October 14, 2021
Cool Breeze
Swoop in on Gay Atlanta Groundbreakers
Georgia Pioneer was Out & Proud in 1965 Our Voice on Local NPR Returns to the Airwaves PALS Volunteer Reflects on 30 Years of Pets and People
Unity in
COMMUNITY
IF YOUR POST-PRIDE SPIRIT lags a little, this issue of
Q ATLus bolsters your resolve with information and inspiration. First up, a sneak preview of what’s next with 10 huge local queer events between Pride and Toy Party. There’s plenty to keep you busy from now up to the holigays.
We profile three local gay men who set examples with their stories – WABE’s Jim Burress, Hamilton Mayor Pro Tem Ransom Farley and PALS volunteer Ed Mead. News you can use includes a couple 40 years of LGBTQ Georgia cold cases.
This issue also delivers all the Q goodness of our regular fea-
tures – Q Shots, the Q Map and Q Advice, as well as fresh daily content online at theQatl.com.
Read up, then shoot your thoughts and ideas to us via social DMs or mike@theQatl.com.
MIKE FLEMING EDITOR & PUBLISHER MIKE@THEQATL.COM GRAPHIC DESIGN DECATUR ATLANTA PRINTING JOHN NAIL, DESIGNER DECATURATLANTAPRINTING.COM
LOCAL ADVERTISING INFO@PROJECTQATLANTA.COM RIVENDELL MEDIA NATIONAL ADVERTISING SALES@RIVENDELLMEDIA.COM 212-242-6863 theQatl.com 5
INSIDE THIS ISSUE VOLUME 4 ISSUE 44
OCTOBER 14, 2021
WHAT’S UP
This Week’s Must-Do List
COVER
8
24
Fall Preview
10 Happenings ‘til the Holigays
11
14
NEWS
COMMUNITY
Trans ATL’s Missing & Murdered
Men in Media, Politics & Volunteerism
Cold Cases
10 Q Things....................8 Q News.........................11 Q Community......14, 18, 23 Q Shots.........................25 Q Map...........................26 Q Advice.......................29 6 theQatl.com
Pioneer Spirits
Q ADVICE
Step In
Do Not Mind Your Own Business
29
Q
10 THINGS OCT. 27
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RELEASE LGBTQ events take you all the way up to the holidays 11 NOV.
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NEWS
Cold
Q
Tracking Atlanta’s missing and murdered trans people through the decades
CASES
By Patrick Saunders
METRO ATLANTA’S MISSING AND MURDERED transgender and gender nonconforming victims are not forgotten. Thanks to a pair of forensic genealogists in Massachusetts, trans cold cases across the U.S. are finding new life. The Trans Doe Task Force is personal for Anthony and Lee Redgrave, who are both trans. The couple founded the project in 2018. They use genetic genealogy to identify trans and gender nonconforming “Doe cases” gone cold. They’re tracking five cases in Georgia and 174 across the world. The Georgia cases include
victims found in Atlanta, Cobb County and Eatonton going back as far as 1978. “Every day I wake up and think that I could be one of those people on this list,” Anthony told Project Q Atlanta. “For that and the fact that we’ve continued to survive, we have to continue going back to the people who didn’t make it.”
The Redgraves created a company to provide private genetic genealogy services in 2015. In 2018, someone murdered a good friend and trans activist named Christa Steele-Knudslien. “It sort of was a situation where it was the stars Antonio Brown aligning because we were dealing with Christa’s theQatl.com 11
COLD CASES continued death and also it was an anniversary of another trans friend’s suicide,” Lee said. “It felt like what do we do with all this grief and frustration that we have with all this death that keeps happening in our community?” They joined the all-volunteer nonprofit DNA Doe Project. “We worked two cases with them then started looking for trans cases, because we just knew that they had to be out there,” Lee said. “We assumed we’d be able find maybe a few, then we just kept finding more and more.”
SMALL DETAILS TELL LARGER STORY
Among cases in Georgia, Trans Doe Task Force wants to identify someone found in an alley behind an Atlanta building in 1985. The victim was assigned male even though they wore panties traditionally worn by women. In another case, a person was found dead inside a train car carrying coal at the Georgia Power plant in Eatonton in 1978. They wore long fingernails and curled eyelashes (top photo left) but police assigned them as male.
