Library and also bpl presents, which is the libraries arts and culture arm tonight. I am thrilled to welcome author james gaines whose latest book which comes out on february 8th is titled the 50s and underground history. Im going to tell you a little bit about what Publishers Weekly says, it says this revisionist history is packed with insights it goes on to say that gains delivers a compassionate and insightful Group Portrait of singular men and women who spoke out on lgbtq issues womens rights civil rights and the environment in the 1950s, not the complacent era that we all think it is. So tonight jamess conversation partner is writer daniel okrent. And before i introduce the two of them. I just have a few quick notes for you first while the book is not released for a few more weeks. This is kind of a sneak peek. You can preorder it and we will put a link in the chat to the website of a local brooklyn bookstore the Community Bookstore so that you can do that if you so desire with just a couple of clicks. Second like all of our talks you have the option tonight to use closed captioning that features that the bottom of your screen life transcript and finally i want to invite you all to share your questions tonight for james type them throughout the program into the q a box at the bottom of your screen and dan will will take as many of them as he has time for towards the end of the program. Now, let me say a word about each. Our guests and i will happily hand it off to them. James our gaines is the former managing editor of time life and people magazines and the author of several books, including wits and days and nights of the algonquin roundtable evening in the palace of reason a study of Johann Sebastian bach in the early enlightenment, and for liberty and glory, washington lafayette and their revolutions. And daniel ocrants books include Great Fortune the epic of rockefeller center, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history last call the rise and fall of prohibition and the guarded gate bigotry eugenics and the law that kept two generations of italians and other europeans out of america. He was also the first public editor of the New York Times. Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for being here. Im excited to hear your conversation and take it away. Thank you very much. Marsha. Im very happy to be here and i want to thank the library and the bookstore for making this possible and i would say hello to my old friend jim. Hi jim. Hi, dan, jim and i met during the 1960s. Were very old. In ann arbor, michigan at a moment when people of our generation thought that we were changing the world. We didnt change the world that much but we did take a lot of selfcongratulatory moments to so how different were we were but what one learns from reading jims book and reading the 50s is that the 60s were the consequence of the 50s as marsha said when she introduced us the complacent fifties were not complacent for those people who are fighting enormous battles that had great consequences in the 60s and many of them still have consequences a very positive sense today. Jim why did you write this book . Um initially it was because my kids came home from school one day and said, why is our time not as exciting as the sixties. Yes, and i had to say you know, im well, i didnt say that. It was actually fraught it wasnt all fun and games they were talking about the music i think. Um, but then i started think i was looking for subject after i finished. The washington lafayette book and and i started to think. How was it that this black and white decade led to this polychromatic riot of the 60s history just doesnt work that way. You know, its its it doesnt work my decades. As you well know. So i started to think why you know, how did the 60s emerge . And as i was because i was reading it came to me that it wasnt the decade. I thought it was. Not at i say it wasnt at all. But it was different and more complicated than i had known. And that makes her good book. Could you maybe introduce where were going by reading the last paragraph of the introduction page . Yeah. Theres a theory that change happens not by winning hearts and minds. But by changing the law. After which harps and minds will follow among isolated people of the 50s. However, theres evidence of an earlier stage in the process of change. The moment when a singular man or woman sets out to confront other than evade some intimately personal conflict which inspires them and others to change the hearts minds of those who make the laws. So isolated by their personal histories, idiosyncrasies flaws and gifts. They have in common the courage the vision and a profoundly motivating need to fight for change in their time in the future. This book is about some of the best of them. And thats what were going to talk about tonight many of the people that jim writes about in this book several of them are familiar names and well talk about a few of them. But the great the one of the huge contributions that i think the book makes is it introduces us to people who were enormously influential players and our nations history and very few of us know who they were. And i thought we might start out for jim. Tell us a little bit about harry. Hay who was harry. Hay. Harry hayes started the first sustained organization for gay rights in the history in American History and he did so at the worst possible time. It was just after World War Two. A time when when the United States the soviet union and nazi germany shared the view that homosexuals were criminals and potential security risks. And the church thought were wicked and the medical profession called psychopaths and it was at this moment that harry. Hey whos then married with two . Daughters decided and a member of the communist party by the way, which will come back to decided that it was time to start a gay rights