I am from Baltimore, born and bred. My mother's side of the family was 100% Polish and 100% East Baltimore. So I was living in Baltimore in 1955 although I was only 5 years old at the time. For reference to give some flavor of the era, the movie Hairspray is supposed to take place in 1962. John Waters also gets a mention later on in the diary.
I turned out gay. More than anything else, I think I was surprised. I came out in 1969, although I really didn't start frequenting the gay bars of Baltimore until '74 when I got my first all-by-myself apartment in town. Then I heard this story from some of my older gay friends. In a nutshell, a gay bar in Baltimore was raided in 1955 and a whole bunch of people were arrested. I had, of course, heard of the Stonewall riots so I was eager to hear if there were any similarities between the two events.
"Was there a riot?" I asked.
"Well, no." said the elder.
'Beer bottles thrown? A fire? Any resistance?"
"Well, not like that." I was told.
"So what happened?"
"A lot of people had to spend the night in jail, but the next day in court, most of the charges were dropped, except for a few people who got small fines."
"And then what? Protests at the police station? Picket signs?
"No, that's the end of the story."
"This story sucks!"
I wasn't impressed. I was too young, too post-Stonewall modern and optimistic to fully realize the constraints of 1955. It didn't dawn on me until years later that I never lived in fear of a gay bar getting raided in Baltimore. In fact, except for the one in the story nearly two decades earlier, I never heard of a gay bar in Baltimore ever getting raided. I attributed that to Stonewall but still, the story about the raid in Baltimore had such staying power. People spoke of it with reverence and as a victory. None of the people who told me the story had actually been there that night so I thought maybe some details had been lost. Only recently did I decide to finally dig deeper. The story truly has merit after all, there are elements of gay pride and support for those arrested came from the most unlikeliest places.
A lot of the information, except for a more recent article and two friends who actually frequented the place, comes from the Baltimore Sun newspaper historical archives. The Sun is pretty pissy about sharing and reprinting so I will excerpt gingerly. They want to sell you access too although I was able to circumvent having to pay by going through the Johns Hopkins library online with a suburban Baltimore library card. Anything bolded is my emphasis.
Just the facts, ma'am...
The Pepper Hill Club was raided at 11pm Saturday night, Oct, 1, 1955. It was located at 200 North Gay Street, the northeastern corner of the downtown business district, only a block from the main police station, two blocks from City Hall and on the fringes of "The Block," Baltimore's infamous tawdry section of strip bars and peep shows. No, the street wasn't named for gay activity, some guy named named Nicholas Gay surveyed the area back in the 1700s. If you've ever been to Baltimore, this is a few blocks north of the aquarium side of the Inner Harbor area.
Here are three photographs of the Pepper Hill Club just a few weeks after the raid. Doesn't look like business was hurt. I don't dare post photos from The Sun but I can link. Wow. Everybody's dressed up, suit jackets, even a few fedoras. Mostly men, some women, but predictably in this era of Baltimore, all white. Go look.
pics
http://www.baltimoresun.com/...
RAID ON NIGHT CLUB BRINGS 162 ARRESTS
Court Outbursts Follow With 5 Convictions; 23 Forfeit Collateral
The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 3, 1955, p.32
Okay, that is a lot of people, way more than were arrested at Stonewall (13). The raid was reported to be the largest ever made on a club or bar in Baltimore. The sheer number of homosexuals in a bar must have opened some readers' eyes. The sergeant who led the vice squad sent two officers to check on the club who reported back to him.
"the place was so crowded they could hardly get in." (me: well, it was Saturday night)
"evidence of homosexuality" (me: the horror!)
"in the rear of the place there was no light at all. Back there we found several couples."
Back-up was called. Five police cars and six wagons responded. Everyone was arrested -- the owners, the employees, every patron. The wagons shuttled those arrested to the police station, totaling twenty-four trips.
Turns out there was some resistance. Many refused to post collateral for release and chose to spend the night in jail instead. On Sunday everyone arrested had to appear in court. The crowd was unruly in the courtroom with several loud outbursts. One of those arrested insisted on testifying even though his charges were dropped.
The head of the vice squad said
"the majority of these people seem to regard the whole incident as a great big joke."
The arrested did not fight back with beer bottles or rioting, but they did fight back with attitudes of mockery and amusement. And not an ounce of shame. Go, peeps!
All of the charges were dropped except for three men and two women. Four were convicted of disorderly conduct and one women was charged with resisting arrest. Only the names and addresses of those five were printed in the newspaper with no charges indicating sexual orientation. Charges against the two owners (operating a disorderly house) went to a grand jury with an eventual later court date. The main article appeared on Monday.
So was that the end of it? No, not by a long shot.
The next day:
5th District Legislator Raps Mass Arrests at Night Club
The Baltimore Sun, Oct 4, 1955, p.36
Delegate Jerome Robinson, Fourth District legislator took issue last night with the mass arrests [snip] and criticized Sergt. Hyman Goldstein, who he said had set himself up as "censor of community morals."
He said "decent, straight-thinking Baltimoreans had hoped police mass raids were a thing of the past."
[snip]
"Mr Robinson said the recent raid was more shocking "because of its nasty implications."
