In the 1960s, there were three places in downtown Tallahassee where gay white men could get a glimpse and meet people like them.
The bus station, the courthouse and the bar at the Floridian Hotel, where the Aloft is now located, back then called the Cypress Lounge.
But it was risky, said Charles Upchurch, a history professor at Florida State University.
“We had to be very careful because the repercussions of being arrested and having your name in the paper are huge,” Upchurch said.
Tallahassee’s LGBTQ history and the different ways people have experienced “same-sex desire and gender transition” has been around for as long as people have lived in the city, Upchurch said, but it’s only relatively recently that the city has started documenting that history.
In preparation for this year’s Tallahassee Pride Week, Upchurch researched the queer history of the state capital and shared his findings with the Tallahassee Democrat.
Florida’s LGBTQ community has grown along with the state’s increasing tourism and the construction of interstate highways and military bases, and many Florida locations, including Tallahassee, have been featured in national guides as queer destinations for travelers across the country.
In the 1960s, the law was intentionally vague: If someone was arrested for lewd conduct or loitering in public, they could be made public if their crime was published in the Tallahassee Democrat’s police logbook.
This was around the same time as the Johns Commission, which the Florida Legislature established between 1954 and 1965 to investigate Communist influence and which was later used to crack down on LGBTQ people in the state, especially in institutions of higher education.
The state’s homophobic climate eased in the ’70s and ’80s, and Tallahassee saw the rise of LGBTQ bars and businesses, including Rubyfruit Books and numerous gay bars, as well as a lesbian publishing house called Naiad Press and a strong social justice presence called the Tallahassee Gay Liberation Front, which began on the campus of Florida State University.
“It’s just a case of multiple separate efforts building on each other and doing great things in a time of change,” Upchurch said.
Rumors and civic responsibility towards the queer community
In 1979, Katie Tully and a partner opened Rumours on Gaines Street in an old office building next to a dry cleaners.
“At the time, queer bars were often dimly lit and in bad parts of town,” Talley says. “Don’t laugh, but we felt it was our civic responsibility to open a place in a better, more downtown location.”
Talley said the city gave its “tacit approval” to open the bar as a social club, with customers paying $5 at the door to become members for the evening.
The bar, located at 517 Gaines Street where The Plant is now, had no sign or advertising. It was known by word of mouth that the bar opened at 8 p.m. and closed around midnight.
Disco was king (or queen), the bar had a DJ and a disco ball, and the décor was Key West-inspired with Art Deco touches, with furniture purchased from Chez Pierre, an old French restaurant on Thomasville Road, Tully said.
“We wanted a place where people could feel good about themselves, feel proud of themselves and have a nice, clean, classy yet fun gathering space,” she said.
Talley added that the bar has never been searched by the Tallahassee Police Department.
Rumor has it it was a “golden moment” in the history of Tallahassee’s LGBTQ community.
“Who could have predicted that around 1980, ’81, the HIV/AIDS pandemic would engulf our culture and so many in the gay community would lose their lives and their fight,” she said. “Those were halcyon days when there was something special for a time. I think we paved the way for Club Park Avenue, which led downtown.”
The Park Avenue club that now houses local restaurant Savoie was the busiest gay bar in Tallahassee history. The same location was TPD headquarters from 1959 to 1972.
There’s even now a Facebook group called “Club Park Avenue Tallahassee,” with the “About” section reading, “CPA. A Tallahassee staple for years. Both famous and infamous. No other club in Tallahassee can match the history of CPA. Rejoin and reminisce.”
Upchurch spoke with dozens of older LGBTQ Tallahassee residents, many of whom had fond memories of the CPA.
“Many people remembered the names of other bars, but they often told stories about Club Park Avenue,” Upchurch said.
The pinnacle of activism
In the 1990s, Tallahassee’s LGBTQ community began organizing and gaining momentum in the fight for equality. It began with a march in 1991, where people walked from Myers Park down Apalachee Parkway to City Hall and back.
The following year, Tallahassee held its first Pride festival, with approximately 200-300 people marching and rallying at the Capitol, giving speeches and performances and receiving extensive media coverage.
The following year, Pride expanded to include a lesbian and gay film festival at the Leroy Collins Leon County Library, but the American Family Association learned of the event and subsequently called for it to be canceled, claiming it would be a “public screening of child pornography,” Upchurch said.
On the day of the festival, the American Family Association gathered between 100 and 200 people in the library’s parking lot to try to block films from being brought into the library, but Toronto police blocked them, telling the protesters they had no jurisdiction, Upchurch said.
“The organizers estimated that between a third and half of the audience were members of the American Family Association, who had come to disrupt the event, so they screened the slowest and most boring art-house film, ‘Andy the Cabinet Maker,’ first,” Upchurch’s study said. “The AFA people left, and everyone else watched the rest of the films.”
“This is our home, so it’s important to us.”
From 1993, when then-Tallahassee Mayor Dot Inman Johnson approved the first Pride Week, to 2024, when thousands of people participated in Pride events on the downtown plaza, the city has made great strides on the road to equality.
In 2014, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.
“To borrow the words of a civil rights leader from the time interracial marriage was banned, the course of history is long, but it is moving toward justice,” Hinkle writes.
Tallahassee is also where Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have enacted a number of anti-LGBTQ bills over the past few years, including the Parental Rights in Education Act, also known by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” Act, and anti-trans bills that would block access to health care for transgender Floridians.
But it was Tallahassee federal Judge Hinkle who recently ruled the law unconstitutional, saying “gender identity is a reality.”
Upchurch, who studies queer history in the UK and the US, said queer history happens everywhere, including Tallahassee. The professor at Florida State University for 20 years said studying local communities has been rewarding.
Twenty-five years ago, books about Southern and rural queer history didn’t exist.
“This is important because this is where we come from,” he says. “What focusing on Southern and rural queer history shows us is that you don’t have to be special to have a story worth telling. It’s about everyday struggles and living authentic lives wherever you are.”
First appearance of Queer in Tallahassee
First (unofficial) gay bar: The Cypress LoungeFirst (official) gay bar: Red Boar TavernFirst bookstore: Ruby Fruit BooksFirst couple to legally marry in Tallahassee: Richelle Marsico and Manda SmithFirst couple to legally adopt a child in North Florida: Casanova and Daniel NurseFirst professor in the nation to teach a college LGBTQ history class: Professor Rictor Norton at Florida State University
This story is part of the TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Bicentennial Project. During the city’s bicentennial celebration, we’ll re-examine Tallahassee history with the help of research from Tallahassee Democrat columnists and historians. For more information, visit tallahassee.com/tlh200. Ana Goñi-Lessan can be reached at agolessan@gannett.com.
