This article addresses the history of lesbianism in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, the members of same-sex female couples discussed here are not known to be lesbian (rather than, for example, bisexual), but they are mentioned as part of discussing the practice of lesbianism—that is, same-sex female sexual and romantic behavior.
1600–1899
Laws against lesbian sexual activity were suggested but usually not created or enforced in early American history. In 1636, John Cotton proposed a law for Massachusetts Bay making sex between two women (or two men) a capital offense, but the law was not enacted. It would have read, "Unnatural filthiness, to be punished with death, whether sodomy, which is carnal fellowship of man with man, or woman with woman, or buggery, which is carnal fellowship of man or woman with beasts or fowls." In 1655, the Connecticut Colony passed a law against sodomy between women (as well as between men), but nothing came of this either.Foster, Thomas (2007). Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America. New York University Press. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a law stating that, "Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration. If a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least", but this also did not become law. However, in 1649 in Plymouth Colony, Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon were prosecuted for "lewd behavior with each other upon a bed"; their trial documents are the only known record of sex between female English colonists in North America during the 17th century. Hammon was only admonished, perhaps because she was younger than sixteen, but in 1650 Norman was convicted and required to acknowledge publicly her "unchaste behavior" with Hammon, as well as warned against future offenses. This may be the only conviction for lesbianism in American history.
In the 19th century, lesbians were only accepted if they hid their sexual orientation and were presumed to be merely friends with their partners. For example, the term "Boston marriage" was used to describe a committed relationship between two unmarried women who were usually financially independent and often shared a house. These relationships were presumed to be asexual, and hence the women were respected as "spinsters" by their communities. Notable women said to be in Boston marriages included Sarah Jewett and Annie Adams Fields, as well as Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith.
Some American lesbians in the arts moved in the 19th century from the United States to Rome, including the actress Charlotte Cushman, and sculptors Emma Stebbins and Harriet Hosmer. Around 1890, former acting First Lady Rose Cleveland started a lesbian relationship with Evangeline Marrs Simpson, with explicitly erotic correspondence. This cooled when Evangeline married Henry Benjamin Whipple, but after his death in 1901 the two rekindled their relationship and in 1910 moved to Italy together.Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Penguin Books Ltd, 1991, page 32
1900–1949 Studies on lesbian activity in prisons
The earliest published studies of lesbian activity were written in the early 20th century, and many were based on observations of, and data gathered from, incarcerated women. Margaret Otis published "A Perversion Not Commonly Noted" in 1913 in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, coupling a decidedly Puritanical moral foundation with an almost revolutionary sympathy for lesbian relationships. Her focus revolved more around her revulsion for sexual contact between those of different ethnic backgrounds, yet offered an almost radical tolerance of the lesbian relations themselves. As Otis noted, "Sometimes the love [of one young woman for another] is very real and seems almost ennobling". This document provided a rare view from a tightly controlled setting monitored by a corrections supervisor. Kate Richards O'Hare, imprisoned in 1917 for five years under the Espionage Act of 1917, published a firsthand account of incarcerated women In Prison complete with frightening accounts of lesbian sexual abuse among inmates. So wrote O'Hare: "...A thorough education in sex perversions is part of the educational system of most prisons, and for the most part the underkeepers [sic] and the stool pigeons are very efficient teachers..." O'Hare then recounted a systematic induction of women into a cycle of forced prostitution to which authorities turned a blind eye: "...there seems to be considerable ground for the commonly accepted belief of the prison inmates that much of its graft and profits may percolate upward to the under officials...the...stool pigeon...handled the vices so rampant in the prison...she, in fact, held the power of life and death over us, by being able to secure endless punishments in the blind, she could and did compel indulgence in this vice in order that its profits might be secured".
Lesbian community Early academic study of lesbian community include lesbian Mildred Berryman's 1930's groundbreaking The Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual on 23 lesbian women, whom she met through the Salt Lake City Bohemian Club. In the study most of the subjects (many of whom had Mormon background) reported experiencing erotic interest in others of the same sex since childhood, and exhibited self-identity and community identity as sexual minorities. During the 1920s lesbian subcultures were beginning to become more established in several larger US cities. However, police raids happened on lesbian places, resulting in their closure, such as the Eve's Hangout in Greenwich Village, after the deportation of Eva Kotchever for obscenity.
