ALBERT WILLIAMS

CHICAGO GAY LIBERATION

Albert Williams by unknown, 1973.

Albert Williams was a key figure in Chicago Gay Liberation in Illinois, one of the earliest post-Stonewall queer activist groups in the Midwest. He joined the movement’s efforts to confront homophobia through direct action, public demonstrations, and cultural visibility. Albert brought his passion for performance to the front lines of queer activism, participating in pickets, zaps, and marches that challenged societal norms and demanded liberation—not just tolerance—for LGBTQ+ people.

In addition to his activism, Albert became a respected journalist and theater critic, using his platform to spotlight queer artists and expand representation in Chicago’s arts scene. His dual commitment to creative expression and political change made him a unique and powerful voice within both communities. Today, his legacy lives on through the stories he told, the movements he helped shape, and the cultural spaces he helped open up for generations of LGBTQ+ people.

— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project

“I grew up in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago, and went to high school in the 1960s. I graduated in 1968, when things were building up toward awareness about gay liberation.

One thing I remember about my youth was a 1964 Life magazine article. The magazine came out weekly, and in June 1964, they published this big article about homosexuality. They focused a lot on San Francisco, and in the photographs, there was a group of men watching a movie on a screen, and they were wearing leather and biker caps and stuff. It was all very dark and furtive and sort of mysterious. They interviewed people from gay rights groups in San Francisco.

My parents subscribed to Life magazine. It showed up in our living room every week, and my whole family read every issue, the same way we all watched The Ed Sullivan Show on TV every week. I was interested in this issue of Life. I was 13, and the article stirred something in me. That was the first time I knew about something called homosexuality and the gay scene—you shouldn’t do it. The movement gained momentum and visibility, and people started to lobby for legislative action and civil rights. It prepped me like Gore Vidal’s novel The City and the Pillar. It was published in the 1940s, but a revised edition came out in 1965. He rewrote extensively and published a new version. I got a copy for 75 cents.

Gay liberation in Chicago started in October of 1969. Someone posted an ad in the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, called The Maroon, saying they were looking for a gay roommate. It was groundbreaking. They didn’t have rules against it, but nobody had ever done that before. The man found a lesbian roommate named Michal Brody. His ad morphed into a gay discussion group, and out of that came gay liberation.

I moved to Chicago at the beginning of 1970. I had just dropped out of college. I found a copy of The Maroon on the subway train. There was an ad for a gay liberation group meeting on campus at the University of Chicago. It wasn’t limited to students. People from all walks of life joined. At the same time, Maher Ahmad said, ‘Let's start a Northwestern University Gay Liberation group.’ We supported each other. We collaborated.

Bruce Voeller (left), Danny Kofoed, and Albert Williams (right) by unknown, circa 1980.

Stonewall marked a new chapter. When you’re younger, you don’t necessarily have much to lose compared to someone in their thirties when you have a good job. When you're a kid you don’t give a shit. We did a picket at the Normandy bar, which Maher helped organize. There was a series of pickets at this very popular bar, where they wouldn’t allow dancing. Dancing wasn’t technically illegal, but it could lead to police harassment for indecency, so the bars did not allow dancing simply because they did not want to open the door to police action. Many bars like the Normandy were owned by the Mafia. The Mafia had an arrangement where they would pay off the cops so they would leave us alone as long as we didn’t go too far. Dancing would have been too far.

We started putting pressure on the bar owners. They began losing customers. This turning point led to a dance at the Coliseum in April. The Coliseum was a big convention center, and we did a Chicago Gay Liberation dance. It was the first time there was a gay pubic dance off of a college campus in Chicago. Two thousand people showed up. It sounds like a lot, and it was, but the Coliseum holds twenty thousand people. It was lesbians, gay people, men, women, and multi-racial people. It was diverse compared to bars, which were discriminatory to certain kinds of people based on their race or gender. The police did come to tell us to stop dancing, but there was nothing illegal happening. There were men by the door in their thirties and forties who were not dancing. They were lawyers standing with notebooks. Once the police saw the lawyers, they left us alone and walked out. Because of this event, bars started letting people dance, which led the way for disco. We were all about coalition building.

There was also an action we took in April. We leafleted the theater when the movie version of The Boys in the Band came out. It was at the Playboy Theater, which Playboy owned. We said the movie illustrated gay people who are persecuted and therefore have issues with self-esteem and self-hate. There weren’t problems with the characters, but with society. We encouraged people to see The Boys in the Band because it was an important film in that it was reaching a non-gay audience and helping them to start seeing the gay world from the inside.

The most important thing I remember about the Pride March was that our March was on the last Saturday of June, not the last Sunday of June, which meant we were the first Pride March in the country. Because this Christopher Street Liberation Day March, which Craig Rodwell organized, was going to be the last Sunday in June, we had ours a day before.

We gathered in Washington Square Park. It was unofficially called Bug House Square. It was known as a free speech forum where people could get up on soap boxes and make speeches about labor or about women's rights or about whatever. The Industrial Workers of the World spoke there frequently. It was also a well-known cruising ground. We had a little rally. People gave some speeches about gay rights, including people from the magazine groups and the homophile organization. Then, we marched.

Part of the reason we did this on a Saturday instead of Sunday was so that we would not be crashing into Holy Name Cathedral on a Sunday at the time of high mass. Holy Name Cathedral was important because the Chicago Catholic archdiocese was extremely politically influential. They were certainly one of the most outspoken voices against gay gay rights, and so we wanted to march there just to make our point.

When we got there, we thought we would be ending, but instead we got turned on and said, ‘Let's keep walking.’ Then we marched east on Chicago Avenue to Michigan Avenue, the big shopping thoroughfare. We marched south on Michigan Avenue to downtown Chicago, into the loop of the business district, which, also on a Saturday, was a shopping area, and tourists would be there.

We ended up marching to the Civic Center Plaza, where a Picasso statue had just been erected. We had our second, final rally there, and then we did a circle dance around the Picasso statue. And that was our statement. What was interesting about this was that we didn't really have a permit because you didn't have to have a permit to march in the gathering place. We didn't really need a permit because it wasn't a parade. A parade required a permit because a parade would take place in the street with floats and marching contingents, but we were just walking down Michigan Avenue, so we didn't need a police or city permit.

A few police officers walked with us to sort of keep an eye on things. They didn't really quite know what to expect, and, frankly, neither did we. They watched us, but they didn't bother us and walked alongside us. And then, I remember, some straight people started sort of joining in. Because when you see people walking in a march, you say, ‘Well, let's follow and see what's going on.’ I do remember some 12-year-old boys on bicycles who just thought this was funny, and they rode along with us. They ended up with us in Civic Center Plaza at the end, just to watch us. There were only about 150 of us there, plus the gawkers, which might have been another 75.”