movement. And everybody told me it was crazy and he did it anyway because among other things he was incredibly stubborn. And he did it. It was called the matter Sheen Society and it was a sort of like a Alcoholics Anonymous group where you came and you talked about that issue, but it took him three or four years to even get someone. To join him in that effort and in that time he lost his family. Yeah. What year are we in jim . When he started that when he actually got to start the it was 1951. When he thought about it, it was 194647. And in the time between he lost his family. He lost all his friends except the gay men that he new and were her friend. Wheres his friends outside the home he lost his relationship with his daughters. Although he he tried to keep it up with by paying the you know, the Child Support he was supposed to through his job at a at a weapon factory. This was in los angeles and they lived in a neighborhood that was called the swish alps because it was a gay scene. And it was a scene he had to keep himself away from which was he had terrible dreams as he as he moved towards starting this organization that falling down mountain sides pushing his children down that sides, you know hurting them and his wife. Um, i dont i cant imagine a worse conflict. But he managed to do it and then as soon as he did it at their first convention, he was voted out of power. Because of his communist connections and by then it was 1953 and everybody was scared to death of mccarthy. And he and they were at every right to be scared of mccarthy because like the combination of communism and homosexuality was really not at the time. It was everybody thought that they were that they were spies. Derby there are being fired by the hundreds from the state department. Um a couple things jumped out of me reading about hey and the and the environment one, you know, just as a fact that i had no idea that when the American Army liberated the concentration camps in eastern europe. We did not set free the men who had pink triangles on their shoulders. They were just left there. They were returned to germany where whose courts had sentenced them to long prison terms and they got no credit for time served in the concentration camp. Incredible and we knew that when we handed them over. Thats 1945 1945 46. Yep. So no 1945. Yeah, moving forward a few years of phrase that comes up in the in the discussion of the Medicine Society is selfrespect as a radical demand. Can you elaborate on that . I think that does it says it all i mean, can you imagine a time when selfrespect would be considered a radical demand . I mean, its its infuriating honestly, but at the time that was the case, thats effectively what at that point. Hey and associates were not. Advocating changes in laws or anything. They wanted selfrespect. That was really the issue selfrespect, but they also wanted the the gale stuff to stop where cops would demand payment from bars for forgive from gay bars and also that they that you know that they were generally oppressed. Everywhere they went they were oppressed. They had to have they had to have sex in bathrooms. And so the police hung out in bathrooms. I mean it was. It was very sorry sight. So when harry hay is kicked out of the organization that he had labored and sweat for to found that doesnt end things who us about frank caminy. Before i get to canada, ill tell you where it went. It went to a guy who in. San francisco who . Who turned the organization inside out he made psychologists part of their routine meetings psychologists who told them they were sick and needed help. He actually told the fbi that he would help them find gay people in San Francisco. That didnt come out until very recent book, but it was it was it was terrible, but then frank hamady in washington. Who had never joined the vanishing . Was a perfect. He had got his astronomy from harvard. And was about to to start teaching at georgetown when he went to San Francisco for a an academic meeting. Presented a paper there, but was caught in a bathroom. Having sex with someone else and was arrested. And then he was he was he was outed to the Civil Service where he then had been had been hired. Because he couldnt teach at georgetown anymore, but they didnt know the Civil Service did not know this happened until sometime later when they called him in and said what happened in San Francisco. And he refused to answer refused to answer, but then he just he just told him it was none of their business. And they fired him. And then he on a diet of 20 cents a day. I mean a an allowance of 20 cents a day because he had no money. He sold his car to get that. He began papering washington with with this story. And and complaining about the legal and moral. I dont know insult that this represented not only to him but to other gay men. Who at the time were still being fired at a very fast rate because now mccarthy was really in his. It is high moment. So he graduated then to being perhaps the most successful advocate for sexual the lack of the the absence of sexual discrimination and and he including a an appeal to Supreme Court on behalf of a guy named bruce scott. That was not successful. But they actually they the chief justice is clerics. Thought it would be but they but he knew that the court would never take the case and thats what happened. Frank how many kept kept fighting and fighting and fighting for years until finally he was able to go to the Obama White House. And the Obama White House canceled repealed clintons dont act dont tell policy. I skipped over the fact that frank amity was a decorated soldier in World War Two an 88 millimeter. Motor crewman and was proud of nothing than his infantryman combat infantry, and its badge which he wore to that occasion . Just without his case. That was after. Half a century of his battling for his guests. Yes. Extraordinary weve