Lesbians in literature
Lesbians also became somewhat more prominent in literature at this time. In the early 20th century, Paris became a haven for many lesbian writers who set up salons there and were able to live their lives in relative openness. The most famous Americans of these were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who lived together there as a couple for many years. In 1922, Gertrude Stein published "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene", a story based on the American couple Maud Hunt Squire and Ethel Mars, artists who visited Stein and Toklas in Paris at Stein's salon. In 1933, Stein published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a modernist memoir of her Paris years written in the voice of Toklas, which became a literary bestseller. Another significant early 20th century writer about lesbian themes was Djuna Barnes, who wrote the book Nightwood. Both Barnes and Gertrude Stein were visitors to another influential Parisian salon hosted by American expatriate Nathalie Barney, as was sculptor Thelma Wood, photographer Berenice Abbott and painter Romaine Brooks.Wickes, George (1976). The Amazon of Letters. New York: Putnam. . In 1923, lesbian Elsa Gidlow, born in England, published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, On A Grey Thread.
Yet, openly lesbian literature was still subject to censorship. In 1928, British lesbian author Radclyffe Hall wrote a tragic novel of lesbian love, The Well of Loneliness. After the book was banned in England, Hall lost her first American publisher. In New York, John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and several police detectives seized 865 copies of The Well from her second American publisher's offices, and Donald Friede was charged with selling an obscene publication. But Friede and his publishing partner Pascal Covici had already moved the printing plates out of New York in order to continue publishing the book. By the time the case came to trial, it had already been reprinted six times. Despite its price of $5 — twice the cost of an average novel — it would sell over 100,000 copies in its first year.Taylor, "I Made Up My Mind", passim.
In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, the Hicklin test of obscenity applied, but New York case law had established that books should be judged by their effects on adults rather than on children and that literary merit was relevant. Morris Ernst, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, obtained statements from authors, including Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken, Upton Sinclair, Ellen Glasgow, and John Dos Passos. To make sure these supporters did not go unheard, he incorporated their opinions into his brief. His argument relied on a comparison with Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, which had been cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case Halsey v. New York. Mademoiselle de Maupin described a lesbian relationship in more explicit terms than The Well did. According to Ernst, The Well had greater social value because it was more serious in tone and made a case against misunderstanding and intolerance. In an opinion issued on February 19, 1929, Magistrate Hyman Bushel declined to take the book's literary qualities into account and said The Well was "calculated to deprave and corrupt minds open to its immoral influences". Under New York law, however, Bushel was not a trier of fact; he could only remand the case to the New York Court of Special Sessions for judgment. On 19 April, that court issued a three-paragraph decision stating that The Well'''s theme — a "delicate social problem" — did not violate the law unless written in such a way as to make it obscene. After "a careful reading of the entire book", they cleared it of all charges. Covici-Friede then imported a copy of the Pegasus Press edition from France as a further test case and to solidify the book's U.S. copyright. Customs barred the book from entering the country, which might also have prevented it from being shipped from state to state. The United States Customs Court, however, ruled that the book did not contain "one word, phrase, sentence or paragraph which could be truthfully pointed out as offensive to modesty".
Most literature of the 1930s, '40s, and early '50s presented lesbian life as tragedy, ending with either the suicide of the lesbian character or her conversion to heterosexuality. This was required so that the authorities did not declare the literature obscene.Gallo, p. 67 For example, The Stone Wall, a lesbian autobiography with an unhappy ending, was published in 1930 under the pseudonym Mary Casal. It was one of the first lesbian autobiographies. Yet as early as 1939, Frances V. Rummell, an educator and a teacher of French at Stephens College, published the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happily together, titled Diana: A Strange Autobiography. This autobiography was published with a note saying, "The publishers wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its kind ever offered to the general reading public" The first American magazine written for lesbians, Vice Versa: America's Gayest Magazine, was published from 1947–1948. It was written by a lesbian secretary named Edith Eyde, writing under the pen name Lisa Ben, an anagram for lesbian. She produced only nine issues of Vice Versa, typing two originals of each with carbons. She learned that she could not mail them due to possible obscenity charges, and even had difficulty distributing them by hand in lesbian bars such as the If Club.
Furthermore, the Hays Code, which was in operation from 1930 until 1967, prohibited the depiction of homosexuality in all Hollywood films.
Lesbians in the military