Back when I first opened the bar, people were ashamed of who they were and frightened of the severe consequences if they were found out. In 2005, Frankel recalled “I always wanted to open a bar where gay people openly socialized with each other. ‘Cause it was a gay bar'” (Wineland, 74).
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She hosted shows and events, and distributed fliers for them, an act “which embodied the new kind of confidence and visibility that the Stonewall riots helped to create.” Also like those who frequented the raided Stonewall Inn, patrons of The Seahorse encountered an intimidating police presence, in which officers would “‘walk around and make people nervous. The riots immediately forwarded the gay liberation movement and the fight for LGBT rights in America. LGBT individuals in smaller cities capitalized on the momentum by opening bars that fostered gay communities and provided them with a relatively safe space for entertainment, dialogue, and activism.įrankel filled this role in South Bend with The Seahorse.
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Its opening followed the famous Stonewall Riots of 1969, in which members of New York City’s LGBT bar community responded to a police raid with a series of violent protests. Joseph County Public Library.Īccording to Ben Wineland’s “Then and Now: The Origins and Development of the Gay Community in South Bend,” Frankel opened South Bend’s first gay club in the early 1970s. Gloria Frankel (right) and friend, circa 1950s, courtesy of LGBTQ Collection, Michiana Memory, St. In this post, we explore the fight for gay rights in the Michiana area and the intrepid woman who lead the charge. In 1974, Gloria Frankel and her gay club, The Seahorse Cabaret, withstood police harassment, challenged regulations against LGBT individuals, and endured a firebombing.
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Four decades before Buttigieg’s announcement, the city reportedly outlawed same-sex dancing. In 2015, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend announced in a South Bend Tribune op-ed that he was gay, making him Indiana’s first openly gay mayor.