WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Henry Gerber 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.080 Happy Saturday. Henry Gerber was born on June twenty ninth, 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:09.200 eighteen ninety two, or one hundred thirty two years ago 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.400 today if you're listening on the day this episode publishes. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.919 Gerber established Chicago Society for Human Rights one hundred years 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.959 ago in nineteen twenty four, and it was the first 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.480 known organization for gay rights in the United States. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.479 We mentioned in this episode that it followed one on 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.720 Compton's Cafeteria riot. That riot happened a little less than 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.680 three years before the more well known Stonewall Riot. There 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.600 are also a couple of mentions in this episode of 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:42.640 Magnus Hirschfeld in his Institute for Sexual Science. When we 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.280 recorded this episode, we did not have an episode on 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:49.360 him that came out afterward on September nineteenth, twenty eighteen, 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:51.040 and us a little bit of an. 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.240 Update to the very end of this episode. In June 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.080 of twenty fifteen, Henry Gerber's house was indeed designated a 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:02.240 National Historic Landmark. Of this episode on Henry Gerber and 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:05.720 Chicago Society where Human Rights came out on June twenty second, 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:11.920 twenty fifteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:20.880 A production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:22.960 I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:29.120 Wilson. And we recently talked about the Compton's Cafeteria riots, 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:32.120 and this is kind of a little bit of a 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.400 dovetail on that, but we're time traveling backwards. We talked 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.440 about in that episode, how you know a lot of 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.000 people point to the Stonewall Riots as the beginning of 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.399 the LGBT rights movement in the US, but of course 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.480 there were things going on before that, as that episode 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.880 on the Cafeteria Riot pointed out, and even before that, 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:54.360 and there were certainly gay people here long before that, 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.560 and there were, in fact LGBT rights organizations trying to 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.000 pop up, probably my earlier than you, suspect. And today 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:04.240 we're going to talk about the man who started, ever 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.080 so briefly, the first such organization in the US, at 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.160 least the first that we know of, and that took 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:14.320 place more than four decades before Stonewall. So just a 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.680 heads up on this one, particularly if you're listening with 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.560 younger listeners. We are going to talk a little bit 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.840 about some legal issues that came up involving specific sex acts, 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.560 So just keep that in mind as you listen to 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:29.840 this one, maybe preview it if you think your younger 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.320 listeners might not be ready for that. But right out 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.519 of the gate, I feel like we have to mention 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.280 that today's subject, who is Henry Gerber, can be a 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.160 little bit of a difficult character in LGBT history. While 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.400 he definitely wanted to push back against anti gay legislation, 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:47.920 he was not so open to bisexuals. He was not 0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:52.079 particularly accepting of lesbians or basically any of the people 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:55.679 we would put under the LGBT umbrella today that we're 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:59.880 not gay men. He was an introvert, He was very 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:05.520 serious man. Some people describe him as curmudgeonly or cantankerous, 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.720 not really a charmer, and he would often look down 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.200 his nose even at other gay men, saying that they 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:14.520 were too frivolous and that they were not forward thinking 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:17.919 enough about the place of the gay man in society. 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.680 But at the same time, he really spearheaded this important, 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:28.079 though often overlooked effort to improve the rights of gay 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.360 citizens and secure some sort of safety for them. So 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.720 we're talking about Henry Gerbert today, keep in mind he's 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.080 a little bit tricky in some ways. He was born 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.040 as of Henry Ditmar. On June twenty ninth of eighteen 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:45.320 ninety two, he and his family left their home in 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:47.920 Bavaria to set out for the United States, and they 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.200 arrived at Ellis Island in nineteen thirteen. At that point, 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.280 Henry was twenty one, and once they had been processed 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.360 by immigration officials, the family moved to Chicago, where they 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.320 were hoping to join the significant German population there. Henry 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.000 got a job pretty quickly working at Montgomery Ward in 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:06.160 the mail order department. 