moore

Sara Jane Moore pleaded guilty. At her sentencing to life in prison she stated “Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And, no, I’m not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger.“

Moore escaped from prison in 1979 for a few hours. She later said, “If I knew that I was going to be captured…I would have stopped at the local bar just to get a drink and a burger.”

On December 31, 2007, Moore, 77, was released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. When the media asked about her crime Moore stated, “I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try.”

In May 2009, NBC’s Matt Lauer interviewed her on the “Today Show.” (NYT article)

Radiolab, an outstanding podcast, presented a program on Oliver Sipple on September 21, 2017. Here is the link to that podcast.

Hero Oliver Sipple Outed
Today in history

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ 

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1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

from Claude Debussy,  “Trois Chansons de Bilitis”
founded September 21, 1955

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

Deep history

On Museum tours at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts I try to emphasize to guests that the many movements  we associate the 60s with were not new. What was historic was the chronological convergence of so many movements.

And so it is with the gay rights movement. Most people think of the so-called Stonewall Riots in July 1969 as the beginning of LGBTQ activism. It certainly is an important milepost, but not the beginning.

Like any view contrary to the status quo’s view, the idea that homosexuality is a normal human trait, not an illness, not an immoral lifestyle, has deeper roots than 1969. And as progressive-appearing as the following chronology is, keep in mind that there were far more homophobic  incidents and politically- biased initiatives than positive during the time period.

  • In 1873: English writer  John Addington Symonds’ 1873 essay “A Problem in Greek Ethics,” extolled the ancient Greeks’ liberal views of sexuality, helped seed a revolution by paving a literary path for the modern gay rights movement. Fully aware of the potentially incendiary contents of his work, Symonds limited the first print run of his essay at ten copies, cautiously circulating them among only trusted colleagues. In the century and a half since the work’s 1883 publication, scholars have painstakingly collected the five versions known to survive. Then, Johns Hopkins University curator Gabrielle Dean stumbled upon a long-forgotten sixth in 2019. He noted that the Greeks accepted and even celebrated relationships between men, offering a stark contrast with the values of 19th-century England, where homosexuality was illegal. Rachel Wallach for Johns Hopkins’ Hub wrote that his essay was the first major English language analysis of ancient Greek sexuality.
  • in 1910 anarchist Emma Goldman spoke of the need for acceptance.
  • on December 10, 1924,  Henry Gerber founded  The Society for Human Rights in Chicago. It was the first US gay rights organization.
  • on January 5, 1948, Alfred Kinsey and his team published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It helped allow objective discussions  of homosexuality.
  • on November 11, 1950, in Los Angeles, gay rights activist Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society. The Society aimed to “eliminate discrimination, derision, prejudice and bigotry,” to assimilate homosexuals into mainstream society, and to cultivate the notion of an “ethical homosexual culture.”
  • in January 1953, LGBT:  ONE, Inc. an early gay rights organization and associated with the Mattachine Society published the first  issue of ONE Magazine
  • on September. 14, 1953  Alfred Kinsey published a second study,  Sexual Behavior in the Human Female This one reported that “2 to 6% of females, aged 20-35, were more or less exclusively homosexual in experience/response.”
1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

San Francisco

And in San Francisco on September 21, 1955 the Daughters of Bilitis became the first lesbian rights organization in the US.

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

Pierre Louÿs

The name for the group came from an 1894 collection of  lesbian-themed poems, Les Chansons de Bilitis, Pierre Louÿs. He said  the poems were his interpretation of poems that the ancient Greek poet Sappho wrote. Louÿs wrote that Sappho had found the poems on a wall and that a woman Bilitis wrote them. Louÿs was actually the original author.

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

The DOB

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were two of the founders. They simply wanted to dance together. That was against the law in 1955. One of Daughters of Bilitis’s primary purposes was to host social functions and to provide alternatives to the frequently-raided lesbian bars and clubs.

Though small in membership, the DOB had chapters across the US.