The next month:
JUDGE HITS POLICE IN CLUB RAID
Cullen Criticizes Mass Arrests, Rules for Defendants
The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 23, 1955, p. 42
The two owners were indicted by a grand jury, had their day in court and were found innocent. Many patrons attended the trial and loudly cheered the verdict.
Judge James K. Cullen yesterday declared police should be severely condemned for making a mass arrest of 162 patrons at the Pepper Hill Club last October 1 and said such action "negatives" their court testimony in a disorderly house charge against the licensees.
[snip]
Judge Cullen pointed out that the club was an establishment licensed by the State of Maryland and said police had no right to enter a public place and make a mass arrest.
[snip]
The Criminal Court judge declared the mass arrest indicated to him that "police intended to make a raid and wholesale arrests" before they entered the club.
Go, judge!
The Police Did It The Wrong Way
Baltimore Sun editorial, Nov. 24, 1955, p.34
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of gay bars, but said the mass arrest was wrong and the bar should be dealt with through the licensing board.
The Week In Brief
The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 27, 1955, p. A-34
Judge James K. Cullen who dismissed charges of operating a disorderly house against the proprietors, agreed such spots were less than savory. But he said the officers had no right to seize all of the 162 patrons in the place during a raid a few weeks ago.
"What right was there to arrest them unless they were committing an offense?" he asked. "The State of Maryland has licensed this place and invited the public in."
Next day Police Commissioner James Hebron said he agreed with the judge, criticized the former vice squad for its actions, and said that such mass arrests would not occur again.
Former? Sounds like somebody got fired.
The story was a continuing saga in the Baltimore Sun with 9 articles from Oct. 1955 through May 1956. Certainly, the gay community was galvanized, at least the patrons of that bar, and probably any gay person who followed the story. But outside of Baltimore, I don't think many ever heard about it.
A few loose ends:
The night of the arrests a large "growing" crowd gathered on the street, in one article described as a "mob." Traffic on Gay St. was blocked by them and more police called in. It doesn't appear any of the street crowd were arrested, however. I don't know who these people were. I don't think there were any other gay bars in the area so were these Block patrons there for other reasons? Or late arrivals? I don't know.
Turns out that the head of vice squad was Jewish, Hyman Goldstein. There was a lot of antisemitism in Baltimore at one time and I don't know when that subsided. My father was horrified to see a "Gentiles Only" sign in my mother's uncle's bakery. They got married in 1941. I would have thought that ended after WW II but it's certainly a theme in the movie Avalon that is supposed to be early '50s. I hope that wasn't a part of why the head of the vice squad got slammed, but I don't know.
It didn't occur to me until I read chrislove's recent diary that the time frame of the Pepper Hill raid overlapped with the Lavender Scare in DC with Joe McCarthy, purging homosexuals from government jobs, surveillance and a general homosexual crackdown in DC. Many of those arrested were from DC, 50 miles away. I found no specific number, but probably what was happening in DC was part of the reason. Whether or not the DC homophobic climate was a contributing factor to the decision to raid, I don't know yet. Added: Seek and ye shall find! I reread all the newspaper articles looking for the number of patrons from DC. No, I didn't find that, but lo and behold, I found a direct quote made by the head of the vice squad at the raid night booking buried at the end of the Oct 3 article.
"We have received word that Washington police are conducting a drive on homosexuals; apparently some of them are coming to Baltimore for their entertainment."
A little bit of incidental but interesting information about the Pepper Hill Club: It was billed as a night club and there often was live music. Later on in the '60s when my friends frequented the place, there was a lesbian band, the Rock-A-Jets, that always performed in men's clothes, that were quite ground-breaking and quite good too, I'm told. Turned out the band was a favorite of John Waters. My friends sometimes saw both John Waters and Glenn Milstead (Divine) at the club.
So that's what I have uncovered. Sort of fits in with the Baltimore psyche. My grandmother told me if you kept your house and yard up, the trash in the cans and didn't make a lot of noise, the row house neighbors pretty much didn't criticize what happened in your house. Maybe my grandmother was preparing me for the future she envisioned for me. I was a very gay kid. Baltimore is described as a city of neighborhoods. That's a lovely thought but the more sinister implication is stick to your own kind. I'm sure Baltimoreans in the '50s were aware of homosexuality but they never talked about it openly, at least not in front of children. I'm sure there were quite a few people like me who came of age thinking they were the only one in the entire world because they had never heard of such a thing. And when aware that there were other homosexuals, didn't have a clue in the world about how to find them. So my take is Baltimoreans in 1955 knew of homosexuality, didn't endorse it, but would rather have homosexuals stick to themselves in their own bars, rather than cruising public bathrooms and parks. As long as they didn't have to see it. A two-edged sword, I suppose, but the end result of the Pepper Hill raid was that gay people in Baltimore could more freely and safely meet and congregate in gay bars.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/...
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/...
(search for Pepper Hill Club, check 1837-1988 option, you can see the dates of articles, titles and summaries for free. You can also access the Baltimore Sun historical archives through the Enoch Pratt Free Library website if you have an Enoch Pratt library card.)