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.800 As is probably obvious at this point, Gerber was gay, 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.600 and a lot of the articles about him indicate that 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:19.200 being homosexual got him institutionalized briefly, although the accounts aren't 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:22.600 entirely clear about exactly when this happened. 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:28.479 Yeah, he's one that we mentioned this a lot in 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.080 in some of our episodes, that there are some portions 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.080 of history and usually it's the further back you go 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:39.560 that it becomes the harder to actually find substantiated information. 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:44.080 And he's very tricky in this regard. Outside of military records, 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.400 a lot of what we have is kind of word 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.080 of mouth and his retelling and some other retellings that 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:51.280 have happened along the way, so some of the details 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.200 get a little mushy meshy. But what we do know 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.080 is that Henry enlisted in the US Army on January 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.800 twenty sixth of nineteen fourteen, and it's believed that just 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.719 after this is when he changed his name from Joseph 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.680 Henry Ditmar to Henry Gerber, although this is another part 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.839 where there's some haziness around the historical record and when 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.359 he stopped using his birth name and switched to Gerber. 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.719 Ditmar actually still appears on a nineteen seventeen draft card, 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.200 although at that point Henry claimed exemption on that card 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.920 as a conscientious objector, and it's possible that he purposely 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.479 shifted the name back to his original Bavarian name in 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.320 an effort to create some paperwork confusion over his status. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.760 That's purely speculation. I don't know based on what I've seen, 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.000 and I haven't seen the actual card, if that was 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.560 a pre printed card or if it's something he wrote in. 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.560 But eventually, we do know that his military records cross 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:51.560 referenced both names, both Dittmar and Gerber. During the early 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.080 part of World War One, he was labeled as an 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:56.960 enemy alien, and he was taken to an internment camp. 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.320 Really sensationalist stories in the press, gossip circles about German 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.960 spies in the United States caused a lot of German 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:06.960 immigrants to be looked upon with suspicion, and he was 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:12.240 no exception. After the war was over, Gerber re enlisted 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.560 at the end of nineteen nineteen and he worked for 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:17.359 the military as a printer and a proofreader, and he 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.000 was shipped to Coblin's Germany as part of the US 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.640 Army of Occupation in nineteen twenty and there he worked 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:25.800 on the Amarok News, which is a daily paper that 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.720 was published to keep American soldiers that were stationed abroad, 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.679 particularly in Germany, informed and entertained, and it published everything 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.960 from poems and short stories to the latest sports scores. 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.560 While he was in Germany serving as a United States soldier, 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:44.280 Gerber was exposed to that country's homosexual emancipation movement and 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.960 as also to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee that was a 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:52.240 critical part of that movement. And I'll give a little 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.800 background on the German homosexual emancipation movements, and we're also 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.240 going to talk a little bit about Magnus Hirschfield who 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:03.800 was also mentioned and in the Compton's Cafeteria episode. So 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.000 the criminal code in Germany was amended in eighteen seventy 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.360 one with the inclusion of what is called paragraph one 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:14.080 seventy five, and that piece of legislation made it illegal 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:16.680 for men to engage in sexual acts with one another. 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:21.160 Twenty six years after paragraph one seventy five was adopted 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:25.120 into law, the Scientific Humanitarian Community was founded in Berlin 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:29.680 by Magnus Hirschfeld. One of the huge achievements of Hirschfield's 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.600 life was the deconstruction of homosexuality from a biological perspective, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.720 sort of moving it away from being defined as a 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:42.720 pathology and with a scientific approach to the issue of homosexuality, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.880 the Scientific Humanitarian Committee was making some progress towards LGBT rights, 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.480 and they were making that progress right up until Hitler's 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.560 rise and the Nazi Party's persecution of any perceived sexual devians. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:59.880 Yeah, the Nazi Party actually burned down Magnus Hirschfeld's in 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:05.880 Institute for Research into Sexuality. That's sort of been alluded 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:07.640 to in a couple of episodes that we have talked 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:09.400 about that have been on this subject, and we've never 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.280 gone into a lot of detail, but yeah, the Nazi 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.800 Party destroyed his facility and all the research that was 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.120 in it. And we're just giving you kind of the 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.360 brief and quick on that to kind of contextualize what 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.600 happens next when Gerber returned to the US. We're going 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.040 to talk about that influence after his time in Germany 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.040 and his exposure to the homosexual emancipation movement, But first 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:34.920 we are going to have a quick word from a sponsor. 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.040 By the time Gerber returned to the US, he was 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.720 well acquainted with the homosexual emancipation movement. He had spent 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.920 his time in Germany reading magazines and other literature about 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.240 the movement and also getting to know its leaders. He 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.559 would kind of travel around Germany and go to lectures 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.520 and really immerge himself in this whole ideology to learn 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.040 about it. And he thought, if Germany could have this 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.440 growing and thriving for the time homosexual culture that was 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.280 willing to speak out for rights, why couldn't we have 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.400 that in the US. So one of the things about 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:17.240 the United States was that there was just a lack 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:21.600 of uniformity in legislation across the country regarding sex. It 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.000 had created a really tangled mess, and that was facing 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.880 anyone who wanted to work toward the cause of rights. 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.920 Being labeled as immoral in his home country for being 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.400 homosexual just really seemed to be an incredible injustice to 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.360 gerber Yeah, and I have to wonder about sort of 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.240 the duality of it in terms of his home country. 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.240 I put that word in the notes, and he considered 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.480 the US his home country, even though he had come 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.240 from Bavaria. And so it's kind of interesting that he 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.240 then went back to Germany and saw them kind of 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.960 working towards this progressive idea of rights, and then he 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.679 went to his chosen home where he just did not 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.640 have of that same kind of social movement going on. 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:07.679 So it's kind of fascinating from that perspective. And when 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.040 he returned to Chicago in nineteen twenty three after his 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.200 three years in Germany, he started working as an employee 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.000 at the US Postal Service, and he saw that Chicago 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.720 had this growing gay subculture, which was secret in most 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.280 areas of the city but fairly open in the bohemian 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.160 neighborhood of Tower Town, which is in the near North 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.959 Side area. And as he saw the gay and lesbian 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.400 community growing, he wanted to create a way to protect 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.280 these people's rights. Inspired by what he had seen in Germany, 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.400 he launched his own plan to create an organization that 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.640 would mimic the ones that were involved in Germany's emancipation movement. 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:46.480 He knew that he could not do it alone, but 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.079 it was really difficult to find other people who were 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.240 willing to take the risks that were inherent in participating 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.920 in this kind of mission. He tried to network with 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.800 other activists, including birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, but he 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.760 never managed to George and the alliances. His efforts to 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:04.600 reach out to the gay men he knew of and 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:10.160 business in Chicago were met pretty coldly at best. Prominent 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.080 business people were just not willing to risk their jobs 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.800 and families to fight for what they thought was definitely 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:16.840 a losing cause. 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.800 Yees, if it's not completely clear. At this point, pretty 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.640 much all these people were closeted outside of Tower Town 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.440 like nobody knew that any of these people were gay, 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.160 and after a year of searching for allies, Gerber and 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.440 six other men that he had managed to round up 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.240 founded Chicago's Society for Human Rights in nineteen twenty four, 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.760 applying for a charter to incorporate the group on December 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:45.760 tenth of that year, and it was the first gay 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.040 rights organization in the United States. 