Know Your SF History: SFPD Raids Drag Ball
Before the riots at New York City’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 and at the Compton’s Cafeteria at Turk Street in San Francisco three years prior, San Francisco’s LGBT community experienced a pivotal moment in which they had to fight for their rights in the face of police harassment and intimidation.
In the 1960s, The Glide Memorial Church on Ellis Street began outreach to San Francisco’s more vulnerable and disenfranchised communities. By 1964, the church, along with the founders of lesbian civil rights activist group Daughters of Bilitis, co-founded the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, or CRH, to bridge the gap between the LGBT community and the Protestant clergy.
On the last day of 1964, the fledgling Council threw a Mardi Gras-themed drag ball at California Hall, located at 625 Polk Street, to ring in the New Year and as a fundraising benefit. Ahead of the proceedings, attorneys for CRH and the Glide Memorial Church clergy met with the San Francisco Police Department to secure a permit. Naturally the police objected, as at the time, the act of “appearing in public in clothing not belonging to one’s own sex” had been illegal in San Francisco for a little over a hundred years and would remain thusly until 1974. The Council countered by citing the Fourth Amendment and stressing that the event was private and as such, the police were legally forbidden to enforce dress codes thereat. Moreover, the Council stated that the ball would be supervised and chaperoned by numerous religious ministers to discourage lewd acts between couples. At the end of the meeting, the police granted the permit and the CRH had the understanding that there would be no interference on the part of law enforcement.
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However, on the evening of 31 December 1964, as the event was starting, the police, in a blatant act of perfidy, parked a van across the street from California Hall, staked out the corners of the block with cruisers, set up floodlights in the vicinity and proceeded to photograph anyone who entered the venue.
These intimidation tactics didn’t sway the crowd, and in all, about six hundred people attended the event. Before long though, the officers began to try to worm their way inside by making disingenuous claims that inspections relevant to fire, alcoholic beverage and health codes were necessary. Nancy May, who was taking tickets at the door, along with three CRH attorneys in attendance, Herbert Donaldson, Evander Smith and Elliott Leighton, told the officers that no inspections would be granted without a warrant. Right then and there, the cops placed the four under arrest and barged in.
The attendees scrambled to leave, wanting to avoid arrests and public humiliation, especially if photos captured in the moment ended up published in the local newspaper. One minister held up his coat to obscure drag queens from the lenses of police cameras. The vast majority of the attendees avoided being arrested. However, along with the ticket-taker and three attorneys, only one couple, Konrad Osterreich and Jon Borset, ended up in police custody, as a same-sex couple dancing was a violation of the draconian sodomy laws in place at the time.
The San Francisco Police Department’s paltry victory would prove to be short-lived. Following the event, seven ministers staged a press conference at Glide Memorial Episcopal Church to condemn the police for acting in bad faith. At the court trials for the four people who attempted to bar the police from entering the venue during the event, the flimsy claims the police made about wanting to inspect the premises were swiftly shot down and the judge swiftly dismissed the charges, citing insufficient evidence for the charges of obstructing police and deeming that the police had deliberately caused disturbance at the party. Later in 1965, the four defendants filed a lawsuit against the city, the 20 police officers on duty during the event and the Chief of Police, claiming a little over a million dollars in damages for civil rights violations.
In the aftermath of the criminal trial and subsequent civil suit, the San Francisco Police Department appointed a liaison to the city’s gay community. However, for nearly a quarter century afterwards, the relationship between the two sides would continue to be fraught and uneasy.
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