Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer

"Have You Heard My Message?"

J. Louis Campbell III

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135834876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

One of the founders of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, Jack Nichols was a warrior for gay equality. Recounting his life and work, Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer: "Have You Heard My Message?" skillfully weaves the story of a man, a movement, and a moment that shaped gay and lesbian history. This powerful biography captures the wisdom, passion, and spirit of a prolific activist and inspirational human being who refused to be silent in a society that considered homosexuality to be sinful and criminal.

As a journalist, activist, and editor of the first gay weekly newspaper in the United States, Jack Nichols left a legacy of gay rights, gay pride, and tremendous courage. Covering episodes before and after Stonewall, during the AIDS epidemic, and beyond, Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer charts the life of this pivotal figure from his childhood in the suburbs of Washington, DC, to his final impassioned days in a Florida cancer treatment center in 2005. This book also explores Nichols' family history and its unique influence on his activist tendencies, as well as his revolutionary relationship with Lige Clark and their status as "the most famous homosexuals in America."

Thoughtful and moving, Jack Nichols: Gay Pioneer also includes the ideas Nichols used to bring the movement to critical mass, and the sources that were influential to his work. Some of the topics detailed in this book are the early influence of Burns and Whitman on the homosexual movement, the integration of androgyny and anarchism into his activist philosophy, his attack on the psychiatric establishment's theory of homosexuality as a "sickness", and his work and vision in men's liberation.

Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer: "Have You Heard My Message?" offers a compelling look at the man and the movement, as well as a wealth of hard-to-find summaries on underground gay journalism, detailed references, personal photographs, and a complete bibliography of Nichols's major writings. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history and future of LGBT movements, as well as students, educators, and researchers seeking a comprehensive and thorough treatment of this revolutionary figure.

Chapter 1

Reflections in the Bubble Room

September 1992
Moffitt Cancer Research Center
Tampa, Florida

I may die here, I tell myself, looking about at a tiny fourth-floor hospital room. Pressing my nose against the singular window, I peer across green lawns. Below, though I can’t hear it, dances a fountain. The chamber is equipped with a noisy air device—limiter flow—creating what is commonly called a bubble room. Doctors will give me massive doses of toxic drugs and within days I’ll be left without an immune system. If I were I to leave this room, I’d soon expire, exposed to the elements. Hopefully, while waiting through the following weeks, my immune system will—after an injection of stored stem cells—grow slowly back ….

Years have flown since I was a young boy dressed in tartans, then celebrating the birth of Scotland’s poet, Robert Burns, singing “Auld Lang Syne,” holding tight to friendly Highland hands. My kilt—a warrior male’s skirt—had been a metaphor of things to come ….

I … had invaded protected domains, those of conventional masculinity. I’d advanced on machismo’s holy of holies, calmly tossing blasphemies across its decaying altars ….

Now, facing my possible demise, I close my eyes and return to childhood, hearing chants of Highland celebrants. Robert Burns’ best-known poem offers their theme. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot,” they sing, “and never brought to mind?” Adjusting my sash, I look about at this smiling Scottish circle and turn to see my grandfather’s proud face. As the chorus swells I can read his lips. “We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet ….”¹

Jack Nichols, born on March 16, 1938, joined the smiling Scottish circle in the singing of “Auld Lang Syne” on May 2, 2005, when he died of complications from a long struggle with cancer. His journey to the bubble room at the Moffitt Cancer Center started in 1984. The gay cancer, an early descriptor for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), had begun to dance through the population, an uninvited guest at a masque. In a 1984 climate where people were afraid to be tested, afraid to know, the forty-six-year-old Nichols believed that his obligation as a pioneer included his willingness to face the questions of mortality that others could not or would not. As part of a medical checkup, he asked that his blood be tested for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The results were negative for HIV, yet there was something else. The doctor asked for two more samples of blood and a sample of bone marrow, and when testing was complete, he summoned Nichols to his office. “You have Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia,” the doctor said. “Macro what?” Nichols asked, after a moment of stillness. The doctor explained that the disease was a rare, incurable blood thickening cancer and projected that Nichols would die of a stroke or heart attack. “How long?” asked Nichols. “It’s hard to say,” replied the doctor. “With intravenous chemotherapy, five, maybe even ten years.”

