“A Night at the Sweet Gum Head” Paints Personal Picture of Queer Atlanta History
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In his book, “A Night at the Sweet Gum Head,” journalist and writer Martin Padgett shares the story of LGBTQ Atlanta during the ’70s and ’80s. The book pulsates with the excitement and energy of the gay nightclub it’s named after as Padgett looks at Atlanta’s past through its disco and political scenes. By blending these two elements together, Padgett has weaved together an intriguing tapestry of Atlanta made up of both government officials and drag queens.
“A Night at the Sweet Gum Head” follows many figures in Atlanta’s extensive LGBTQ history, but the two individuals Padgett highlights the most are John Greenwell and Bill Smith. Greenwell was a regular at the Sweet Gum Head, where he would rise to fame as the drag star Rachel Wells. Smith was a journalist and political activist who led the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, became city commissioner, and wrote for the gay newspaper the Barb. These two very different people tell much of Atlanta’s LGBTQ community’s story during the disco era.
While the story is focused on Greenwell and Smith, it is also personal for Padgett. Like Greenwell, Padgett lived part of his youth in Alabama and saw Atlanta as an escape from heteronormativity; and like Smith, Padgett took his passion for telling and redefining the story of the LGBTQ community to journalism. He even lived on Cheshire Bridge Road, the very same road where the Sweet Gum Head used to be.
When asked about his inspiration for the book, Padgett said, “I started writing about Cheshire Bridge Road because I thought the book was going to be something like Atlanta’s history since the late ’60s — really after the day Martin Luther King was shot. I thought, ‘Has Atlanta really lived up to the expectation, the goals that Martin Luther King left behind?’”
“I started looking on Cheshire Bridge Road for stories I could get close to because I had lived there when I first came to Atlanta,” he continued. “This bar’s name kept cropping up, and I had no idea. I thought, ‘Well, I’m decently well-traveled on bars — at least when I first moved to Atlanta.’ So, when I didn’t know the name and I didn’t realize I lived next door to where it was, I thought I should spend a couple of afternoons looking around for stuff. And then I saw John Greenwell’s memoir about being Rachel Wells. And from then on I realized this was it, and within the first couple of days of poking around I knew it — this was a book.”
When asked about his own experience living in Alabama as Greenwell did, Padgett said, “Alabama was a place I felt very comfortable as long as I was living a very code-switched life. I actually really liked Birmingham, but it wasn’t very gay at all, or at least I thought — it was a small community. Everyone I knew who was gay, the handful of people, were always going to Atlanta. ‘You have to go to this place, do this, do that.’ I kept on coming every weekend and kept loving it. And when I decided I didn’t want PR for a career, I moved to Atlanta. And not long after I moved I decided to buy a place and ended up on Cheshire Bridge Road just because I thought it was the epicenter of what gay night culture was and knew it would be a comforting place to come out.”
Padgett’s personal connection to the history in “A Night at the Sweet Gum Head” becomes clear when looking at the intricate way he tells the story of Atlanta. Padgett bounces between the personal stories of the numerous individuals who make up Atlanta’s history instead of hyperfocusing on major events.
“When you find as many fascinating people as you find at a nightclub, it’s hard to want to turn any of them away,” Padgett said. “In fact, you cannot write a book about a nightclub focusing on one or two people only. People are going to wonder who else is there, or why is Liberace in the corner?”
The effect of Padgett’s decision to the tell the stories of individuals — and to base these stories around a nightclub — is one that humanizes the people involved in creating Atlanta’s LGBTQ history and embraces queer culture for what it is. As Padgett writes in the preface of “A Night at the Sweet Gum Head,” “While samesex marriage has normalized aspects of our queer lives to a degree, assimilation is one of the many things that have eroded our sense of community. We’re losing a distinct dimension of the queer experience. We’re being straightwashed, even as an unashamed army of bigots wants to turn back the clock.”
Padgett and “A Night at the Sweet Gum Head” fight against this “straightwashing” and gives the narrative back to LGBTQ people by placing it in the safe spaces that have allowed the community to blossom into what it has become.
“A Night at the Sweet Gum Head” is available for purchase online and at Charis Books and More.