In April, 1969, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom protested The San Francisco Steamship Lines Company at 320 California Street, for firing Gale Whittington for appearing in a gay article in Berkeley Barb. However, the protest also had an anti-Vietnam war message, as the Steamship Lines Company delivered supplies to U.S. troops in South East Asia.
“States Lines still refuses to even discuss our grievances,” says Leo Laurence, CHF co-chair-man; “so feeling on the line is that more militant action is necessary.” “Talk this week is for a sit-in,” Laurence said, “and legal preparations and scheduling are already underway.” “If the Blacks and the Anti-War forces help us, we will stop States Line’s ships from going to Vietnam from both San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. (1)
At the same time as the San Francisco Steamship Lines Company protests continued on, a gay man was murdered by the police in Berkeley. Frank Bartley was shot by Berkeley police officers Weiker Kline and Frank Reynolds on April 17, 1969 and died of complications several days later. Kline and Reynolds were vice cops who patrolled Aquatic Park, a gay cruising site on the waterfront in West Berkeley. Allegedly, Bartley was soliciting the officers for gay sex, when during a struggle to arrest Bartley, he accidentally shot himself with Kline’s gun. However, radical gays didn’t believe this story and began organizing against the police officers’ systematic violence against gay people.
‘The uptight middle class gay establishment will talk about Frank Bartleys murder in their bars,but they won’t get off their dead asses and DO something about it,’ said Laurence. ‘Now it’s a matter of survival. “If the gays don’t stop being too scared to act, they are going to get shot and killed. ” (2)
These two events, the ongoing picket at the San Francisco Steamship Lines Company and the murder of Frank Bartley galvinized the radical gay community and drew people towards the Committee for Homosexual Freedom.
(1) “Gay Strike Turns Grim,” Berkeley Barb, April 25-May 1, 1969, 7.
(2) “Calls Gay Death “Offical Murder”,” Berkeley Barb, April 25-May 1, 1969, 7.