Transcription
Vern: Hi, this is Vern Hall for another session of, chatting with you. And let’s talk about social justice and why social justice is important. At quite a young age, I came to the conclusion that I was a member of the LGBT community. Of course, we didn’t call it that then, we were just queers. I went into the service upon graduation from high school, knowing full well at that time where I was, but figuring it no, I wanted to serve my country, and I did until about two months before my service would have had been renewed and I got discharged with an undesirable discharge. That’s what you get for being gay. So I got discharged, couldn’t get unemployment as most other veterans couldn’t at that time, but you had to have had an honorable discharge.
And so then I ended up moving to Cleveland, taking a few small jobs here and there, something to pay the rent. And I finally went to the Ohio Employment Board, and they helped me out a lot and took me out on a job interview, which I gained, and they employed me. They didn’t have a problem in the big city of Cleveland with gay people. And so I began working for the trucking industry and, advanced in the ranks there until 1976 came about. And I ended up there in 1976, came about me ended up moving to Florida. And along the way a few other events happened. One was in 1969 when we had that nice little demonstration called Stonewall down in New York. And I remember in the electric thrill that went through the bars at the time, my God, the queens finally stood up to the cops, and they beat them pretty good. They maintained their own. And this was a sign to the rest of us, you know what? You don’t have to stay in the closet. You can come out, come out wherever you are. And so I began to be active with some of the things in the Cleveland area that was happening.
And then in 76, as I mentioned, I moved to Florida and lived down there for just over two years. And of course, there were plenty of gay people there, we’re everywhere come on. I came back up north and I came to Rochester because that’s where my two sisters and my mom had moved in the intervening years, and they had a gay community center. So I hide over there and got involved, and I ended up becoming within…after about a year, the President of the Rochester Gay Task Force. And then the big deal was in 1979, we planned the March on Washington for lesbian and Gay rights. I became the co-chair for upstate New York to organize the march, and I traveled all over upstate talking to other groups and everything, getting busses ready. And we went to Washington October just before my birthday, and we had a march, and we marched in front of the White House and down Pennsylvania Avenue, and we ended up meeting at the bottom of the Washington Monument. And it was amazing because our Rochester contingent, we were at the head of the New York group, and it was amazing to watch and turn around and look back and see all of my brothers and sisters still arriving. There were over 100,000 of us, according to the Park Service. Some estimated 200,000. And then I came back to Rochester, and I became even further involved. And then after a while, I moved out here to Richmondville because, well, Roger was from here and he was homesick, essentially. So we came home and it was a matter of here our activism became something different. It became a thing of living together openly without any explanations.