Breaking the news to his mother and close friends, Nichols actually felt lucky. “I drove past a motorcycle accident… and saw two bodies lying covered by the roadside,” he told them. “At least I’ve got time to reflect.” And during the next eight years, Nichols persevered through daily and monthly treatments of drugs and chemotherapy. Now, in 1992, at age 54, and with time running out, he lay in the bubble room at Moffitt, undergoing an experimental procedure designed to prolong his life.

The procedure required that blood stem cells be removed from his own bone marrow, after which he would be treated with a massive dose of chemotherapy sufficient to destroy his cancer, as well as his immune system. His body defenseless, he would be vulnerable to the slightest complication. Thus, he was sealed in a sterile bubble room in order to guard against opportunistic diseases and infections. On completion of the intense therapy, the blood stem cells previously extracted from Nichols’s bone marrow would be returned to his body to, theoretically, produce new blood and restore his immune system.

The procedure was successful, and in the winter of 1992, Nichols became a poster boy for stem-cell therapies. The head nurse at Moffitt said that she had never encountered anyone with a more positive outlook. Nichols affirmed that he stayed “positive, always.”² The resilience of Nichols’s body and the constancy of his positive attitude are reflections in the bubble room of forces, both distant and proximate, of a family culture historically willing to challenge convention and supersede obstacles.

The Isle of Lewis

For centuries, Scots have had a strong belief in themselves, perhaps drawing energy from Scotland’s two geographically and historically distinct cultures: the Highlands, composed of people living in the mainland hills and the isles in the west and north, and the Lowlands, composed of people living along the coast and on the mainland plains.³ The northern-most Highlands lie within the Arctic Circle in the Land of the Midnight Sun. The Scottish Highlands tout the highest mountains and the longest, deepest inland waters in Great Britain. In the midst of this natural bombast is a hardy humanity constituting Britain’s lowest density of population.

Nichols’s maternal family record begins in Tong, Scotland, on the Highland Isle of Lewis.⁴ Lewis is virtually treeless, with rugged cliffs overlooking an equally rugged North Atlantic Ocean. The Isle is approximately 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle, on the edge of which for at least one day in June the sun does not set and neither does it rise for at least one day in December. It is a fisherman’s domain of beaches, lakes, hills, streams, and yards with small gardens of flowers and vegetables. The impoverished soil of the Isle makes large-scale agriculture impossible. Peat, a vegetable tissue containing carbon elements, is a major source of heat and is cut and stacked to dry outside of homes, as if cords of wood. The people of Lewis are rugged out of necessity, warm and friendly out of desire.

Nichols’s grandfather, Murdo Finlayson (1884-1972), grew up on Lewis as one of seven Finlayson children. Murdo, whom Nichols would affectionately call Poppop, worked on a fishing boat, the Nothing, as a cook and a coiler, coiling the ropes as they surfaced with the fishing nets. It was hard labor to which Murdo frequently referred as a benchmark of endurance and success whenever he went through rough waters in life—“Well, I was at one time a cook and a coiler.” Murdo, physically strong and “positive, always,” was centered on his work ethic, his service, and his love of Scotland.

Going to America

Murdo and one of his brothers, John, decided to become carpenters and immigrate to America, as so many did, for a better life. They attended the Nicholson Institute in Stornoway, Scotland, and learned basic carpentry. Murdo would later learn engineering drawing at Chicago Tech.⁵ In April 1906, John left Scotland for North America, with Murdo following in June. They reunited in Winnipeg, Canada. That same year, San Francisco was devastated by an earthquake and fire. So, in September, John went to San Francisco, followed by Murdo in October, to work in construction rebuilding the city. In 1910, they moved to Chicago and formed what would become one of the leading commercial and industrial building firms in Chicago, the Finlayson Brothers.

On April 16, 1914, the Finlayson bothers married the Renwick sisters, Murdo wedding Euphemia (1891-1968), whom Nichols would affectionately call Nana, and John marrying Agnes. The Renwick sisters were Lowlanders, the daughters of Thomas Renwick, a shepherd in Bedrule, Scotland. The Renwick children were educated in a school on the estate where their father worked. In 1908, when Euphemia was seventeen, Thomas Renwick and his family moved to Winnipeg. Thomas ultimately bought a farm in the Ryerson District, which he farmed successfully until his death in 1936. Canadian nights were so cold that Euphemia and her siblings would go to bed near a pot of boiling water. When they awoke the next morning, their hair would be frozen to their pillows. Hard work and a cold climate fostered great strength and resolve in Nana, just as being a cook and a coiler had in Poppop. The combination of two Scottish cultures produced occasional friendly sparring, and after marrying the Highlander Murdo, the Lowlander Euphemia joked the rest of her life that she was put on this earth to tame a Highlander. But their relationship was always loving, gentle, and full of laughter. Their perspectives on life would find expression in their daughter, Mary, and her son, Jack Nichols.