got a lot of other administration. We have a lot of people to cover but before we leave the subject, could i ask you to read the last paragraph on page 47 . Yeah, frank how many harry hay . And theyre known an unknown core cohorts. Left the country a priceless legacy. They lifted the burden of shame for millions of people whom the medical profession called psychopaths. The Church Called wicked in the state called felons. And they replaced that bird with every citizens birthright selfrespect and respect of others. No one in the early Homophile Movement got more recognition in their lifetimes than harry. Hay and frank kammany, but what deserves celebration as much as the victories they and their compatriots one. Is the model they left behind . Compotecomings famously wrote to be nobody by yourself in the world, which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else. Means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight. That is what they did. Thanks, jim. The next section of the book is about. The origins of really of american feminism in the in the 20th century or i guess. Um american feminism post the the voting amendment the 19th amendment of the constitution the key figure in this chapter. There are many women in this chapter are really kind of thrilling figures, but the one who struck me was Paulie Murray, tell us about Paulie Murray if you would thanks to a new movie. Shes finally getting some credit for all she did but she began life. She was the she was the her mother died when she was three and she was sent to live with her grandparents. One of them was fought for the union in the civil war. And the other one was the child of a black slave and a white i mean she was the child of black slave, but she was also the mistress as it were but i dont think she was she was the rape victim of her owners, son. So she grew up with people on both sides of the south. And she was as a relative of their skin color of when she called in between race. Which was especially a problem in school when she was young. Because she was made fun of for that reason. And then when became a teenager. She thought she was missed miss identified. As a as a girl she was she felt she was a man. And she kept writing to doctors saying please help. I know theres been a mistake. So she was in between both racial and gender so that was her. That was her. That was her struggle, and that was her. Weapon against the world as she found it later. And as she helps form it to me this that part of the story really begins when shes in law school at Howard University can tell us about she was well educated. She went to hundred her background was middle class. Her her family were nurses and professional people an academics and so she she she was she was. She was going around the country trying to save a sharecropper named odell waller. From the news and i mean a legal news. He had been he had been convicted of murder. Wrongly but of course convicted in minutes by a white jury. That one stop she was she gave her spiel in front of Thurgood Marshall and leon ransom. Who was then the dean of Howard Law School and was given as a result a full tuition scholarship to howard. She was the only girl on only woman in her class of all black men. How it is a black university. And she found herself. Laughed at behind her back. She was not called in class as much of the other guys. As the other people and she was at the first the first instance aware of what she came to call jane crow. It was the combination of sexual discrimination gender discrimination and racial discrimination. It didnt it didnt or her final law school paper was about how the equal protection argument of the constitution could prevail over plessy versus ferguson the separate but equal decision of the 19th century. Her classmates laughed at her but she prevailed and wrote that thesis her professor spotters with robinson bet her 25 that that no 10 that it wouldnt be that plus he wouldnt be overturned for the next 25 years. In fact, it was overturned by Thurgood Marshall in the wellknown brown decision, which he won in part by reading her thesis which spot is what brawson robinson brought him because he didnt realize he was really going for it. So, but she didnt address gender discrimination until years later. When she wrote a paper called jane crow. And that was the argument that Ruth Bader Ginsburg used when she was still an attorney to argue to to write the brief that that one Supreme Courts decision. To declare sexual discrimination to be unconstitutional that was a huge breakthrough and it was because of polymerie and and ginsburg acknowledged that by putting her name on the brief. No her role as a figure in american legal history is enormous, but we know ginsburg and we know marshall we dont know her exactly and this we begin to see or ibmc reasons. That reasons why but i began to see the you know the nature of this discrimination very vividly around the time of the march on washington in 1962 by this point. Shes a wellknown figure certainly within the civil rights legal community. And the march on washington which we all know about is about to take place and shes not very pleased with the way. Its proceeding. So she rights to a Philip Randolph who was one of the organizers the labor leader who was one of the organizers of the march. Could you . Read what she said to him. Page 74 74 yes. And by the way, hey Philip Randolph. And his and his march on Washington Movement from the 1940s hired her he was her first real employer. And this is what she said to him when rosa parks daisy bates all the September Clark all the prominent women of the Civil Rights Movement were giving seconds on the podium at the march on washington. Certainly for not there. Sorry. The time has come to say to you quite candidly, mr. Randolph. That tokenism is as offensive when applied to women as when applied to.