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.360 The Society of Human Rights published a newsletter called Friendship 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.280 and Freedom, which circulated to all of its members. Was 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:59.679 a pretty small group, and not many people wanted literature 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.479 that my out them to show up in their mailboxes. 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:08.720 Postal inspectors cooperated with law enforcement and would report suspicious materials. 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:10.800 At this point, pretty much all of this would have 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:11.920 been considered obscene. 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:18.840 Yes, all pretty much illegal. Nonetheless, Gerbert continued his work, 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:21.440 and the mission of the Society was to educate the 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.920 heterosexual community about homosexuality and to reform the laws that 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.959 made homosexuality criminal. But they had to be very very 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:29.760 careful about this. 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.960 The charter for the group relayed this purpose this way 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.240 quote to promote and protect the interests of people who, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.440 by reasons of mental and physical abnormalities, are abused and 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.760 hindered in a legal pursuit of happiness, which is guaranteed 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.880 them by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.760 public prejudices against them by dissemination of factors according to 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:54.280 modern science. Among intellectuals of mature age. The society stands 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.440 only for law and order. It is in harmony with 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.599 any and all general laws insofar as they protect the 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:04.040 rights of others, and does in no manner recommend any 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.480 acts and violation of present laws, nor advocate in any 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:13.800 manner inimical to public welfare. You probably noticed that there 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.400 is no mention there of homosexuality or gay rights. Remember, 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:20.800 this was still a time when it was absolutely illegal 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.400 to be gay, thanks to sodomy laws in Illinois. There 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.719 were precedent cases that established oral sex as sodomy under 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:31.079 the letter of the law, including one which judicially categorized 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.680 fallatio as a crime against nature. This was not a 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:36.720 time that it would have been safe for an organization 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.760 intended to decriminalize homosexuality to be out and proud about it. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:42.960 They had to be very, very careful and kind of 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:47.320 work in incremental, very slow steps. Unfortunately, their work did 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.480 not last very long at all. Just eight months after 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.400 it was founded, and with only two issues of Friendship 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.920 and Freedom having been published, everything came to a crashing halt. 0:13:57.400 --> 0:13:59.920 In July nineteen twenty five, the wife of one of 0:13:59.920 --> 0:14:03.040 the co founders reported her husband to a social worker. 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.520 After the couple's daughter said she had seen her father 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.520 and other men performing seances and other strange behavior. The 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:13.120 social worker she spoke with contacted police, and soon thereafter 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:16.640 the Society for Human Rights, which was headquartered in Gerber's home, 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:23.080 was rated. Gerber was arrested for deviant behavior. His typewriter, 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.840 his diaries, and other papers were seized, and at this 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.040 point in time, Illinois sodomy law stipulated a minimum one 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.520 year prison term for anyone found guilty, with the maximum 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.280 sentence of ten years, so this was quite a serious situation. 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.400 Gerber always insisted that the story of his colleagues's behavior, 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.000 as reported by his wife and related in the papers, 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:48.880 was fabricated, but because the accused husband, al Menager, was 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:53.280 confessed to being bisexual during police screening, no one cared 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:57.760 that the facts of the news weren't entirely accurate. Yeah, 0:14:57.800 --> 0:14:59.920 and this also came as a surprise to Gerber. He 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.920 he had not even known, according to what I read 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.440 that the members of his group, that any of them 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.520 were married. So when this turned up and there was 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.560 a wife that had reported one of them, remember, he 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.960 wasn't really that keen on bisexuals, so This was a 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.800 really kind of weird and awkward situation in addition to 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:21.560 being dangerous and kind of a powder keg. Gerber was 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.160 held by the police for several days. He was allowed 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:26.840 a phone call the morning after his arrest, which he 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.440 used to call work and explain his absence, and his 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:31.880 supervisor kind of tried to help him out. He wrote 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.760 up the situation as absent on leave in an effort 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:39.600 to cover for Gerber. Henry endured three trials with his colleagues. