San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tireless leader in 1970s gay liberation
AMBER HOLLIBAUGH 1946-2023
When the Briggs Initiative to prevent gays and lesbians from working in California public schools made the ballot in 1978, San Francisco activist Amber Hollibaugh could quickly see what was needed to defeat it.
It needed someone with a working-class background who was brave enough to go out into the conservative strongholds of the Central Valley and explain that the Briggs Initiative was not just an attack on schoolteachers who happened to be gay, but also an attack on labor.
Hollibaugh was that person, having grown up hardscrabble in Bakersfield. She was also fearless, going into Teamster meetings and union halls to explain that the measure wasn’t just about gay men, but also about women. In many cases Hollibaugh was the first lesbian the male truck drivers had ever knowingly met, according to campaign documents held at the San Francisco History Center.
“Amber was a firebrand who came from a poor family, but she was so eloquent,” recalled wellknown activist Cleve Jones, who rode a bus to Fresno with Hollibaugh during the campaign. “She was very charismatic and very articulate, and though not college educated, she had read everything. She was very good at explaining to people that the Briggs Initiative was against working-class people.”
The Briggs Initiative, Proposition 6, was defeated in the November 1978 general election, and it gave momentum to the gay liberation movement in San Francisco.
Though Hollibaugh was most effective in conversation with small groups, she was unexpectedly thrust to the forefront on May 21, 1979, when the manslaughter verdict was announced in the case of former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White, who had assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay supervisor.
The verdict shocked the city, which had expected a murder conviction. Outrage in the gay community sparked a march on City Hall that spiraled into what became known as the White Night riots — violent clashes between the police and protesters that injured dozens of officers and more than 100 civilians.
“The crowd was angry and throwing rocks, and everyone was trying to calm them down,’’ recalled Jones, who later founded the AIDS Memorial Quilt. ‘Then Amber got on the bullhorn and gave a speech that said, ‘I think we ought to do this more often,’ and all hell broke loose.’’
Social justice activist Tom Ammiano, later a city supervisor and state Assembly member who was also there, recalled Hollibaugh’s speech as more inspirational than inciting. “With all the anger that was happening that night, Amber was able to focus the crowd in a way that was magical for the time,” he said. “For those minutes, the beast was quelled and inspired by her words. She had righteous anger, and she made it productive.”
Hollibaugh, who worked for years as a bookstore expert on feminism and lesbian literature, added to the genre with her memoir, “My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home,” published by Duke University Press in 2000. In the author bio she is described as “a lesbian sex radical, exhooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker, and journalist.”
She died Oct. 20 in the Brooklyn apartment she shared with