Love Cults, Masquerading Gals, and Subway Sammies: A Digital Visualization and Analysis of the LGBTQ+ Subcultures of Mid-Twentieth Century Boston
The aim of this digital humanities project is to analyze the diverse LGBTQ+ subcultures that existed in mid-twentieth century Boston. The personal accounts of LGBTQ+ life during this time are few and far between. There is limited scholarship on the LGBTQ+ community of Boston before the late 1960s. Tessa Bahoosh created an online digital project titled Mapping Boston's Former Gay Bars. Their project mapped all of Boston's gay bars from the 1920s through 2020, but did little else to analyze the city's queer subcultures. Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland, published and compiled by The History Project of Boston, and The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond by Russ Lopez, insufficiently examined Boston's queer history. Their analyses were superficial and anecdotal and they failed to utilize certain digital scholarship tools, like ArcGIS, that are invaluable in analyzing the spatiality of Boston's queer subcultures.
Primary sources that detail the hidden lives of LGBTQ+ folks are scarce. Non-heteronormative behaviors were considered devious and shameful and so nearly all queer men and women lived multifaceted lives; for example, they pretended to be straight in public with their friends and colleagues, but in their more private and intimate moments of their lives, they openly expressed their affection towards those of the same sex. Fortunately, we see this type of behavior documented in The Mid-Town Journal.
The Mid-Town Journal was founded by South End Boston native Frederick Shibley. The journal covered not only the South End of Boston, but also the Greater Boston area.
The Mid-Town Journal is one of the most valuable historical records that has highlighted Boston's LGBTQ+ community. Shibley touted the paper as a source that displayed the most "unbelievable panorama of life" that Boston's South End had to offer.1 Shibley published articles in this weekly newspaper that not only covered the mundane happenings of Boston and the South End, but more importantly the complex lives, relationships and experiences of queer Bostonians that mainstream newspapers neglected to cover. The Mid-Town Journal "unwittingly created a comprehensive, day-by-day account of the city's lesbian and gay community during a period when gays were virtually invisible in the media." 2
The journal is critical in revealing the intricate relationships, behaviors, compositions and geographical distributions of Boston's diverse LGBTQ+ subcultures.
By analyzing The Mid-Town Journal and court materials from The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, my project will help not only map the multifaceted LGBTQ+ subcultures of Boston in the mid-twentieth century, but also assess and examine the personal experiences and private lives of queer Bostonians.
The transformational effects of World War Two on American society cannot be underestimated. Millions of men and women were uprooted from their small towns and placed into large cities like Boston beginning in the early 1940s. Boston had already had a queer subculture, but the influx of service men and women enlivened it. Bars like Kit Kat Club, The Black Cat, and the Touraine Café became popular meeting spots for LGBTQ+ men and women.3 Servicemen and servicewomen began to intermingle with the established queer subcultures. It became easier than ever for queer folks to meet one another.
But with the increase of social interactions came risks. Beginning in the 1930s and extending into the 1940s, the Boston police arrested hundreds of men and transgender women for "lewd and lascivious conduct and sodomy." 4 Nineteen forty-five through 1947 saw the highest number of men and women being arrested for public indecency and sodomy. The authorities would detain gay men for cruising for other men in parks and public restrooms while apprehending transgender women for cross dressing in public.5 Police arrests were frequent which meant that LGBTQ+ folks would have likely lived in fear after leaving their homes.
However, not even the privacy of one's own home could prevent the encroachment of the Boston police department. Private parties, hosted by LGBTQ+ people, were often raided by the police. Disapproving neighbors typically tipped off the police of possible queer gatherings. Those who were arrested at the parties were normally convicted of lewd and indecent behavior (i.e. having sexual relations with those of the same sex). Additionally, judges commonly charged them with suspended sentences and probabtion.6
Clearly, the middle part of the twentieth century was a time of great fear and danger for many queer men and women. Boston police were relentless in their pursuit of suppressing any and all non-heteronormative behavior. Arrests continued well into the 1950s and early 1960s. LGBTQ+ bars, social gatherings and anonymous midnight rendezvous still continued. But, America's mood toward gay men and women soured.
During the height of the Cold War, several American politicians, such as U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, led the crusade of identifying suspected Communist sympathizers who had allegedly infiltrated the U.S. government and were attempting to bring down American democracy.7
McCarthy and his supporters subsequently viewed gay men and women as particularly susceptible to Communist influence. According to historian David K. Johnson, "In popular discourse, communists and homosexuals were often conflated. Both groups were perceived as hidden subcultures with their own meeting places, literature, cultural codes, and bonds of loyalty. Both groups were thought to recruit to their ranks the psychologically weak or disturbed. And both groups were considered immoral and godless. Many people believed that the two groups were working together to undermine the government."8
It was a precarious time for queer men and women to live openly in America during the 1950s and into the early 1960s. Thousands of men were discharged from the military and federal government annually while those in the civilian world were under constant threat of blackmail, public censure and imprisonment.9 But, as we will see, gays, lesbians and transgender women found plenty of opportunities to connect with one another throughout the city.
Notes
[1] Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 130.
[2] Improper Bostonians, 148.
[3] Russ Lopez, The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond (Boston: Shawmut Peninsula Press, 2019), 118.
[4] Lopez, The Hub of the Gay Universe, 126.
[5] Lopez, The Hub of the Gay Universe, 126.
[6] Lopez, The Hub of the Gay Universe, 157.
[7] David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 18.
[8] “An interview with David K. Johnson author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government,” University of Chicago Press, The University of Chicago, accessed April 2, 2022, https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/404811in.html.
[9] Improper Bostonians, 142.