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.200 The only evidence against him that was supposed to prove 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.720 that he was homosexual was a powder puff that was 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:46.920 allegedly found in his room. 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:52.680 Ee. Yeah, that's widely believed to have been planted. Remember, 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.720 he was not, by any accounts I have read, a 0:15:55.720 --> 0:16:02.000 cross dresser. He wasn't. He didn't dabble in any sort 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.880 of alternate gender expression. So this powder puffs, it's very jarring. 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.280 In the record, it seems very weird and out of place. However, 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.760 the charges against him were eventually dropped, and that happened 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.920 when a judge realized this was during the third trial 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.400 that Gerber had been arrested without a warrant, but unfortunately, 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.160 he had spent his entire savings up to this point, 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:28.560 particularly on this third trial, hiring an attorney so that 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.840 he could try to sort of save himself from this mess. 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.640 The raid and the trials had been reported by the news, 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.120 with the Chicago Examiner running a story about it under 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:42.520 the headline strange sex cult exposed, So even though he 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:45.120 had been released and the charges were dropped, he was 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:47.560 still fired from his postal job in the wake of 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:54.040 the incident for a quote conduct unbecoming a postal worker. Additionally, 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.480 all records of the Society for Human Rights and their 0:16:57.560 --> 0:16:59.760 Friendship and Freedom Newsletter that had been seized in the 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.920 red were destroyed, and for decades this important aspect of 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:08.760 LGBT history was basically erased. There are no surviving copies 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.600 of the Friendship and Freedom newsletter. A review of it 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.440 was reprinted in the book Paris Gay nineteen twenty five, 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.360 which came out in nineteen eighty one. The review describes 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.560 the newsletter as moral and says that it included a 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:25.200 poem by Walt Whitman and an essay about Oscar Wilde's 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.440 practice of wearing a green carnation in his lapel. It's 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:31.919 long been rumored, but not ever confirmed that Wild in 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.280 his social circle would wear green carnations as a secret 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:40.120 symbol of homosexuality. Yeah, so that's how that essay would 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.399 have appeared in the newsletter. And in just a moment, 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.400 we're going to talk about Henry's life after the raid 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.000 and subsequent trials and how that put an end to 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.640 the Society for Human Rights. But first we're gonna take 0:17:51.640 --> 0:18:03.320 a brief word from a sponsor. After all of these 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:05.640 things that we've talked about, Henry Gerber was in need 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.959 of a fresh start, and he chose to move to 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.120 New York City. In nineteen twenty seven, he re enlisted 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:13.560 with the US Army and then he would serve for 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.399 seventeen years. He's also said to have been frustrated at 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.520 this point with the lack of activism within what he 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:23.679 called the Dorian crowd. He was also really exasperated at 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.239 his perception that other gay men were too willing to 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.600 accept the commonly held belief that homosexuality was a mental illness, 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.439 and people were seemingly willing to accept a life of 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:38.679 clandestine meetings in a state of fearfulness. Yeah, so he 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.679 basically kind of kept on the downlow after this, but 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:44.959 he did continue to write, so throughout the thirties, Gerber 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.000 wrote articles for gay magazines. He used a pen name, 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:52.080 and he also managed a correspondence club which was called Contacts, 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:55.600 which would eventually become a communications network for gay men 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.800 in the US. And he also wrote an essay called 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.520 in Defense of Homosexuals which was published in The Modern Thinker, 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.200 and he wrote that under the pseudonym Parasex. In nineteen 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.760 thirty four, he even wrote an anti Hitler paper openly 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.320 criticizing Hitler's treatment of homosexuals. 