And it’s not only racial, it’s economic, it’s all these kind of things, it’s education. And it still exists, just not quite as much as it did back then, but there is a whole lot of prejudice within the gay community. We’re coming into a society, or a community, however you want to describe it, that’s already there. It’s very difficult to be, back then, to be an African-American man and live in this gay society, because it’s so white. And it wasn’t that big, but it was effective, it was effective. We held signs and we marched around the bars, and stuff like that. We had a little protest around the bars about these carding African-Americans. “They’re with me, they’re with me, they’re with me, they’re with me, and they’re with me.” And eventually, they met them and then they were able to start coming in.īut during that period of time, we had a little protest. I used them knowing me to get my friends in. I had made friends with them, I was able to get in and stuff, you know. All they needed to do was be white to get in. and they knew most African-Americans didn’t have it, while our white counterparts didn’t need anything to get in. They – rather than have one identification, Louisiana identification card that said who you are, they had to have four. And how they stopped it, how they controlled it I should say, is through identifications. Sometimes crippling, but you get up, you dust yourself off, and you fight on.ġ970s: Combatting Racism In The New Orleans Gay Bar Scene.īack then, and like I think now, bartenders control the space. It’s an experience, it’s an adventure, it’s a journey. It’s important that you hear a lot of this stuff from a black perspective. Then I eventually got to meet the bartenders, and they got to know me. I began to feel that same isolation that, you know, that I felt when I was 12 years old. For me, it translated back to the “For Sale” signs. And I began to experience the same thing, you know, being last to be served at the bar when you’re sitting up at the bar and all the white guys and stuff getting their drinks and stuff before you. It was a period of time when blacks… when the gay bars and the gay community was predominately white. When I walked into it, I began to feel – experience that same thing again. I finally got enough nerve to go up, and I discovered it, I found it, I dressed up, I got pretty, and I finally got enough nerve to walk in it. When I finally got enough nerve to go into that gay bar. Bars that – some of them still exist now. I found places where gay people hung out at. So, you know, through those magazines, I found some addresses and I ventured out. It taught me that there are places for people like me in the city, in New Orleans.
You know, after reading the magazines and seeing what happens at his house, and who comes and who goes, and all that kind of stuff, you know, and I realized he was.īut, you know, looking at these magazines from his trash taught me a lot. I realized that the man next door to me was gay. So, I started putting two and two together, and I realized he was gay. And there were all these magazines, and in all the magazines was this word “gay.” And, you know, growing up back in the 60s, in my era, those are things that you kept a secret.Īnd I ran across a magazine that my neighbor, the white guy that lived next door to me, put in his trash.
I always knew… that was the name that was called to you when you were a kid in African-American communities if you were a sissy. The word “gay” came along much later in my life. Eventually over the years and stuff, it became one big community, with the black family. They got to know us and things changed in the community. We knew absolutely nothing about what was going on, you know, and I really – I really did not understand that until much later in my life, that this was a racial thing.Īnd then they got to know us. All these “For Sale” signs started popping up. All of these “For Sale” signs started popping up all around the neighborhood, especially the block in which we lived in, on the street we lived in. We settled in, about a week or two, you know, and then the strangest thing happened. Moved us uptown to a community that we really did not know. Took us from the ghetto and moved us uptown.
When I graduated from sixth grade, my parents moved. That’s where I grew up, until the age of 12. Very, very poor community, but we were all very loving and very – a very loving and very happy community. Central City was – is an African-American community. We lived in an area of New Orleans called Central City. Well, I was born to Sadie and Charlie Hickerson. First Shunned By Neighbors, Then The Bars: Being Black In New Orleans In The 1960s and 1970s.