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Saturday! Henry Gerber was born on June 29, 1892

2:45

or 132 years ago today if

2:50

you're listening on the day this episode publishes.

2:53

Gerber established Chicago Society for Human

2:55

Rights 100 years ago in 1924

2:58

and it was the first known

3:01

organization for gay rights in the United

3:03

States. We mentioned

3:05

in this episode that it followed

3:07

one on Compton's cafeteria riot. That

3:09

riot happened a little less than

3:11

three years before the more well-known

3:14

Stonewall riot. There are

3:16

also a couple of mentions in this

3:18

episode of Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute

3:21

for Sexual Science. When we

3:23

recorded this episode, we did not have an

3:25

episode on him that came out afterward on

3:27

September 19, 2018.

3:30

And as a little bit of an

3:32

update to the very end of this

3:35

episode, in June of 2015, Henry Gerber's

3:37

house was indeed designated a national historic

3:39

landmark. This episode on Henry

3:41

Gerber and Chicago Society for Human Rights came

3:44

out on June 22, 2015. Welcome

3:50

to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

3:52

of iHeartRadio. Hello,

3:58

I'm and welcome to the podcast.

4:00

I'm Holly Fry. And I'm Tracy

4:03

V. Wilson. And we

4:06

recently talked about the Compton's

4:08

cafeteria riots. And this is

4:10

kind of a little bit of a dovetail

4:13

on that, but we're time traveling backwards. We

4:16

talked about in that episode how, you know, a

4:18

lot of people point to the Stonewall riots as

4:20

the beginning of the LGBT rights

4:22

movement in the U.S. But of course, there

4:24

were things going on before that, as

4:27

that episode on the cafeteria riot pointed

4:30

out, and even before that. And there

4:32

were certainly gay people here long before

4:34

that. And there were,

4:36

in fact, LGBT rights organizations trying to

4:38

pop up probably much earlier than you

4:40

suspect. And today we're going to talk

4:42

about the man who started ever so

4:44

briefly the first such organization in the

4:47

U.S., at least the first that we

4:49

know of. And that took place more

4:51

than four decades before Stonewall. So

4:54

just a heads up on this one, particularly

4:56

if you're listening with younger listeners, we

4:58

are going to talk a little bit about some legal

5:01

issues that came up involving specific sex acts.

