I popped it in and was listening to it, and it was Bill’s voice. Why did he decide to take his own life? Did he feel threatened, or did he give up? Did he just su er from activist burnout like a lot of people did? Did his addiction overwhelm him and he wasn’t able to see a way out? I had this thrilling moment where I went to the New York Public Library and found this unnoted cassette tape about an Atlanta gay hotline. To this day, I keep overturning notes and sources and thinking there’s got to be something else that Bill left behind. Also, there’s always the central mystery of Bill, who died of a drug overdose just a few months shy of age 32. It was a half-hour television show on WSB, hosted by Nancy Scott at the time, and that episode was recorded entirely inside the Sweet Gum Head. Do you have sense of what they are and where you would look next? I’ve been hunting for a taped copy of Today in Georgia from March 24, 1978. You mentioned that some stories still elude you.
It was the most notable, most widely covered protest of that kind in Atlanta, and it catalyzed the gay community and straight allies at the same time. Those small acts of protest ended up building into this massive protest in 1978 outside of the Southern Baptist Convention, where between 2,000 and 4,000 people protested Anita Bryant speaking inside because of what she had to say about gay people. When they marched down the sidewalks in 1971, they had to stop for stoplights they had to wait for tra c to go by.
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They explored that-whether that was going out in full drag and “passing” as women or men, or whether it was Bill Smith and “an army of lovers” forced to march on a sidewalk by the police because the ACLU wouldn’t help get permits for an o cial gay-rights protest. People really felt like anything could happen, and they felt like they didn’t have to be bound by labels and identities. One of the men I interviewed, Gil Robison, a longtime civil-rights and queer-rights activist in town, said the 1970s were a time of exploration and optimism. For the fi rst few years, there were small acts of liberation, where people would simply be seen in public in a gay venue or be seen holding hands. Atlanta Magazine Atlanta Magazine June 2021: ĬON N ECTOR BOOK EXCERPT who just wanted to set it on fi re.