Evander Smith was an openly gay

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

lawyer who gained national attention for his efforts to legally block San Francisco police from harassing attendees of a fund-raising ball held by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an early

homophile Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, Achillean, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, g ...

organization, on January 1, 1965.

Police harassment at California Hall

On the eve of January 1, 1965, several homophile organizations in San Francisco, California - including the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, the

Society for Individual Rights The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term ''homophile'', which was commonly used by the ...

, the

Daughters of Bilitis The Daughters of Bilitis , also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesb ...

, and the

Mattachine Society The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, perhaps preceded only by Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection ...

- held a fund-raising ball for their mutual benefit at the California Hall. Prior to the ball, several of the ministers from the Council on Religion and the Homosexual met with the San Francisco police, who tried to get them to cancel it. The clergy members declined to cancel the event, and the San Francisco police agreed not to interfere. However, on the evening of the ball, the police showed up in force and surrounded the California Hall and focused numerous kleig lights on the entrance to the hall. As each of the 600 plus persons entering the ball approached the entrance, the police took their photographs. A number of police vans were parked in plain view near the entrance to the ball. Evander Smith, a lawyer for the groups organizing the ball, and Herb Donaldson, another openly gay lawyer, tried to stop the police from conducting the fourth "inspection" of the evening; both were arrested, along with two heterosexual lawyers - Elliott Leighton and Nancy May - who were supporting the rights of the participants to gather at the ball. On January 2, 1965, ministers associated with the Council on Religion and the Homosexual held a news conference in protest of Smith, Donaldson, and the other two lawyers arrest as well as the police harassment that they ball attendees had been subjected to. Twenty-five of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco joined the defense team for the four lawyers, and the judge directed the jury to find the four not-guilty before the defense had even had a chance to begin their argumentation when the case came to court. This event has been called the "San Francisco's Stonewall" by some historians; The participation of such prominent litigators in the defense of the Smith, Donaldson, and the other two lawyers marked a turning point in gay rights on the West Coast of the United States.

Anti-war efforts

Smith went on to protest the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

and was one of a group of signatories to a full page ad calling on the

San Francisco City Council The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the legislative body within the government of the City and County of San Francisco. Government and politics The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a ch ...

to pass a resolution calling for an end to the war.

Legacy

Season 2, episode 9 of the

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

“

Making Gay History ''Making Gay History'' is an oral history podcast on the subject of LGBT history, featuring trailblazers, activists, and allies. Most episodes draw on the three-decade-old audio archive of rare interviews that the podcast's founder and host Eric ...

” is about Smith and Herb Donaldson.

Police harassment at California Hall

Anti-war efforts

Legacy

References

Further reading