5:03

So just keep that in mind as you

5:06

listen to this one, maybe preview

5:08

it if you think your younger listeners might

5:10

not be ready for that. But

5:12

right out of the gate, I feel like we

5:14

have to mention that today's subject, who is

5:16

Henry Gerber, can be a little bit of

5:18

a difficult character in LGBT history. While

5:21

he definitely wanted to push back against

5:23

anti-gay legislation, he was not

5:26

so open to bisexuals. He was

5:28

not particularly accepting of lesbians or

5:30

basically any of the people we would put

5:34

under the LGBT umbrella today that were not

5:36

gay men. He was

5:38

an introvert. He was a very

5:40

serious man. Some people

5:42

describe him as curmudgeonly or cantankerous,

5:45

not really a charmer. And he would often

5:48

look down his nose, even at other gay

5:50

men, saying that they

5:52

were too frivolous and that they were not forward thinking

5:54

enough about the place of the

5:56

gay man in society. But at

5:59

the same time, he really

6:01

spearheaded this important, though often

6:03

overlooked, effort to improve the

6:06

rights of gay citizens

6:09

and secure some sort

6:11

of safety for them. So we're

6:13

talking about Henry Gerber today. Keep in mind, he's

6:15

a little bit tricky in some ways. He

6:18

was born Joseph Henry Dittmar on June 29th of

6:21

1892. He

6:24

and his family left their home in Bavaria to

6:26

set out for the United States, and they arrived

6:28

at Ellis Island in 1913. At

6:31

that point, Henry was 21. And

6:34

once they had been processed by immigration

6:36

officials, the family moved to Chicago, where

6:38

they were hoping to join the significant

6:40

German population there. Henry

6:42

got a job pretty quickly, working at Montgomery

6:44

Ward in the mail order department. As

6:48

is probably obvious at this

6:50

point, Gerber was gay. And a

6:52

lot of the articles about him

6:54

indicate that being homosexual got him

6:56

institutionalized briefly, although the

6:58

accounts aren't entirely clear about

7:01

exactly when this happened. Yeah,

7:04

he's one that, we

7:07

mentioned this a lot in some

7:10

of our episodes, that there are some portions

7:13

of history, and usually it's the

7:15

further back you go that it

7:17

becomes the harder to actually find

7:19

substantiated information. And he's very tricky

7:21

in this regard. Outside of military records,

7:24

a lot of what we have is kind

7:26

of word of mouth, and his retelling, and

7:28

some other retellings that have happened along the

7:30

way. So some of the details get a

7:32

little mushy-meshy. But

7:34

what we do know is that Henry enlisted in

7:36

the US Army on January 26th of 1914. And

7:41

it's believed that just after this is when he

7:43

changed his name from Joseph

7:46

Henry Dittmar to Henry Gerber, although this

7:48

is another part where there's some haziness

7:50

around the historical record, and when he

7:52

stopped using his birth name and switched

7:54

to Gerber. Dittmar actually still

7:57

appears on a 1917 draft card. although

8:00

at that point Henry claimed exemption

8:02

on that card as a conscientious

8:04

objector. And it's possible that

8:06

he purposely shifted the

8:08

name back to his original Bavarian name in

8:11

an effort to create some paperwork confusion over

8:13

his status. That's purely speculation. I don't know

8:15

based on what I've seen and I haven't

8:17

seen the actual card if

8:19

that was a pre-printed card or if it's something

8:22

he wrote in. But

8:24

eventually we do know that his

8:26

military records cross-referenced both names, both

8:29

Dittmar and Gerber. During

8:31

the early part of World War I, he

8:33

was labeled as an enemy alien and he

8:35

was taken to an internment camp. Really

8:38

sensationalist stories in the press and in

8:40

gossip circles about German spies in the

8:42

United States caused a lot of German

8:44

immigrants to be looked upon with suspicion

8:46

and he was no exception. After

8:50

the war was over Gerber re-enlisted at the end

8:52

of 1919 and he worked for the

8:55

military as a printer and a proofreader

8:57

and he was shipped to Cobblins, Germany

8:59

as part of the U.S. Army of

9:01

Occupation in 1920. And there

9:03

he worked on the Amorok News, which is

9:05

a daily paper that was published to keep

9:07

American soldiers that were stationed abroad, particularly in

9:09

Germany, informed and entertained. And

9:11

it published everything from poems and

9:13

short stories to the latest sports

9:15

scores. While he was

9:18

in Germany serving as a United

9:20

States soldier, Gerber was exposed to

9:22

that country's homosexual emancipation movement. And

9:24

as also to the Scientific Humanitarian Committee

9:27

that was a critical part of that

9:29

movement. And

9:32

I'll give a little background on

9:34

the German homosexual emancipation movements. And

9:36

we're also going to talk a little bit about

9:39

Magnus Hirschfeld, who was also mentioned in the Compton's

9:42

cafeteria episode. So

9:44

the Criminal Code in Germany was amended in 1871

9:46

with the inclusion of

9:49

what is called Paragraph 175. And

9:52

that piece of legislation made it illegal

9:54

for men to engage in sexual acts

9:56

with one another. 26 years after Paragraph

10:00

F175 was adopted into law, the

10:02

scientific humanitarian community was founded in

10:05

Berlin by Magnus Hirschfeld. One

10:08

of the huge achievements of

10:10

Hirschfeld's life was the deconstruction

10:12

of homosexuality from a biological

10:14

perspective, sort of moving it

10:16

away from being defined as

10:18

a pathology. And with a

10:20

scientific approach to the issue

10:22

of homosexuality, the Scientific Humanitarian

10:24

Committee was making some progress

10:26

towards LGBT rights, and

10:29

they were making that progress right

10:31

up until Hitler's rise and the

10:33

Nazi Party's persecution of any perceived

10:35

sexual deviance. Yeah, the Nazi Party

10:37

actually burned down Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute

10:40

for Research into Sexuality. Like

10:42

that's sort of been

10:45

alluded to in a couple of episodes that we

10:48

have talked about that have been on this subject,

10:50

and we've never gone into a lot of detail,

10:52

but yeah, the Nazi Party destroyed his

10:54

facility and all the research that was in it. And

10:58

we're just giving you

11:00

kind of the brief and quick on that

11:02

to kind of contextualize what happens next when

11:04

Gerber returns to the US. We're gonna talk

11:06

about that influence after his

11:08

time in Germany and his exposure to

11:10

the homosexual emancipation movement, but

11:13

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Tracy v. Wilson from stuff you missed in history class.

