The Un-Natural State by Brock Thompson

Author:Brock Thompson [Thompson, Brock]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, LGBT Studies, Gay Studies, General, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Lesbian Studies
ISBN: 9781557289438
Google: YixLCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 2010-10-01T03:57:27+00:00

Charlotte Downey and one of Tulsa’s all-women softball teams. Downey is the tallest in the back row.

Courtesy of Charlotte Downey.

She took the money awarded in her lawsuit and opened “Our Place” in 1970, a lesbian beer bar on the model of her beloved Black Cat on the outskirts of Tulsa. To keep out undesirables—that is, anyone who was not a lesbian—Downey charged them seventy-five cents a glass for a draft beer instead of the normal twenty-five cents a glass for “sisters.” She opened at noon everyday except Sundays, and the bar soon proved as popular with the working-class lesbians much as The Black Cat had been. Like The Black Cat, Our Place was often a magnet for prying eyes and violent trespassers. Also, being but three blocks from a Tulsa police station, the bar would often attract unwanted attention from law enforcement. Downey recalls what she saw as superficial visits from the Tulsa Department of Health that would disrupt business for hours.

Downey was philosophical, seeing these intrusions as normal and expected. Downey responded as best she could. Rowdy straight men like those who taunted and fought with the customers of The Black Cat would occasionally enter looking for trouble, and one such disturbance in 1972 proved fatal for one man. Two brothers entered Our Place, dragged two lesbians out, and began assaulting them in the street. As others rushed to help, Downey reached for the small twenty-five-caliber handgun she kept hidden under the bar, a commonplace feature in small town bars across America. She ran outside and fired three shots into the air hoping to stop the assault. The fighting stopped, but one of the men stood and charged toward Downey. She then put a bullet in his stomach. He lingered for a few days in the hospital before dying from an infection of the gunshot wound.

After first charging her with attempted manslaughter, the prosecutors then upped the charge to first-degree murder, a capital offense in Oklahoma. Downey was in complete shock. Thinking from the beginning that it was a case of self-defense, she offered her statement freely without a lawyer. The police took everything down in what they regarded as Downey’s confession. Downey endured three trials. The first was declared a mistrial. In the second Downey was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and given a forty-year sentence, but this was later overturned on appeal. By the time of the third trial, Downey, although mentally weary from what had turned out to be an extended nightmare, still refused to plead guilty. The verdict was returned as manslaughter with a four-year suspended sentence.

Though it was the last trial she would face as a result of the shooting, Downey had enough. The trials were at the end of a long list of instances and episodes of injustice that pushed Downey out of Oklahoma and into nearby Arkansas. She was sick of Oklahoma and the seemingly constant harassment she faced as an out lesbian there. She had left by 1983, looking for a peaceful,

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