Little details like that are what the Redgraves are looking for as they search the database of the missing and murdered for cases to add to their map.
“We look for contextual clues when limited information is released,” Anthony said. Yet another Georgia case involves a person shot in DeKalb County in 2017. Assigned male, they wore a wig and bra and gave their name as Justine. Police claim the person was shot after attempting to burglarize a home. “But we really lack details here, and this could have been somebody who was homeless and trying to find someplace to stay because they were outdoors, or somebody who was trying to survive, or a case of misinterpretation on the part of the homeowner,” Lee said. There was only a postmortem image of Justine available, so Anthony created a new forensic image (top photo center). The Redgraves included Justine’s in a series of case writeups posted to the r/UnresolvedMysteries subreddit last November to mark Transgender Awareness Week.
FROM SIDE PROJECT TO NONPROFIT
What started as a side project for the Redgraves with a group of grassroots activists is now a nonprofit organization. Three years in, solving cases is a rare occurrence in their line of work. “The biggest reason we haven’t had more cases solved with DNA so far is because it’s very difficult to get [police] departments [and medical examiners] to submit the cases to us — usually because of budget reasons,” Lee said. “We’re hoping that incorporating as a nonprofit will help with that. We’re hoping to fund these cases for the departments going forward.” Meanwhile, TDTF keeps scouring records for other unidentified transgender and gender nonconforming victims. “We have the ability and knowledge and experience, so we feel a responsibility to do this because nobody else was doing this work,” Anthony said. Visit transdoetaskforce.org
12 theQatl.com
Q
MEDIA NEWS
Now
14 theQatl.com
Hear THIS Gay Atlanta WABE reporter returns to airwaves after heart surgery By Patrick Saunders WABE RADIO’S JIM BURRESS IS BACK ON the airwaves after a six-week break to recover from congenital heart surgery. Unfortunately, heart conditions are all in the family for the gay Atlanta local host and senior producer for “All Things Considered.” He’s been with NPR’s Atlanta affiliate since 2008. “My genes are awful,” he told Project Q Atlanta. “My dad had a heart attack when he was 43, my sister had a heart attack when she was 43 — which was just last year. I just turned 42.” Burress’s doctor diagnosed him with an enlarged heart after a routine X-ray in March. “It’s something that would have been easily overlooked if she wasn’t as good as she is,” he said. “It would have eventually caught up with me, but it could have been in the ER. They said it could have killed me within a year.” Anxiety grew as Burress did more research on the surgery. “I couldn’t get past the notion that they actually chemically stop your heart,” he said. “It’s a miracle almost to me that they can do what they do, and the surgeon is brilliant and capable, but at the same time to think about what is happening is kind of grotesque.” He forced himself to stop research-
ing, which helped with the anxiety in the few weeks before the surgery.
‘Not ready to throw in the towel yet’ Burress doesn’t remember anything about the July 30 procedure. “I do remember waking up and not being able to lay down the pain was so bad,” he said. He returned home after about five days at Emory St. Joseph’s Hospital. The recovery was slow for six weeks, but Burress returned to the air on Labor Day. “You really, really start to miss work,” he said. “Even getting the phone calls and emails at weird hours and worrying about am I going to be able to tackle this story today.” “My coworkers I missed a ton. Everyone I worked with was so amazing during this time. It’s almost like I got homesick,” he added. The post-surgery pain has subsided. “A couple of weeks ago, I just woke up and felt better and I’ve felt better ever since,” he said. “It was like a light switch. It almost seems like something I experienced in the distant past.” Burress continues doing all his duties from home, including hosting WABE’s The Brief. The podcast recapping the day’s news launched in June. The heart surgery was Burress’s second health scare in the last two years. He temporarily lost his voicefollowing surgery to repair collapsed spinal disks in 2019. “You can’t pick the genes you get, and everything that’s happened has been genetically related,” he said. “But what choice do you have?” “I still consider myself young at 42, and I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. You suck up the pain and get through it,” he added. theQatl.com 15
Q
POLITICS
Pioneer
SPIRIT
By Patrick Saunders
HAMILTON, GA., MAYOR PRO TEM
Ransom Farley was around 11 or 12 years old when his grandmother told him he was “special.” He realized what that meant a couple of years later when he thought he liked a girl. His mother asked him why he was “wasting that girl’s time” if he didn’t really want her. He asked his grandfather about it.