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The newsagents. Wherever you are in the

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to podcasts. By

16:03

the time Gerber returned to the US,

16:06

he was well acquainted with the homosexual

16:08

emancipation movement. He had spent his

16:10

time in Germany reading magazines and other literature about

16:12

the movement, and also getting to know its leaders.

16:14

He would kind of travel around Germany and go

16:17

to lectures and really immerse himself

16:19

in this whole ideology to learn about

16:21

it. And he thought if Germany could

16:23

have this growing and thriving

16:26

for the time homosexual culture that was

16:28

willing to speak out for rights, why

16:30

couldn't we have that in the US?

16:33

So one of the things about the United

16:35

States was that there was just a lack

16:37

of uniformity in legislation across the country regarding

16:39

sex. It had created a really

16:42

tangled mess that was facing

16:44

anyone who wanted to work toward the cause

16:46

of rights. Being labeled as

16:48

immoral in his home country for

16:50

being homosexual just really seemed to

16:52

be an incredible injustice to Gerber.

16:56

Yeah, and I have to wonder about sort of

16:58

the duality of it in terms of his

17:00

home country. I put that word in

17:02

the notes. He considered the US his

17:05

home country even though he had come from Bavaria.

17:08

And so it's kind of interesting that he

17:11

then went back to Germany and saw them

17:13

kind of working towards this progressive idea of

17:15

rights. And then he went to his chosen

17:17

home where he just did not have that

17:19

same kind of social movement

17:22

going on. So it's kind

17:24

of fascinating from that perspective. And

17:26

when he returned to Chicago in 1923 after

17:28

his three years in Germany, he

17:31

started working as an employee at the

17:33

US Postal Service. And he saw that

17:35

Chicago had this growing gay subculture, which

17:38

was secret in most areas of the city,

17:40

but fairly open in the Bohemian neighborhood of

17:42

Tower Town, which is in the near Northside

17:44

area. And as he saw

17:46

the gay and lesbian community growing, he wanted

17:48

to create a way to protect these

17:51

people's rights. Inspired by

17:53

what he had seen in Germany, he

17:55

launched his own plan to create an

17:58

organization that would mimic the the ones

18:00

that were involved in Germany's Emancipation Movement.

18:03

He knew that he could not do it alone,

18:05

but it was really difficult to find other people

18:08

who were willing to take the risks that were

18:10

inherent in participating in this kind of mission. He

18:13

tried to network with other activists,

18:15

including birth control advocate Margaret Sanger,

18:17

but he never managed to forge

18:19

any alliances. His efforts to

18:21

reach out to the gay men he knew of

18:24

and business in Chicago

18:26

were met pretty coldly at best.

18:28

Prominent business people were just not willing

18:30

to risk their jobs and families to

18:33

fight for what they thought was definitely

18:35

a losing cause. Yeah,

18:38

it's as if it's not completely clear. At

18:40

this point, pretty much all these people were

18:42

closeted. Outside of

18:44

Tower Town, nobody knew that

18:46

any of these people were gay. And

18:49

after a year of searching for allies, Gerber

18:51

and six other men that he had

18:53

managed to round up founded Chicago's Society

18:55

for Human Rights in 1924, applying

18:59

for a charter to incorporate the group

19:01

on December 10th of that year. And

19:04

it was the first gay rights organization in

19:06

the United States. The

19:08

Society of Human Rights published a newsletter

19:10

called Friendship and Freedom, which circulated to

19:12

all of its members. It

19:14

was a pretty small group. And not

19:16

many people wanted literature that might out

19:19

them to show up in their mailboxes.

