Renee Jackson was 7 in 1975 when two men who were trying to open the first gay bar on North Halsted Street knocked on the door of her family’s Lakeview apartment.
“I went to the door and I found it odd that these men were at our house because everyone in the neighborhood knew each other and they stood out like a sore thumb,” said Jackson, 43, who still lives in Lakeview.
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“They weren’t familiar to me at all, so I ran down the hall and got my father, but I stayed behind the door in the dining room and listened.”
The men told Jackson’s father that in order to open their bar, they needed the support of area residents. They had asked other people in the neighborhood to sign a petition, but no one had. Many said they would sign if Jackson’s father signed.
Julius Jackson was well known and respected in the community. A supervisor at the nearby corporate headquarters of a candy factory, he was a precinct captain and a prominent member of Lakeview’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church.
As a black man whose marriage to a white woman had cost them relationships with family members on both sides, Julius Jackson understood what it was like to be ostracized and discriminated against because of whom he loved.
He also had grown up with a mother who’d lived openly as a lesbian since the early 1930s. He said her sexuality never stopped him from loving her.
“I worshipped my mother,” said Jackson, 83, who’s still in Lakeview. “My brother and I did get a lot of flak growing up from schoolchildren. But I just believed that no one should be able to tell you who you should or shouldn’t love.”
He said he signed the would-be bar owners’ petition without hesitation and then asked his wife to sign it.
Gay bars had been open along North Clark Street and Diversey Avenue since the 1960s. But by the summer of 1975, North Halsted Street in the area now known as Boystown, had its first gay bar, according to the Northalsted Business Alliance.
Renee Jackson said that 36 years later, when she walks down North Halsted through the crowds of black youths who gather outside the area’s stores and gay bars, she understands that many of these teens hang out in Boystown because they don’t feel comfortable being openly gay in their own communities.
But Jackson said she loves her neighborhood and doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable or unsafe when she walks past large groups of young people who are “laughing, juking, swearing and flirting.”
“I don’t want anyone, including the youths, to feel disrespected,” she said. “And it’s not about race or skin color. I feel the same way about the youths (who may be causing trouble) as I do obnoxious Cubs fans who roam our neighborhood before and after games.”
Jackson first emailed me in 2009 when I wrote about the tension between area residents and youths who attend programs at the Center on Halsted, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center. I talked to her again after the July 3 mob attack on North Halsted of a 25-year-old man, who was hospitalized after being stabbed.
Before the cafes, coffee shops and condos placed their stamp on the area, Jackson said she recalls walking to school down a far grittier North Halsted that had auto shops, a laundromat and an A&P, where residents got their S&H Green Stamps.
“There was a mom and pop grocery store named Tito’s and the family lived above the store and the kids went to school with me at Our Lady of Mount Carmel,” she said. “It was more of a neighborhood where you worked and lived and shopped.”
She said what people fail to remember is that as stores closed and more gay bars moved in, some residents blamed the bars and their patrons for an uptick in lewd behavior, prostitution and drugs.
“At the time, it was still even shocking for me and my sisters to see openly gay men walking down the street holding hands and kissing,” she said. “I don’t care about that now, but we were surprised because we were young and it wasn’t something we were accustomed to.”
It was a new scene for adults in the area as well, and when gay men started attending church services at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Renee Jackson said some of the older parishioners expressed discomfort.
“But I remember Father (Thomas) Healy saying, ‘They’re children of God too,'” she said. “And we ended up having (one of the first Masses) in the archdiocese where gays and lesbians felt they could be accepted.”
Jackson said living in an area with a vibrant nightlife, nobody expects it to be bland and ordinary. But she does expect a level of safety and respect.
She said her neighborhood is a special place where people can let their hair down. And that’s important because although times have changed since her late grandmother, who was born in 1914, came out, the LGBT community still faces many challenges.
“My grandmother had to be brave to come out back then,” Jackson said. “She was black, a woman and gay. It’s better today, but there still isn’t complete acceptance.
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“My godson, who’s gay, lives on the West Side (in a neighborhood where) he would need police protection if he came out over there. So I like it that the kids can be themselves freely here. But that doesn’t mean they have to scream and yell and behave badly. We all have a stake in this neighborhood.”