Farley also made national headlines earlier this year after helping uncover body camera footage showing Hamilton’s police chief making racist comments about slavery and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The town later ousted the chief and another police officer.
This small-town Georgia official has been out and proud for 55 years
“And he told me, ‘Junior, you don’t have the right to mess with nobody’s emotions. If you don’t mean them no good, you need to leave them alone. You think this girl is who you want, but she’s not.’ That was it,” Farley told Project Q Atlanta. He realized he was gay. That was in 1965.
In the pushing-six decades since, Farley left Hamilton, went to college, served in the U.S. Navy on a submarine and aircraft carrier on multiple continents, worked as a nurse in D.C., performed multiple roles at an Atlanta bathhouse, 18 theQatl.com
returned to Hamilton on his mother’s orders and got elected to the city council.
And Farley’s not nearly done making waves. The 70-yearold is considering a run for the town’s top job.
Hamilton to Antarctica Farley was born in Hamilton in 1951. The town — which counted about 400 residents at the time — sits on about three square miles of land and is roughly 25 miles north of Columbus. Farley said he didn’t hide his sexual orientation after coming out in his late teens. He was young, Black, out and proud in small-town Georgia in the final years of the civil rights movement.
Hamilton Mayor Pro Tem Ransom Farley at work
Ransom Farley during his Flex days in 1995
“I walked the streets of Hamilton just like everybody else,” he said. “Everybody knew who I was and nobody made a big deal out of nothing. I never hid it.” He graduated high school in 1969 and went to Western Kentucky University, dropped out and worked for Mammoth Cave National Park. Then he joined the U.S. Navy. He was the only Black sailor in a class of 80 during basic training. “I was thinking I’d have to do battle with these boys from the South and I didn’t,” he said. “These white boys shielded me and made sure that I graduated. I’ve been lucky all my life.” He served on the USS Bluefish submarine and the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. He went from places as balmy as the Philippines to as frigid as Antarctica. Farley worked at a hospital in Washington, D.C., after leaving the Navy, bounced around a few other places, got his nursing degree and worked at a nursing home. And he sowed his oats. “You know how it is when you’re young and hot,” he said. “I was experiencing sex and everything, running amok.”
Ransom Farley in the U.S. Navy in 1971
Atlanta and a health scare Atlanta came calling for Farley in 1990. He took a job as a maintenance man at Flex Spas in Midtown soon after arriving. “I had never seen so many fine men walking around naked,” he said. “I had my share of fun there.” He earned promotions to clerk and then assistant manager in his 15 years there. “Sex and drugs go together, and we could not have people doing drugs in the club,” he said. “If I caught you on drugs or with drugs I didn’t call the police, but I would throw you out of the club.” Farley had a heart attack in 2005, which triggered his return home to Hamilton. theQatl.com 19
RANSOM FARLEY continued “My momma insisted that I come home,” he said. Fed up with how Hamilton treated its Black residents , Farley ran for city council in 2014 and won. “Nobody was representing the Blacks,” he said. “When I looked at it, it wasn’t nobody’s fault but ours that we were not represented. We let four councilmen and a mayor decide what was going to happen to us.” Since Farley won his council seat, the city hired its first Black female clerk and first Black police officers. “Hamiliton ain’t never had no Black policemen,” he said. “The only time a Black woman was in city hall she was cleaning up.” Farley was appointed mayor pro tem in 2018.