19:22

Postal inspectors cooperated with law and

19:25

enforcement and would report suspicious materials. At

19:27

this point, pretty much all of this

19:29

would have been considered obscene. Yes,

19:33

all pretty much illegal. Nonetheless,

19:36

Gerber continued his work. And

19:38

the mission of the Society was to educate

19:40

the heterosexual community about homosexuality

19:43

and to reform the laws that

19:45

made homosexuality criminal. But they

19:47

had to be very, very careful about this. The

19:49

charter for the group relayed this purpose this way,

19:53

to promote and protect the interests

19:55

of people who by reasons of mental

19:57

and physical abnormalities are abused and hindered

19:59

in a legal... pursuit of happiness, which

20:02

is guaranteed them by the Declaration of

20:04

Independence, and to combat the public prejudices

20:06

against them by dissemination of factors according

20:09

to modern science among intellectuals of mature

20:11

age. The society stands only

20:13

for law and order. It

20:15

is in harmony with any and all

20:18

general laws insofar as they protect the

20:20

rights of others, and does in no

20:22

manner recommend any acts in violation of

20:25

present laws, nor advocate in any manner

20:27

inimical to public welfare. You

20:31

probably noticed that there is no mention

20:33

there of homosexuality or gay rights. Remember,

20:36

this was still a time when it

20:38

was absolutely illegal to be gay, thanks

20:40

to sodomy laws. In

20:43

Illinois, there were precedent cases that established

20:45

oral sex as sodomy under the letter

20:47

of the law, including one which judicially

20:49

categorized fellatio as a crime against nature.

20:53

This was not a time that it would

20:55

have been safe for an organization intended to

20:57

decriminalize homosexuality to be out and proud about

20:59

it. They had to be very, very careful

21:01

and kind of work in incremental, very slow

21:04

steps. Unfortunately, their work did

21:06

not last very long at all. Just

21:09

eight months after it was founded, and

21:11

with only two issues of friendship and

21:13

freedom having been published, everything came to

21:15

a crashing halt. In July

21:17

1925, the wife of one

21:19

of the co-founders reported her husband to

21:21

a social worker after the couple's daughter

21:23

said she had seen her father and

21:25

other men performing seances and other strange

21:27

behavior. The social worker

21:29

she spoke with contacted police, and soon

21:31

thereafter, the Society for Human Rights, which

21:34

was headquartered in Gerber's home, was raided.