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:17.080 Yeah, which was kind of bold and a little bit dangerous, 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:21.880 even written under a pen name. Then a few years 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.879 down the road, there was a man named Manuel Boyfrank 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.760 and he was a gay activist in California, and he 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.159 reached out to Henry Gerber in the nineteen forties. He 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.160 was hoping to get some assistance in creating a new 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:37.760 movement to fight the oppression of homosexuals. And while Gerber 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.200 was glad to help out through his writing, he did 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.320 not want to attach his real name to the effort 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.080 and take a real pivotal role. He just did not 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:50.199 want to risk losing everything again. Throughout his military career, 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:54.280 he dealt with harassment. He was blackmailed and beaten. His 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:57.639 quarters at Governor's Island were searched by Army investigators in 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:01.760 February nineteen forty two. They found no illegal materials or 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.679 evidence of illegal behavior, but just the same he was 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.359 held in the guard house for several weeks after the search. 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:13.520 He was honorably discharged in nineteen forty five. In nineteen 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.440 fifty a new gay rights organization formed called the Mattachine Society. 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.280 We referenced that in the earlier episode about the Compton's 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:25.480 Cafeteria riot. And in nineteen fifty two this group began 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.560 publishing the first gay and lesbian national newsletter, which was 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:33.639 called One. And when Gerber found out about One, he 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.159 actually wrote to the magazine with an account of his 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.040 efforts to start the Society for Human Rights and his 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:45.040 attempts to get a previous newsletter out called Friendship and Freedom. 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:47.880 In nineteen fifty eight, One was part of a First 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.240 Amendment case heard by the US Supreme Court. This case 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.479 was incredibly important because it eventually led to the ruling 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.159 that publishing homosexual content did not mean a publication was 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:02.880 inherently obscene. Yeah, prior to that, if you even said, 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.760 or you know, suggested that two men might care for 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:10.720 one another romantically. It was pretty much obscenity, whereas this 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:13.880 drew that boundary of like, no, that's not automatically obscene, 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:18.679 you guys. Years later, in nineteen sixty three one the 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.639 magazine actually ran a full story about Gerber's efforts and 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:24.560 the work that he was doing in the nineteen twenties, 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.080 and it kind of reintroduced his part in the LGBT 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.800 rights movement to inter Record. 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.359 In his retirement years, Henry Gerber moved to the US 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.800 Soldiers and Airman's Home in Washington, d C. He died 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.359 there on December thirty first, nineteen seventy two, from pneumonia. 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:45.920 He was eighty years old. In nineteen ninety two, posthumously, 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:48.720 of course, Henry was inducted into the Chicago Gay and 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:53.000 Lesbian Hall of Fame, and in February of twenty fifteen, 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.000 the house at seventeen ten North Carearley Court in Chicago, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.880 which is where Gerber lived when he founded the Society 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.320 for Human Rights, was nominated as a National Historic Landmark. 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:06.679 The National Historic Landmarks Committee unanimously approved the nomination. The 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:08.719 next step in the process was for it to go 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.960 to the National Park Service Advisory Board in May twenty fifteen. 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:14.880 We have not yet been able to find any information 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:17.439 about how that went since that we are recording this 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:23.560 literally immediately after the conclusion of May twenty fifteen, that 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:26.960 they have not published their notes yet. Today it's June second, 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:30.280 I think that we're recording. So if it's approved by 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.280 the Advisory Board, the nomination would then move to the 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:36.000 Secretary of the Interior for final approval. 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:41.400 So yeah, his home may become a National Historic Landmark. 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:43.920 It looks like it's on track for that to happen, 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:45.760 but you never know what will happen in the process, 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:48.080 so that's something to look forward to. We may have 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.320 an update soon, which would be exciting. So yeah, that's 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:54.320 the story of Henry Gerber. He is a tricky He's 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:57.119 one of those people that he comes up for a 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.560 long time. He was written about in sort of like 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.199 here's the the LGBT rights activists you have never heard of. 0:23:03.760 --> 0:23:07.320 But even so, as we mentioned in the episode, there 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:11.280 are some blank spots in there that are not always 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:15.000 entirely clear. And because he's maybe not the most sort 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.400 of charming character, I think he gets overlooked anyway. 0:23:19.560 --> 0:23:20.640 Yeah, well, and. 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:21.280 Some of his. 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:27.760 Prejudices like continue to exist today, Like there is still 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.800