Herbert Donaldson (February 12, 1927 – December 5, 2008) 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 and judge who gained national attention for his efforts to legally block San Francisco police from harassing attendees of a fund-raising ball for 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 met with San Francisco police, who tried to get them to cancel it.
The clergy members declined to cancel the event, and 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 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 arrested as well as the police harassment to which the ball attendees had been subjected. 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.
The event has been called "San Francisco's
Stonewall" by some historians;
the participation of such prominent litigators in the defense of Smith, Donaldson and the other two lawyers marked a turning point in gay rights on the West Coast of the United States.
Later career
Governor
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
appointed Donaldson as the first openly gay male municipal court judge in the state of California in 1983.
He retired in 1999. Four years later, he began serving a three-year term as judge of San Francisco's new
Behavioral Health Court.
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 Donaldson and
Evander Smith.
See also
*
List of LGBT jurists in the United States
This is a list of openly LGBT Americans who are or were judges, magistrate judges, court commissioners, or administrative law judges in the United States and its federal district and territories. If known, it will be listed if a judge has served o ...
References
Further reading
Archival Sources
Scott Bishop Papers, 1989-1990are housed at the
GLBT Historical Society
The GLBT Historical Society (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society) (formerly Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California; San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) maintains an extensive collection ...
. ''Contains two interviews with Herb Donaldson.''
GLBT Historical Society oral history collectionare housed at the
GLBT Historical Society
The GLBT Historical Society (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society) (formerly Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California; San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) maintains an extensive collection ...
. ''Includes three interviews with Herb Donaldson.''
Evander Smith - California Hall papers, 1965-1973(.5 linear feet) are housed at the
San Francisco Public Library
The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as ''Library Journals L ...
.
Judge Herb Donaldson, Oral History Interviewis available through the
Regional Oral History Office
The Oral History Center (ROHO) is part of The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. The office was founded in 1954. ROHO conducts, analyzes, teaches about, and preserves oral history interviews on a wide range of topics rela ...
of
The Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...
at
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donaldson, Herb
1927 births
2008 deaths
Gay men
LGBT people from California
American LGBT rights activists
LGBT lawyers
LGBT judges
Lawyers from San Francisco
Activists from California
LGBT appointed officials in the United States
20th-century American lawyers
20th-century LGBT people