21:38

Gerber was arrested for deviant behavior. His

21:41

typewriter, his diaries, and other papers were

21:44

seized. And at

21:46

this point in time, Illinois sodomy

21:48

law stipulated a minimum one-year prison term

21:50

for anyone found guilty with a maximum

21:52

sentence of 10 years. So this was

21:55

quite a serious situation. Gerber

21:57

always insisted that the story of his

21:59

colleagues... Behavior as reported by his wife

22:01

and related in the papers was fabricated

22:04

But because the accused husband Al

22:07

Meininger was confessed to being bisexual

22:09

during police screening No

22:11

one cared that the facts of the

22:13

news weren't entirely accurate Yeah,

22:16

and this also came as a surprise to Gerber he

22:19

had not even known According

22:21

to what I read that the members of his

22:23

group that any of them were married So

22:26

when this turned up and there was a wife

22:28

that had reported one of them remember He wasn't

22:30

really that keen on bisexuals So this was a

22:33

really kind of weird and awkward situation in

22:35

addition to being dangerous and kind

22:37

of a powder keg Gerber

22:40

was held by the police for several days He

22:42

was allowed a phone call the morning after his

22:44

arrest Which he used to call

22:47

work and explain his absence and his supervisor

22:49

kind of tried to help him out He

22:51

wrote up the situation as absent on leave

22:53

in an effort to cover for Gerber Henry

22:56

endured three trials with his colleagues

22:59

The only evidence against him that was supposed to

23:01

prove that he was homosexual was a powder puff

23:03

that was allegedly found in his room Yeah,

23:07

that's widely believed to have been planted

23:11

Remember he was not By

23:13

any accounts. I have read a cross dresser. He

23:15

wasn't He didn't dabble

23:18

in Gen any

23:21

sort of alternate gender expression. So

23:23

this powder puff it's very jarring in the

23:25

record It seems very weird and out of

23:28

place however The charges

23:30

against him were eventually dropped and that

23:32

happened when a judge realized this was

23:34

during the third trial That

23:36

Gerber had been arrested without a warrant But

23:40

unfortunately he had spent his entire Savings

23:43

up to this point particularly on this third trial

23:45

hiring an attorney So that he

23:47

could try to sort of save himself from

23:50

this mess The raid

23:52

and the trials had been reported by the news

23:54

with the Chicago Examiner running a story about it

23:56

under the headline strange sex

23:58

cult exposed So

24:00

even though he had been released and the

24:03

charges were dropped, he was still fired from

24:05

his postal job in the wake of the

24:07

of the incident for, quote, conduct

24:09

unbecoming a postal worker. Additionally,

24:12

all records of the Society for Human

24:15

Rights and their Friendship and Freedom newsletter

24:17

that had been seized in the raid

24:19

were destroyed. And for decades, this

24:21

important aspect of LGBT history

24:24

was basically erased. There

24:26

are no surviving copies of the Friendship and

24:28

Freedom newsletter. A review of it was reprinted

24:30

in the book Paris Gay 1925, which came

24:32

out in 1981. The

24:36

review describes the newsletter as moral

24:39

and says that it included a poem by

24:41

Walt Whitman and an essay about Oscar Wilde's

24:44

practice of wearing a green carnation in his

24:46

lapel. It's long been

24:48

rumored but not ever confirmed that

24:50

Wilde and his social circle would

24:53

wear green carnations as a secret

24:55

symbol of homosexuality. Yeah,

24:57

so that's how that essay would have appeared

25:00

in the newsletter. And

25:02

in just a moment, we're going to talk about

25:04

Henry's life after the raid and subsequent trials and

25:06

how that put an end to the Society for

25:08

Human Rights. But first, we're going to take

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following every twist and turn in the

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race for the White House. After

30:00

all of these things that we've talked about, Henry

30:02

Gerber was in need of a fresh start and

30:04

he chose to move to New York City in

30:06

1927. He

30:08

reenlisted with the US Army and then he would

30:10

serve for 17 years. He's

30:13

also said to have been frustrated at this point

30:15

with the lack of activism within what he called

30:18

the Dorian crowd. He was also

30:20

really exasperated at his perception that other

30:22

gay men were too willing to accept

30:24

the commonly held belief that homosexuality

30:27

was a mental illness and

30:29

people were seemingly willing to accept

30:31

a life of clandestine meetings and

30:33

a state of fearfulness. Yeah,

30:36

so he basically kind of kept on

30:38

the down low after this, but he

30:40

did continue to write. So throughout the

30:42

30s, Gerber wrote articles for gay magazines.

30:44

He used a pen name and

30:47

he also managed a correspondence club, which

30:49

was called Contacts, which would eventually become

30:51

a communications network for gay men in

30:53

the US. And he

30:55

also wrote an essay called, In Defense of

30:58

Homosexuality, which was published in The Modern Thinker

31:00

and he wrote that under the pseudonym Parisex.

31:03

In 1934, he even wrote

31:05

an anti Hitler paper, openly

31:08

criticizing Hitler's treatment of homosexuals.

31:11

Yeah, which was kind of bold

31:13

and a little bit dangerous even written under a pen

31:16

name. Then

31:18

a few years down the road,

31:20

there was a man named Manuel Boyfrank and

31:22

he was a gay activist in California and

31:25

he reached out to Henry Gerber in the 1940s. He

31:28

was hoping to get some assistance in

31:30

creating a new movement to fight the

31:32

oppression of homosexuals. And

31:35

while Gerber was glad to help out through

31:37

his writing, he did not want to attach

31:39

his real name to the effort and take

31:41

a real pivotal role. He just did

31:43

not wanna risk losing everything again. Throughout

31:47

his military career, he dealt with

31:49

harassment. He was blackmailed and beaten.

31:52

His quarters at Governor's Island were searched

31:54

by army investigators in February, 1942. They

31:57

found no illegal materials or evidence.

32:00

of illegal behavior, but just the same, he

32:02

was held in the guardhouse for several weeks

32:04

after the search. He was honorably

32:06

discharged in 1945. In

32:11

1950, a new gay rights organization

32:13

formed called the Mattachine Society. We

32:16

referenced that in the earlier episode

32:18

about the Compton's cafeteria riot. In

32:22

1952, this group began publishing the

32:24

first gay and lesbian national newsletter,

32:26

which was called One. And

32:29

when Gerber found out about One, he actually

32:32

wrote to the magazine with an account of

32:34

his efforts to start the Society for Human

32:36

Rights and his attempts to

32:39

get a previous newsletter out called

32:41

Friendship and Freedom. In

32:43

1958, One was part of a

32:46

First Amendment case heard by the US Supreme Court.

