Colorado Springs Police Department
CSPD has had many run-ins with the Colorado Springs LGBTQ+-community.
A Tumultuous Time at Colorado Springs High School
I was a superior being, and I immediately felt that lesbianism explained why I had always felt superior.
In 1948, Dorothy moved herself back to Colorado, specifically Colorado Springs. There, Barbara would enroll in Colorado Springs High School (now called Palmer High School) until 1950. While there, she clashed with the school counselors over her lesbian identity.
I had a counselor in Colorado Springs High School, whose name I can't remember. She became very upset, not by the fact that I was a lesbian, but because I refused to keep it a secret. And I did upset her, to some extent. She would talk with me, then become so unnerved that she would cry and wring her hands and say, "Whatever will we do with you?
In 1948, when Barbara was 15, she met a woman in her 20's at a bus stop. After speaking a few times, the woman learned that Barbara was a lesbian. She went home to tell her mother about Barbara.
The next day, Barbara was confronted by two Colorado Springs Police Department officers at school, who brought her to the police station and proceeded to question her.
Things like "What do you do with your girl friends?" in reference to genitals and so on, and even some things I hadn't heard of, and some suggestions that hadn't occurred to me, which l remember thinking about with curiosity.
The police threatened her before taking her back to school with instructions to never speak to the young woman who reported her again, and to not go to said woman's place of work, the Peak Theater.
Now I had no interest in this young woman, which is rather remarkable, because I was interested in so many young women, but I was really annoyed by the ban on the Peak Theater, because I enjoyed that theater a lot. I resented having to give up one out of the five available theaters in downtown Colorado Springs.
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Despite this unpleasant encounter with the police and the backlash from her counselors, Barbara continued being out and proud as a lesbian, often using her identity as a way to shock others.
I can't think of anything comparable today that would have the same effect. I did sort of create temporary catatonic states in people occasionally. But I enjoyed that. I mean that was like a weapon in the hands of a teenager. I was no different from any other teenager-that is to say, obnoxious, overbearing, arrogant, positive that I knew everything about everything.
Barbara and her family moved to Kansas City, Kansas by 1951. She went on to be an editor for The Ladder, the same lesbian magazine her mother wrote to when she was younger. She later founded Naiad Press, a landmark publisher of lesbian literature. Her impact on lesbian culture and literature can't be overstated.
You can't change the world and everyone in it if you don't have power...and the people who control the press control the world.
1970's
There are multiple accounts of the Colorado Springs Police Department harassing the LGBTQ+ community through the 1950's to the 1970's.
...the only positive aspect of the community is that the police department here is very 'laid back...If there's an incident at a gay bar, for instance, it's not all over the newspapers, and people with military ID's aren't turned over to the Military Police."
References
Morris, John A. “Colorado.” Gaysweek 3, no. 109 (1979): 16-. Archives of Sexuality and Gender. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/XYGRRH706001510/AHSI?sid=bookmark-AHSI&pg=16&xid=8a44ed86. ↩︎ ↩︎