As with any organization that society views as made up of perverted or sick individuals, those members differed in their views as to how to react. Should there even be a reaction? Would any reaction simply bring more attention and more discrimination? Should a reaction be as strong as society’s actions?

Gradually the DOB became as much a political as social organization.

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

The Ladder

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

In October 1956 DOB published the first issue of The Ladder.  Lyon edited it initially under the pen name Ann Ferguson. The Ladder published until  1972.  Barbara Grier and the DOB president Rita LaPorte both felt a  stronger lesbian feminist stance was needed. Should the DOB align itself with male gay rights groups? And by 1972, the feminist movement was seen by many as equally if not more important.

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

Short-lived 

After 14 years the DOB dissolved, but it had helped continue the historic tradition of the LGBTQ community organizing and educating Society

1955 Daughters Bilitis LGBTQ

Black history, Today in history

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

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Izola Curry Stabs MLK

20 September 1958

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Martin Luther King, Jr

Boomers remember the day that James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968 had begun with the disillusioning Tet Offensive and June 5 brought Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert Kennedy on the night RFK had mostly wrapped up the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

When Ray assassinated King, it didn’t bring surprise or shock so much as worry and wonder. When would the violence end?

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

1958 book signing

Martin Luther King, Jr (29 years old) was in New York City signing copies of his recently published book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story in Blumstein’s department store. Izola Ware Curry was on line with others who were waiting for King to sign a copy of the book.

Izola Ware Curry was a woman with mental illness. The illness prevented her from holding a job. She moved regularly in hopes of finding a permanent job and living in a permanent location.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Officer Howard

When she came up to King she asked him if he was Martin Luther King, Jr. When King replied yes, she said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” then stabbed him in the chest with a steel letter opener.

NYPD officers Al Howard (31 and on the force for 3 years) and Phil Romano (a rookie) responded.  Someone wanted to pull out the opener, but very luckily for King, Howard told her not to and told King, “Don’t sneeze, don’t even speak.”

Cops didn’t carry radios at the time and so Howard had to use a phone.  There was also a crowd issue. Howard devised a plan. He announced that people must clear a path to the front door and began to move in that direction, but Officer Romano and other carried King out the back door to an ambulance.

At the Harlem Hospital, chief of thoracic and vascular surgery John W. V. Cordice, Jr., and trauma surgeon Emil Naclerio [who had been attending a wedding and arrived still in a tuxedo] were the first to treat King. They  inserted a rib spreader, making King’s aorta visible.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Aubre de Lambert Maynard

Chief of Surgery Aubre de Lambert Maynard then entered and attempted to pull out the letter opener, but cut his glove on the blade; a surgical clamp was finally used to remove it.

While it may seem that a letter opener is not necessarily a very dangerous weapon, had Curry’s thrust gone any deeper it would have hit King’s aorta and likely killed him.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Aftermath

When King later spoke of the incident, he sometimes told about how many letter of encouragement he’d received. Even from President Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon. But he typically spoke about a letter that a high school student from White Plains, NY sent: 

Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.

With gallows humor, King always closed the telling by saying, “And I’m glad I didn’t sneeze, too.” He  referred to the letter the day before Ray assassinated him.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Indictment

A grand jury indicted Isola Curry, but psychiatrists found her too ill to be responsible for her actions. She first went to Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She remained there for some 14 years. She was later institutionalized for about a year at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, in the East River. She lived in a series of residential-care homes before entering a nursing home in Queens, NY.

She died there on March 7, 2015 with no known relatives. (NYT obit)

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Showman’s

When Howard retired, he and his partner Mona Lopez took over the Showman’s jazz club, now located  at 375 West 125th Street in Harlem. They ran it for nearly 39 years until COVID shut down so much.

In September 2020, Howard and Lopez flew to Las Vegas, a regular trip for them, but on the way home Howard fell sick. It was COVID and he died on October 21 . His funeral was held October 27 at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home in Jamaica Queens. He was buried at The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

PDF NYT article: MLK stabbed

Link to expanded story about Officer Howard.

Amsterdam News obituary for Howard

Izola Curry Stabs MLK