Jefferson Poland
Jefferson Poland | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Jeff Poland interviewed in the Seattle underground paper Helix, 1968 | |
| Born | John Jefferson Poland July 12, 1942 |
| Died | November 17, 2017 (aged 75) |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Jefferson Fuck Poland Jefferson Clitlick |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Known for | Sexual Freedom League |
John Jefferson Poland (July 12, 1942 – November 17, 2017), who sometimes went by Jefferson Fuck Poland and Jefferson Clitlick,[1] was an activist who co-founded the Sexual Freedom League.
Early life
[edit]Poland was born in Indiana in 1942.[2][3] He became a student at Florida State University and majored in sociology. He was expelled from that university in 1960 for his integrationist work with the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). He participated with the Freedom Riders in Florida and in June 1961 was one of the "Tallahassee Ten" who were arrested for unlawful assembly at a segregated airport restaurant. A year later, he was involved in Ban the Bomb activities.[4][5]
Poland moved to California and worked as an agricultural labor organizer, renting a room in the home of Dolores Huerta. He worked with CORE to register black voters in Louisiana in the summer of 1963.[6]
Poland participated in one of the first known LGBT rights demonstrations in the United States. Poland, along with organizer Randy Wicker and several others, picketed the Whitehall Induction Center in New York City to protest the US military's exclusion of homosexuals from military service and the violation of confidentiality of gay men's draft records. Sources differ on the date of this demonstration, with some citing 1963 and others 1964.[7][8][9][10][11]
Sexual Freedom League
[edit]In 1963, Poland founded the Sexual Freedom League in New York City with Leo Koch.[12] He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and focused his organizing efforts near the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Poland founded various chapters, including ones in the East Bay, San Francisco, Berkeley and San Diego. However, he did not run these organizations himself; he would found them and then turn them over to others. Poland was a graduate student at San Francisco State University.[13][14][15][16][17]
Poland, on August 25, 1965, conducted a "Nude Wade-in" he led with Ina Saslow and Shirley Einseidel at Aquatic Park, a public beach in San Francisco.[18][19][20][6][21][22][23] Poland, calling himself "Jefferson Fuck Poland", had, in 1966, his name legally changed thereto and identifying as bisexual.[24] While at San Francisco State University, Poland with Blair Paltridge, were connected with a magazine called Open Process. They were suspended for printing and writing obscene material in the November 14, 1967, issue of the magazine.[25][26][27] In 1968, Poland signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[28] Poland was a subject and contributor to the underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb.[29][30]
Poland, after attempting to attend the Berkeley City Council meeting of September 22, 1970, was arrested and later convicted of disturbing the peace and interfering with a police officer in the line of duty. He served 90 days at Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center near Dublin.[31]
Psychedelic Venus Church
[edit]In 1970, Poland founded the Psychedelic Venus Church (PsyVen or PVC), an offshoot of the Sexual Freedom League, with Mother Boats becoming president. He felt that the leadership of the Sexual Freedom League was becoming too "bourgeois". Each meeting began with smoking marijuana. The meetings continued in the San Francisco Bay Area until 1972.[32][33][34] The Church had 700 members by 1971 but disbanded in 1973.[35]
Jefferson Poland Archive
[edit]Poland turned over his archives to the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, where they are now available for public viewing by academic researchers.[citation needed]
Sex offense conviction
[edit]By 1980, Poland had moved to San Diego. In 1983, Poland was charged with molesting the 8- or 9-year-old daughter of an acquaintance whom he babysat. Poland fled the country and he lived for five years as a fugitive in India, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1988, he was arrested in Hawaii. By that time he had changed his last name legally to "Clitlick".[36] He pled no-contest to California Penal Code 288(a), "lewd or lascivious act with a child under 14 years of age," a felony, and was sentenced to a year in prison and to register as a sex offender.[37][38][39]
Death
[edit]Poland died on November 17, 2017, at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.[citation needed]
Books
[edit]- Sex Marchers by Jefferson F. Poland and Sam Sloan (1968) ISBN 1881373053 published by Elysium Growth Press, 2nd Edition (2006) ISBN 0-923891-13-7 by Ishi Press
- Second Bite of the Apple, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, Collection number: BANC MSS 70/143 c
- The Records of the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League by Jefferson F. Poland and Valerie Alison, Olympia Press, 1971, ISBN 0700413200
Notes
[edit]- ^ Weigel, Moira (2016). Labor of Love. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. pp. 145–146. ISBN 9780374182533.
- ^ Allyn, David (May 23, 2016). Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Routledge. pp. 41–53. ISBN 9781134934737.
he would tell Jeff to strip and then whipped the naked boy with a belt. Eventually Jeff told his mother about his father's beatings, and mother and son fled to Houston, Texas.
