 |
 The South's Pioneer |
|
By Jack Nichols
In spite of a busy business career that had preceded his movement work, Inman, when I met him in 1965, had become a taxi driver. In Washington D.C. Frank Kameny had already been corresponding with him and had suggested I take over the workload. Inman, we determined, was the only active member of his newly founded Athenaeum Society. He needed moral support. "Maybe we could talk him into changing the name of his group and starting a Mattachine Society of Florida," we thought. It would give him allies in the North and provide us with a Southern frontier.
The night was filled with the glow of tropical romance. Lige's tight-fitting shirt was powder-blue, a color-draped over his muscular form, emphasizing his ever-fresh magnetism. Later we dined with Inman at a legendary Coconut Grove restaurant, The Candlelight. By instinct, I suppose, Inman had recognized us as we walked through the door. Rising from his seat at the bar, he took us to a booth where we ordered supper. In his forties, Inman was tall and slim. He pontificated in earnest tones. He was dead serious about gay rights, and since he was the only person brave enough to stand up against Florida's bigoted establishment, we assured him—though we lived afar—that we wanted to help. We were conducting, after all, a challenge to state-sponsored cruelty. Because he was willing to take on both the politicians and police, we looked hopefully to him. It was apparent that because of our enthusiasm, he looked hopefully to us too. Outside of Washington, this was the first time that Lige and I had put our diplomatic talents to work. Lige's smile, as usual, was clearly our entry card. As he joined me in an attempt to persuade Inman to streamline his gay rights agenda, Lige was well-nigh irresistible. By urging Inman to change the name of his fledgling organization so that it reflected, along with other Mattachine groups, a party line that emphasized gay equality, we argued that he could become part of a national trend, one that eased the isolation he was experiencing as he struggled alone.
George Arents was an elderly multi-millionaire who owned the United States franchise for Ferrari automobiles. We drove to his impressive Coral Gables mansion, Carousel, named to call attention to a row of merry-go-round horses that adorned the back porch. The rich man had a handsome youthful lover whose career was car racing. The young man was an engaging conversationalist. On the Carousel porch, the five of us clinked glasses. Inman agreed, after a pina colada or two, that it might be wise to turn his Athenaeum Society into The Mattachine Society of Florida, Inc. "We should incorporate," he insisted, "because it would protect us if our Society gets in trouble." In turn I accepted his plea that I correspond with him regularly, offering moral support from our home in the North. "I'd like for you to be Vice-president," he petitioned, "and for you, Lige, since you do editing for the Army's Joint Chief of Staff, please say you'll be the Editor of our Florida publication." We assumed our new titles, and then it was George's turn. In an atmosphere of cheer and hope, the wealthy gentleman promised to provide our new organization with regular contributions. "You just ask when you need something," he said. I opened a post office box when we returned to Washington. There, every other day, I picked up letters from Inman, letters filled with his questions, worries, and observations. Working for two Mattachine societies, one in the nation's capital and the other in Florida, found me unduly preoccupied. Caught up too much in ideological movement concerns I was failing—then-- at exactly the point where Lige excelled, the personal touch. Instead of enjoying Lige's extraordinary company after supper, I often retired to the typewriter composing lengthy replies to Inman's endless entreaties. Each month Lige edited six or eight monthly pages for Florida's segment of The Homosexual Citizen, published in association with The Mattachine Society of Washington. Putting aside concerns about his Pentagon security clearances, Lige took part in the first Mattachine demonstration at the State Department. Although all of the picket's participants were Washington Mattachine members, he constructed a sign that read, "This Demonstration is Sponsored by The Mattachine Society of Florida, Inc." as part of a careful "bluffing" strategy we'd worked out. Inman was bluffing Florida politicians with a threat to picket that could never materialize, promising a line around the Capitol Building in Tallahassee. Florida's Mattachine had only subscribers, supporters and contributors, and, like Inman's replaced Atheneum group, it had no active membership other than Inman himself. Its rubber-stamping Executive Board, with the exception of Lige and me— who were both living outside the Sunshine state—was composed of Inman's Miami-area friends. He'd been railing against a proposed bill circulating in Florida's legislature, "the sexual psychopath bill," which, if passed would, he said, allow the state to put those accused of "the abominable and detestable crime against nature" into mental hospitals, the state confiscating their personal possessions to pay for their hospitalization. Lige arranged to take a photo of our phony Florida sponsorship sign showing Washingtonians posing as Floridians clustered around it, the State Department building its background. Inman distributed this photo among Florida's politicians to give credence to his picketing bluff. When the legislature quickly dropped the bill, he exulted that our bluff had worked.