32:48

This case was incredibly important because

32:50

it eventually led to the ruling

32:53

that publishing homosexual content did not

32:55

mean a publication was inherently obscene.

32:59

Yeah, prior to that, if you even said, you

33:01

know, suggested that two men might care

33:04

for one another romantically,

33:06

it was pretty much obscenity, whereas this

33:09

drew that boundary of like, no, that's not automatically

33:11

obscene, you guys. Years

33:13

later, in 1963, One, the magazine, actually

33:17

ran a full story about Gerber's efforts

33:20

and the work that he was doing in the 1920s. And

33:22

it kind of reintroduced his part in the

33:25

LGBT rights movement into record.

33:28

In his retirement years, Henry Gerber moved to

33:30

the US soldiers and airmen's home in Washington,

33:33

D.C. He died there on December

33:35

31st, 1972 from pneumonia. He

33:39

was 80 years old. In

33:41

1992, posthumously, of course, Henry

33:44

was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian

33:47

Hall of Fame. And

33:49

in February of 2015, the house at

33:51

1710 North Greeley Court in

33:53

Chicago, which is where Gerber lived when he

33:55

founded the Society for Human Rights, was

33:58

nominated as a National Historic Landowner. landmark. The

34:01

National Historic Landmarks Committee unanimously approved the

34:03

nomination. The next step in the process

34:05

was for it to go to the

34:07

National Park Service Advisory Board in May

34:09

2015. We have not

34:11

yet been able to find any information about

34:13

how that went since we are recording this

34:16

literally immediately after the conclusion of

34:18

May 2015. Yeah,

34:21

they have not published their notes yet. Today

34:23

it's June 2nd, I think, that we're recording.

34:26

So if it's approved by the Advisory

34:29

Board, the nomination would then move

34:31

to the Secretary of the Interior for

34:33

final approval. So

34:36

yeah, his home may become a National

34:38

Historic Landmark. It looks like

34:40

it's on track for that to happen, but you never

34:42

know what will happen in the process. So that's something

34:45

to look forward to. We may have an update soon,

34:47

which would be exciting. So yeah,

34:49

that's the story of Henry Gerber. He is tricky.

34:51

He's one of those people that he comes up

34:54

for a long time. He was written about in

34:57

sort of like, here's the LGBT

34:59

rights activists you have never heard of.

35:01

But even so, as

35:03

we mentioned in the episode, there

35:06

are some blank spots in there

35:08

that are not always entirely clear.

35:10

And because he's maybe not

35:12

the most sort of charming character,

35:14

I think he gets overlooked anyway.

35:17

Yeah. Well, and some of his prejudices

35:22

continue to exist today. There

35:25

is still a lot of anti-bisexual

35:27

sentiment. Yes. And like a

35:29

general trend of kind of assuming anyone who

35:32

has a relationship with a person of the

35:34

same sex is gay or lesbian,

35:36

and that bisexuality is not a thing. Like

35:38

there's a lot of those ideas

35:42

continue to crop up today, years

35:44

and years later after his death. So that's

35:47

not a... that didn't go away. Right.

35:51

Yeah. I mean, you know, within any community,

35:53

there is always fracturing. And he was kind

35:56

of one of the first people that exemplifies

35:58

some of that going on. And it's not,

36:00

it's easy to go, oh, well, that's how it was

36:02

in the 20s, which again, I always just feel like

36:05

we have to pause and go, this was something he

36:07

was working on in the 1920s. So

36:09

much earlier than we really think about this movement.

36:14

But a lot of those, those issues still echo

36:16

today. So it's kind of an interesting

36:19

touchstone and, and we can kind of see the

36:21

mirror of that continuing. Thanks

36:28

so much for joining us on this Saturday.

36:30

Since this episode is out of the archive,

36:32

if you heard an email address or a

36:34

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36:36

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36:39

our current email address is

36:41

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