- ^ Grant 1995, pp. 139–150 "Jefferson Poland was born in Indiana in 1942"
- ^ "Sit-in at a Miami diner". Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Dalzell, Tom (November 15, 2014). "Gone: Sexual Freedom League (And a Look at Body Freedom)". Retrieved June 29, 2016.
- ^ a b Sides 2009, Ch. 2.
- ^ Fletcher 1992, p. 67.
- ^ Hekma 2014, Ch. 13.
- ^ Grant 1995, p. 135.
- ^ Wilson, Erin Faith (June 25, 2015). "Beyond Stonewall: 9 Lesser-Known LGBT Uprisings". Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Belonsky, Andrew (September 19, 2013). "Today in Gay History: The First Gay Protest".
- ^ Allyn 2000, p. 43-44.
- ^ Marinacci, Michael (July 1, 1998). "Sex, drugs and Hindu Godes: The story of the Psychedelic Venus Church". Archived from the original on February 3, 2003. Retrieved June 30, 2001.
- ^ Rorabaugh 2015, p. 110.
- ^ St. Clair, Katy (September 24, 2003). "Children of Om". East Bay Express. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
- ^ "Berkeley Historical Plaque Project - Sexual Freedom League". Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Schaefer 2014, Ch. 1.
- ^ "Sexual Freedom League Collection at The Kinsey Institute". Retrieved July 27, 2007.
- ^ Hoffman 2015, p. 221.
- ^ "Nude bathers Ina Saslow, Shirley Einsiedel, and Jefferson, an official of the Sexual Freedom League, wade out of water as crowd gathers around them, Aquatic Park, San Francisco". Library of Congress - Research and Reference Services / UPI. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Barton, Ruth (February 2012). "Screening Irish-America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television". Journal of American Studies. 46 (1): 259–260. doi:10.1017/S0021875811001630. ISSN 1469-5154. S2CID 145459130.
- ^ "Students: The Free-Sex Movement". TIME. March 11, 1966. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ "Time Mag (3/11/66): "Students: The Free-Sex Movement"". June 24, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Allyn 2000, p. 53.
- ^ United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities (1967). Hearings. p. 2055.
- ^ ""Subversive Influences" - House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)". Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ "American Civil Liberties Union News, volume xxxiii, number 1. January 1968. "ACLU Intervention and Concerns; Due Process at S. F. State College"". January 1, 1968. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
- ^ "Chron buckles to sex group". June 23–29, 1967. p. 2. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ "Women passive?". June 23–29, 1967. p. 2. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Boats, Mother (November 13–19, 1970). "Fuck gets ninety days for democracy!". Berkeley Barb. p. 5. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ The Records of the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League by Jefferson F. Poland and Valerie Alison with preface by Herbert Gold, Olympia Press, 1971
- ^ Clifton 2006, p. 148.
- ^ Holzer 2015, Ch. 3.
- ^ Kelly, Aidan (January 30, 2013). "A History of the Craft in America: California and Councils, 1967-1973, Part II". Retrieved June 30, 2016.
- ^ Grant 1995.
- ^ Blair, Tom (October 6, 1988). "Title: Tom Blair". San Diego Union-Tribune.
- ^ Callahan, Bill (September 9, 1988). "Child molester gets one year in jail". San Diego Union-Tribune.
- ^ "Child molestation". San Diego Union-Tribune. August 12, 1988.
Cited texts
[edit]- Allyn, David (2000). Make love, not war: the sexual revolution, an unfettered history. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-03930-6. paperback ISBN 0415929423
- Clifton, Chas (2006). Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 0759102015.
- Fletcher, Lynne Yamaguchi (1992). The First Gay Pope and Other Records. Boston: Alyson Publications. ISBN 1-55583-206-7.
- Grant, Linda (1995). Sexing the Millennium: Women and the Sexual Revolution. Grove Press. ISBN 9780802133496. (reprint)
- Hekma, G. (2014). Sexual Revolutions. Springer. ISBN 978-1137321466.
- Hoffman, Brian (2015). Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0814790540.
- Holzer, Hans (2015). Witches: True Encounters with Wicca, Covens, and Magick. Hachette Books.
- Rorabaugh, W. J. (2015). American Hippies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107049239.
- Schaefer, Eric (2014). Sex Scene: Media and the Sexual Revolution. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822376804.
- Sides, Josh (2009). Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199888542.
External links
[edit]- Jefferson Poland at IMDb
- Jefferson F. Poland papers, approximately 1965-1973
- Undated letter from Jefferson Poland to Martin Luther King, Jr. Archived August 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- MLK's response date November 16, 1962 Archived August 22, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1942 births
- American LGBTQ rights activists
- American tax resisters
- Free love advocates
- American people convicted of child sexual abuse
- People from the San Francisco Bay Area
- LGBTQ people from Indiana
- People extradited from Australia
- People extradited to the United States
- American prisoners and detainees
- Prisoners and detainees of California
- American cannabis activists
- 2017 deaths