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By Jesse Monteagudo
Jesse Monteagudo has long been Florida's foremost activist-scholar.
Though Richard Inman's legacy was celebrated in GayToday recently,
Monteagudo's assessment of our first Southern pioneer, I believe,
has historic significance that scholars and history buffs elsewhere
cannot ignore. The State of Florida has had its share of outstanding LGBT leaders; people who worked against enormous odds to make life better for the Sunshine State's LesBiGay and Trans community.
Like the rest of us, they were only following in the footsteps of Richard A. Inman. This state's first queer activist, Inman dared to be openly and actively gay at a time when that was a dangerous thing to be. By challenging both a firmly antigay political establishment and a closeted gay community, Inman earned the title of Florida's Gay of the Century. Who was Richard Inman? Since he dropped out of sight after 1969, Inman became largely unknown to a generation of activists who took up where he left off. Though I grew up in Miami, I was not aware of Inman or his achievements until I became an activist myself. Only recently did Inman begin to receive the recognition that he so richly deserved. James T. Sears, whose book Lonely Hunters: An Oral History of Lesbian and Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968 contributes so much to our knowledge of Inman, called him "a soldier of fortune turned taxi driver challenging the homophobia and ignorance of heterosexuals as well as apathy and timidity among homosexuals".
Florida in the 1960's was "the Mississippi of the homosexual", and it reacted to homosexuality with a ferocity not unlike Mississippi's handling of the civil rights movement. The Legislative Investigation Committee, chaired by State Senator Charley Johns (hence the "Johns Committee") targeted gays in state universities and other public organizations. A slew of state and local laws outlawed gay sex, barred gays from certain professions, criminalized drag and prohibited gays from working or congregating in a bar. Violence against homosexuals was tacitly tolerated, if not actively encouraged, by the authorities, and gay meeting places were at the mercy of constant police raids. Florida's LGBT community retreated into their closets, hoping against hope that the enemy would pass them by. Nichols was only slightly exaggerating when he told Sears that, "at that time [1966], Florida was the worst place in the Union" for gay people. Only Richard Inman dared to challenge the status quo. Born in Tampa circa 1926, Inman arrived in Miami in the 1940s. According to Sears, Inman "frequented many of the bars and parties in Miami, and his two long-term gay relationships were spliced between a couple of failed heterosexual marriages. Like many others in his time and place, Inman was arrested at least twice, for "simply being in a gay bar" during a raid. Though he owned a mortgage company and "dozens of Miami properties" during the fifties, by 1963 Inman had filed for bankruptcy and was working as a taxi driver. Inman turned to politics: "I had never before been a member of a homophile organization", he wrote. "Such organizations were entirely to be found only in the major cities of the North and in California. ... I knew nothing about the history, aims, or goals of the homophile civil rights movement. ... In the past, homosexuals had meekly accepted their arrests, paid their fines to the court, and then run for cover. Never before had anyone stood up to the Legislative Investigation Committee, the State Attorney, or the police departments when confronted by their harassment tactics."
Undaunted, Inman founded (1963) the Atheneum Society, which
according to Sears, was "the first state-chartered, explicitly homosexual
organization in the South." Created "to combat ... gross injustices
affecting homosexual citizens which are perpetuated by certain heterosexuals
who masquerade behind the guise of 'justice' and decency", the Society was
basically a one-man [Inman] group.
Even so, Inman benefited from the secret but substantial financial assistance of an elderly millionaire who owned the U.S. franchise for Ferrari. "George [Arents] is very closety," Inman told Jack Nichols, "but he does provide me with pocket cash when there's printing to be done, or when I want to get a mailing out." With his Atheneum Society in tow, Inman soon became, in Sears's words, "the lightning rod for Florida's nonexistent homophile movement." Claiming to represent "200,000" Florida homosexuals, Inman "privately engaged in correspondence and conversations with political leaders and kingmakers. He also engaged in a long-term battle with two powerful politicians: Charley Johns and [Dade State Attorney] Richard Gerstein."
