The many faces of love

The Supreme Court’s deliberation on gay marriage has put me to thinking about the history of gay people in Arkansas. About 25 years ago, while visiting my mother in rural western Arkansas, she told me that I had a gay cousin. Standing by the kitchen sink and staring determinedly at the dishes she was washing, she said, “Did you know that Mikey is one of those homosexuals?”

After a few uncomfortable minutes, I gathered the nerve to ask my elderly mother if she knew of any gays in her childhood. “Oh no,” she said with certainty, “there were no gays in those days.” My mother and larger family went on to accept Mikey’s homosexuality, but I am afraid she was wrong in denying the existence of gays in Arkansas’ past.

I cannot think of a subject more difficult to research than the history of homosexuality and the public reaction to it—at least before the modern era. And I certainly do not claim to have had any great success. But over the years I have picked up tidbits indicating that at least a few Arkansans were gay.

Survivors of the doomed expedition of French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, known in our history as “La Salle,” accused their leader of being homosexual. However, one must discount those assertions since members of the party murdered La Salle in 1687.

The first reference I have found to homosexual behavior in Arkansas is an 1887 newspaper report from Van Buren stating that three black boys had raped a white boy. The victim had originally sworn that the black youths had “committed an assault upon him by whipping him.” The teenage defendants were found guilty of assault, but “during the trial a plain case of sodomy was developed” for which they were charged separately. I have been unable to determine the outcome of the case. And, of course, one must be careful to note that sexual assault has little to do with sex and much to do with violence.

One of the challenges in researching this topic is the fact that early Arkansas statutes outlawed certain sex whether it was practiced by men or women. Hence, we do not know in most cases whether those charged with sodomy or “buggery” were involved in gay or straight sex. For example, in 1869 a black man was found innocent in Crawford County of committing “the detestable crime of buggery,” but the newspaper accounts do not specify whether the sex partner was another man or a woman.

It appears that many of those charged with sodomy were black men. However, in 1914 the official report of the Arkansas attorney general noted that three white men from Sebastian County were serving time for sodomy.

Perhaps the best known lesbian Arkansan of the 19th Century was Alice French, a very successful writer who used the pen name Octave Thanet. French, who grew up in Iowa, had a long-term relationship with a widow named Jane Allen Crawford. From 1883 to 1909 French and Crawford spent their winters on a large plantation near the Black River in Lawrence County. There they built a home named Thanford and lived together rather openly. In one of her books, French referred to Crawford as “my partner,” but the word was probably used innocently.

Undoubtedly the best documented case of lesbian love before the modern era was that of Dr. M. V. Mayfield. Ironically, in light of the modern drama titled Victor Victoria, Mayfield’s middle name was Victor.

Harold Coogan, a Mena historian who has written an interesting account of Dr. Mayfield, reported that the doctor arrived in Mena around 1915. He set up an office above the meat market on Mena Street and proceeded to win a loyal following of patients. He was especially known for his cancer cures. According to an article in the New York Times, Dr. Mayfield was acclaimed “as a capable general practitioner.”

Dr. Mayfield, who was well along in years when he came to Mena, was a dapper dresser, taking pride in his always shined shoes, tiny though they were. A surviving picture shows a man with close cropped hair wearing a dark suit, black bow tie and wire-rimmed spectacles. His face was deeply furrowed with wrinkles.

In January 1926, the elderly doctor fell ill and became bedridden. Dr. Mayfield’s sex became known during that illness. Newspapers from around the country sent reporters to Mena— with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sending a photographer. The destitute doctor charged the photographer $10 to take her picture—this time clad in a dress.

With the national publicity came many reports on Dr. Mayfield’s earlier life. The doctor had been married to women on more than one occasion. In Neelyville, Ohio, Dr. and Mrs. Mayfield had been known as “Vic and Beck.” It appears that Dr. Mayfield never took a wife in Arkansas.

Dr. Mayfield died in 1929 at the age of 82. In compliance with her last wish she was buried in men’s clothing and a female preacher conducted the funeral. An indigent resident of the Polk County poor house, Dr. Mary Victor Mayfield was buried by the county in an unmarked grave.