A similar result, even more significant, came on the heels of our demonstration at the Civil Service Commission. Thwarting movement conservatives —those who objected to pickets-- Barbara Gittings began running photos on the cover of The Ladder showing lesbians carrying picket signs. Thereafter, government officials, obviously embarrassed by parading homosexuals, contacted us and asked for a meeting, agreeing at that meeting to spell out reasons for excluding gay men and lesbians from government service. With their sorry document in hand, the Mattachine Society of Washington responded with a merciless critique of the government's anti-gay policies. Both in and out of the movement there was steady progress. We who were militants moved swiftly, giving our more conservative gay critics little time to respond. Herb Rau, a columnist for The Miami News, began giving regular—almost daily-- coverage to Florida's first gay organization. From Washington I congratulated Inman, suggesting that Florida Mattachine join East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) our association of East Coast gay groups. He agreed and I represented Florida at the 1965 ECHO conference in New York. My second meeting with Inman took place in early 1966. I'd persuaded him to attend the first national meeting of gay organizations (NACHO) in Kansas City. At the same time we also met Foster Gunnison, Jr., a kindly intellectual who'd been corresponding with us for a nearly a year from his home in Hartford, Connecticut. Foster's biography can be found today in an otherwise badly-composed history titled Stonewall. He promptly fell in love with Lige in his gentlemanly way. I wasn't jealous, however, and so our platonic friendships with him grew promptly into lifelong associations. Based on Foster's carefully-written letters, we'd already decided he'd make an effective gay crusader. Overworked while serving as both Washington's and Florida's Mattachine Vice-president, I begged Richard Inman to accept Foster Gunnison as my Vice-presidential replacement in the Florida group. At Kansas City Inman agreed to my proposition. For an extended time, I remained in close touch with the Floridian pioneer, however. A biography of Richard Inman—including many excerpts from my lengthy 1965 correspondence with him—is available as a full chapter in James T. Sears' stellar hardback history of the gay and lesbian south, Lonely Hunters, scheduled next month to be published in paperback. Sears' painstaking research has resurrected this first Southern gay activist whose whereabouts are now unknown. In 1970, Inman visited me in my New York offices at GAY. After that he vanished. He'd had a heart condition which could have claimed him early. Today, if he's still alive somewhere, he'd be in his mid-70s. In Lonely Hunters, Sears expertly captures Inman's seeming contradictions and much about him that's admirable. The south's foremost gay historian asked me to provide a quote about Inman and Lonely Hunters contains my carefully-honed thoughts about my old comrade-in-arms:
Richard Inman, like a bright comet, soared through skies, lighting up America's early gay and lesbian liberation cause. Unique in our movement's history, he was committed to what he called "constitutional rights" and his brave willingness to step forward in a benighted area where savage antigay persecution had become standard government fare was, to me, a foremost inspiration in those heady times.
I made Richard Inman my confidant and comrade-in-arms because I knew he was working virtually alone, sometimes despairing. I embrace the memory of him still. He serves our history as a shining example of what a single, committed, energetic individual can do—even though suffering setbacks himself—in the ongoing struggle to right the lot of the wrongly-persecuted. |
Floridian Richard Inman was a pioneer of the Gay Liberation Movement in the American South 
Lige Clarke 
Jack Nichols and Frank Kameny in 1997 
© 1997-99 BEI