Nichols and Clarke were impressed by Inman. In his memoir of Inman, written for the on-line magazine GayToday, Nichols described Inman as being "In his forties, ... 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." Nichols and Clarke convinced Inman to change the Atheneum Society's name to that of the Mattachine Society of Florida. Inman became President, Nichols Vice President, and Clarke editor of the group's news letter; while Arents promised to continue his financial contributions. Though Nichols and Clarke returned to Washington, Nichols and Inman maintained a massive correspondence. As head of the Mattachine Society of Florida, Inman adopted, in John D'Emilio's words, "a Kameny-like tone in his dealings with public officials." Clarke helped Inman's tactics by carrying, at a Mattachine-sponsored picket of the State Department, a sign that read "This Demonstration is Sponsored by The Mattachine Society of Florida, Inc." There was a method to this madness, as Nichols explains: "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 Criminal Sexual Psychopath bill] which, if passed, would ... 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 as 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." Sears credited this victory on "Richard's understanding of the intricacies of Florida politics, coupled with his diverse network of contacts." Inman won in spite of Florida's closeted gays, some of who "sent critical, anonymous letters about him to various lawmakers." Inman's success won him the recognition of the national homophile movement. As a result, Inman affiliated Mattachine Florida with ECHO (East Coast Homophile Organizations) in 1965 and attended the organizing meeting of NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations) in 1966. Inman attended the NACHO organizing meeting in Kansas City, where he met Foster Gunnison, Jr. The overworked Nichols convinced Inman to accept Gunnison as his new Vice President, and Gunnison and Inman began their own correspondence. Inman was a master of "political dialectics", which he described "as the way a politician will say one thing in his platform then do the opposite once elected and then get away with it without anyone calling his cards. It could be described as disagreeing with someone, but agreeing with them to their face so strongly that they don't hear you put words into their mouth and then before they know it, they are doing what you wanted them to do in the first place."
 Historian James T. Sears, Ph.D., Dr. Franklin Kameny, and Jack Nichols A born Machiavellian, Inman believed that the end justified the means: "I am not above playing the dirtiest kind of politics". "When pinned down, you either lash out at those who disagree, or you attempt to totally subjugate those who do agree," Inman wrote Kameny. According to Sears, "Richard Inman was the Gordon Liddy of pre-Stonewall gay politics. His nonconventional tactics, web of contacts, and philosophy of 'political dialectics' differentiated him from other homophile leaders. In his legislative struggle he adeptly used the media both openly and surreptitiously ... . Richard used his closely guarded connections with those in the 'rackets' ..., federal agencies, and anti-Castro fronts who provided protection. "He also relied on wealthy but closeted homosexuals like George Arents ..., on friendly capitol reporters who kept his lobbying efforts outside prying public eyes, on a cadre of gay politicos as well as state politicians who delivered key votes, and on longtime political insiders such as the chief clerk of the Florida House and former secretary of the Johns Committee, Mrs. Lamar Bledsoe (to whom he even sent a vase of red roses)." A firm anticommunist, Inman opposed the ideas and tactics of the New Left, the demonstrations and protests of the Vietnam era: "Civil disobedience like sit-ins", he wrote, "DEFINITELY NO! We start that and then we'll be classed right along with the Vietnam and Berkeley crowds. Why in hell do some of us think we must ape others? Can't we be original? Don't we have an original and unique problem?" Homophile goals, Inman insisted, should not be "contaminated" with any other agenda. Like other "moderate" activists before and since, Inman argued that "diversions such as marriage, adoption and an unnecessary preoccupation with the subject of pornography all tend to create enormous resistance in the minds of the public and lawmakers against the homophile movement. "These major and minor items should be listed and separated and the entire emphasis of the movement put upon [law reform, nondiscrimination and freedom of assembly]. Shove the others to the back, at least for now, until we get the items in the first group accomplished." Though Gunnison liked and admired Inman, he recognized that Inman was a "lone wolf"; "halfway between a drifter and a taxi driver." If Inman seemed to contradict himself, as when (according to Martin Duberman) he "helped in 1965 to organize, in conjunction with the South Florida Psychiatric Society, a program of free