But I don’t know that it will ever do without a gay bar. I think it will become less and less needed as society accepts what they’re going to have to accept about homosexuality, that we’re everywhere, we’re not going anywhere. And so, eventually yes. We fought the State of South Carolina for a year to get the Capital Club opened.”Įddie Early, Interview 2 “Well, I think there will always be a need for gay bars, simply because there are people who need that camaraderie. We were together for an awfully long time, 40 years. It didn’t seem like a real direct threat, kind of like with COVID, you know? It’s like when it’s all very distant to you it doesn’t seem like that much, but then all of a sudden you get hit in the head with it because someone you know has it.”Įddie Early, Interview 1 “I met Les in 1965. But only six people in 1983, so it wasn’t so… Even the gay community was only becoming aware of this, and it seems so…that so few people had it. I only knew basic stuff about AIDS anyway, I mean I just didn’t know a lot, and that really scared me. I clearly remember that, that scared me to death. Ray Drew “I remember in 1983 I went to do an internship in Charleston, and I read in the newspaper that six people in the state had been diagnosed with AIDS. Like I’m just glancing through here “Out on Campus,” “Out in Myrtle Beach,” “Out in Greenville,” because we would talk to various people from that area trying to give it a statewide-type. So that was one of the places where we wanted to make sure that we had coverage, was with that crowd. Universities and all the colleges in Columbia could pick up the show. That they understand that the change is needed.”īruce Converse “WOIC didn’t go out probably about as far, but XRY had the advantage that it was within the college community. It’s not that people resent that we come in and ask for our rights, but that we so change them in some way by our presence, by who we are. To me, I want whatever happens next to be deeper. No big deal.” I guess I hope that we stop fighting the circumstances, because too often what we protest are the circumstances, and we don’t change the people involved in the circumstances. Like I said, for us, by us.”Ĭandace Chellew “I just hope it becomes a non-issue, that people are just like, “Oh, okay. Because we had some great times at Traxx, but we needed another outlet to where it was just for us. Kim Cannady “But it was at that time that I began to develop something for Black women to come and party and have just as good of a time as we would have had at Traxx. (Snaps) They always said she was blind, but I didn’t believe it.” But if you gave her a $1 bill, she sure as hell knew that you had stiffed her, she could tell. It was in a log cabin on Shakespeare Road, and a blind woman ran it.
You would go there earlier in the evening, and then later in the evening you would go to the H&M Lounge. If you want me back then Jerry’s coming back and it’s going to be that way.’ And dad said, ‘Well, we’ll see you next weekend.'”Īllen Bardin “But there was another club downtown on Sumter Street called O’Grays that was like, sort of an old 1950s style bar. One morning got up and had breakfast and Jerry had left the table and I was getting ready to leave, and dad said, ‘Sit down, I want to talk to you.’ And he said, ‘What’s going on?’ And I said, ‘I think you know.’ And he said, ‘Yes, I do.’ And I said, ‘Well it can be this way, daddy…if it’s going to ruin our family life and you don’t want me here, I will leave and you don’t have to see me again. Robert Barnes and Jerry Kelly “Well, it was like when we would go to see my parents we would spend the night, because they’d want us to stay Saturday and Sunday or whatever, and so we would like stay overnight.