At work, Murdo supervised the office operations of the Finlayson Brothers, while John supervised field operations. The company was involved in major downtown Chicago construction, for example, the Blackstone Theatre, the Blackstone Hotel, the Palmer House Hotel, and a Scottish Rite building. The company also built apartment houses in Chicago and neighboring Indiana. The brothers built a unique home for their families in Wilmette, a north-shore suburb of Chicago. The structure linked two houses on a large corner lot, each house facing a different street. They were attached at the center, sharing a common front porch and a common basement. Each house contained three bedrooms, two baths, a nursery, den, kitchen, living room, and dining room. The shared front door to both houses led into a vestibule where separate doors into each home often stood open, allowing unfettered access for members of both families and fostering a feeling of close camaraderie. The architectural concept of his mother’s childhood home tickled an adult Nichols when he learned of it. Two houses connected in the middle, with free and open passage into each, promoting close camaraderie, would become a metaphorical template for his ideas about gender and androgyny, houses of masculinity and femininity connected so that people could move freely into either or both of the two houses, in close camaraderie.

As the Great Depression descended on the economy, Finlayson Brothers folded. Nevertheless, Murdo and John continued to submit bids to build post offices in Virginia, and the two families moved east to Bethesda, Maryland, where they crammed into one five bedroom house. The house had a peculiar configuration that made staying warm in winter difficult. Even so, the house was open to any extended family members who needed a place to stay in hard times. In the meantime, the brothers started their construction business again, building homes in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the Maryland suburbs of Chevy Chase, Bethesda, and Westmoreland.

Murdo believed that everything Scottish was superior and was ready, willing, and able to argue the point with anyone. So it came as no surprise that when he discovered the St. Andrew’s Society of Washington, DC, he joined. The society is named for Scotland’s patron saint and is dedicated to charitable and educational assistance to Scots, to perpetuation of Scottish culture, and to the promotion of social activities among the members. The DC chapter, established in 1908, reconstituted the Alexandria, Virginia, chapter, founded in 1760. Murdo served as president from 1939 to 1942 and as chairman of the Board of Trustees from 1957 to 1958. He re-energized the Society, making it one of the most prestigious organizations in the city. The society’s Robert Burns Banquet, in particular, drew the likes of Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Peter Marshall, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Mary Halliday Finlayson

Nichols’s mother, Mary (1915-2005), was born to Murdo and Euphemia Finalyson in Chicago.⁶ She loved living in the double house in Wilmette, and on a block with dozens of playmates. Mary showed early signs of a strong will and an undaunted independence when Wilmette held a show for registered dogs. Mary insisted to her mother that her dog, Trixie, be allowed to participate in the show. After all, Trixie was a famous brand, a Heinz 57. Euphemia did everything she could think of to persuade Mary that Trixie was not a breed of dog recognized by the dog show. But Mary would not take “no” for an answer, and thus began her life of activism. Euphemia took Mary and Trixie to the show, where Mary refocused her insistence on the show’s directors. Euphemia’s pet name for Mary was brown sugar, because Mary was sweet but unrefined. However, refined or not, Mary won the argument. The directors of the show conferred and created a new category, Cutest Dog In Show, in which Trixie won the blue ribbon.

Mary was “joyless” about moving from Illinois, where she attended the acclaimed New Trier High School, to Maryland, where she attended Bethesda–Chevy Chase High School. The change provided new opportunities, however, for her to sharpen her activist tendencies. One of her English teachers gave her C grades without ever returning any of her papers. So, Mary went to the teacher, demanding her papers be returned. The teacher started giving Mary A grades but still did not return any of her papers. Mary discovered a pragmatic counterpoint to her activism and declared victory, accepting the new circumstances.

While in high school, Mary met and fell in love with Dick Nichols, an athlete and big man on campus. After her graduation, Murdo and Euphemia asked her to wait for at least a year before marrying. Reluctant to wait, as any teenager in love, but devoted to her parents, Mary agreed. In 1935, after the year had passed, Mary and Dick were wed. Characteristically, Mary instructed the minister to eliminate the word obey from her wedding vows.

In 1937, Mary and Dick received the happy news that Mary was pregnant. Accepting an offer to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox, Dick lef...