counseling for teenagers who 'want to get out of the gay life,'" he was only exercising his "political dialectics". On April 19, 1966 Inman appeared on the television documentary The Homosexual. Hosted by WTVJ's Ralph Renick, The Homosexual was dominated by antigay zealots like Detective John Sorenson of the Dade County Sheriff's Department of Morals and Juvenile Squad. Only Inman represented the pro-gay side of the issue. Inman's appearance was a disaster. John Loughery, who viewed a tape of The Homosexual while researching The Other Side of Silence, wrote that Inman's "performance ... suggested gay men and lesbians would be better served by silence. Uncomfortable on camera and looking as if he had suddenly realized that acknowledging his sexuality was tantamount to admitting a crime for which he might be arrested, Inman squirmed before his interviewer's questions, ending with the claim that he had given up homosexuality four years earlier - 'it's not my cup of tea' - though he believed that homosexuals deserved fair treatment. He giggled at the suggestion of gay marriage or gay adoption. 'You weren't exactly inspired to run out and join his organization,' a Fort Lauderdale gay man, then in his twenties, noted. 'Actually, he scared me more than the cop they had telling the eighth-graders that any one of them could become a deviant if they weren't careful.'" Though Inman lied with a purpose - his "political dialectics" in action - he did not win any converts with his equivocal performance. In his career as an activist, Inman received scant support from South Florida's frightened gay community. Then as now, closeted gay men high up in government worked to sabotage the activist agenda. "Everyone is hiding and are afraid that somehow they will be connected and exposed. Everyone now says 'count me out.' Last night, two bars asked me politely 'don't come around here anymore.'" Inman also received harassing phone calls from anonymous parties and tickets from the Miami Police Department, which also tried (unsuccessfully) to get Inman's employer to fire him. This did not keep Inman from suing the City of Miami (February 1966), arguing that the City's antigay laws "arbitrarily denies to certain and various persons their rights to the equal opportunities upon which this great country was founded." Sears called this the "first civil rights legal action brought in the South by an admitted homosexual." Though Inman lost his case, he laid the groundwork for later trials that overturned Miami's antigay laws. Inman was burned out. In March 1967 he abolished Florida Mattachine. In October the Miami Vice Squad raided Inman's new enterprise, the Atheneum Book Shop, charging Inman with possession of pornography (he was acquitted on a technicality). By August 1969, the Miami Herald could claim that "The Miami [gay] subculture shows few signs of the minority group syndrome. Since the demise of the Mattachine Society of Florida ... Miami has had neither homosexual organizations nor militants. A politically docile, socially invisible subculture, it attracts little attention, and less support." It remained for a new generation of activists to take up where Inman left off. What happened to Richard Inman? According to Jack Nichols, "In 1970, Inman visited me in my New York offices at GAY. After that he disappeared. 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."
Since Lonely Hunters doesn't tell us about Inman's post-1969 whereabouts, I took the
liberty of asking Professor Sears. This is his reply:
"By the late 60s, [Inman's] cases, one of which went all the way to the US Supreme Court, had been lost, [and] he devoted his energies to the Atheneum Bookstore -- which basically sold erotica. The bookstore was busted on several occasions and, again, Inman went to court. ... I should also note here that his connections with erotica stem at least from his meeting with Guy Straight [a San Francisco activist] -- who later went to prison for photographing and selling underage pornography -- at the NACHO conference in Colorado. "Any way, before the activities of the GLF [Gay Liberation Front] and related activities in Florida (circa 1970) ..., [Inman] had departed for California. ... Bob Basker, among others, was involved in some of the early activities and knew Richard, who ended up in Long Beach. Bob had given me Inman's phone number a couple of years ago [and] said he last talked with [him] about ten years before (circa 1987); I tried calling but the numbers were not active." "In my next book, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones, which focuses on the Stonewall Era in the South, I will end the mystery of Richard Inman." Whether dead or alive, Inman vanished into oblivion, not waiting for a new generation to emerge and recognize his achievements. It remained for Nichols to summarize, in Lonely Hunters, Inman's contributions to America's Queer Nation: "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." |
Richard Inman 
Lige Clarke
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