‘If you’re a racist, own it’ Hamilton hit the national headlines for all the wrong reasons earlier this year. A city employee found body camera footage of the police chief using a racial slur while making lewd comments about Bottoms and Stacey Abrams. The footage also caught an officer making racist statements about slavery. The footage was recorded as the two prepared to patrol a Black Lives Matter rally. The city employee showed the footage to Farley. “I had known [the police chief ] for about 10 years,” he said. “I was flabbergasted.” Farley alerted the city attorney and city administrator about the video. The mayor and the city council met that night to discuss the incident. The police chief resigned, and the officer was fired. “I own the fact that I am Black and I am gay,” Farley told the New York Times. “If you’re a bigot, if you’re a racist, own it.” Farley is up for re-election to council in 2023, but he’s considering a new post. “If I listen to the people, they’re saying they want me to run for mayor,” he said. “They want me to be the first Black mayor in Hamilton.” “I told them I don’t know at this time. At my age you don’t know about my health. I got a chance to think about it,” he added. 20 theQatl.com
Hamilton Police Department Chief Gene Allmond (left) made national headlines after Ransom Farley (above) turned in video of the chief and an officer making racist and sexists comments.
‘I’m who I am’ Sixty years after his grandmother first told him he was special, Ransom Farley is now Hamilton’s resident LGBTQ elder statesman. Young LGBTQ people in Hamilton often visit him and bring him trinkets. “They want to know how the hell I did it,” he said. “Nobody’s given me hell for it. It makes me feel good that this young crowd thinks enough to ask me questions. It really does. And it keeps me young in a way. I love it.” “I’ve caught more hell here in Hamilton being Black than I have about being gay,” he added. Farley said the older LGBTQ crowd in Hamilton asks him why the younger ones always come around. He tells them it’s because he’s just being himself. “Two things I will not do,” he said. “I will not apologize to nobody for being Black and I will not apologize for being gay. I’m who I am. All my life I’ve laid it out there. Everywhere I’ve went I’ve laid it out there.” “It’s in your hands now. You can choose to do whatever you want with it. You should never lie about who you are and what you are. You can own it in a good way or in a bad way. I choose to own mine in a good way.”
Visit outonfilm.org for online passes, tickets and information on 150 titles.. theQatl.com 21
Q Events
The Best LGBTQ Things to Do in Atlanta This Week
SATURDAY, OCT. 16
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13
National Flag Football
The Craft Your queer goth obsession is back
NFFLA Fall Ball
The LGBTQ and allied League of Atlanta begins
a quickie autumn season @
Silverbacks Park, 2 p.m. Attend for the scoop on a
on the big screen
Third Half social hour. nffla.com
with a Craft costume
ATL United Watch Party & Pop Up
The LGBTQ pro soccer fans of
contest plus drag hosts
All Stripes host the game
Dotte Com and Szn Alx-
party, but be ready. A Better
ndr @ Plaza Theatre, 7 p.m. plazaatlanta.com
Buzz apparel, All Stripes
THURSDAY, OCT. 14
merch and a food vendor
Town Hall on Pride Committee
are popping up too @
The contingent of LGBTQ Atlantans pushing for
Georgia Beer Garden, 6 p.m.
gabeergarden.com
change and transparency at Atlanta Pride hosts a second public meeting. All are welcome @ My Sister’s Room, 7 p.m. facebook.com/msratl Game Night DJ Darlene finds you playing games with drink specials and other surprises @ Hideaway, 8 p.m.
SUNDAY, OCT. 17 West End Artist Market
LGBTQ makers sell their wares while you enjoy
the beer, music, Beltline scenery and outdoor party @ Wild Heaven, 12 noon – 5 p.m. wussymag.com
Before that, do your daydrinking, 2 p.m. facebook.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20
com/atlantahideaway
Bianca Del Rio
The Drag Race comedy
SATURDAY, OCT. 16 Deviant: Homecoming Get into your minimalist football and jock gear for a body-positive, sex-positive dance party with the recurring party exclusively for Black gay men @ Heretic, 10 p.m. hereticatlanta.com
queen hits Atlanta with her “Unsanitized” tour
@ The Eastern, 8 p.m. theeasternatl.com Switch!
The drag show you need midweek, hosted by
Mutha Taylor Alxndr and her House of Alxndr, plus DJ sets and a cool crowd @ My Sister’s Room, 10 p.m. mysistersroom.com
Find the full weekend calendar of LGBTQ events each Thursday at theQatl.com 22 theQatl.com
COMMUNITY
Q
and supplies and bring pets to appointments. The ravages of the virus often led volunteers to provide other support as well.
“HIV used to manifest itself in people’s eyes, so they sometimes couldn’t see anymore,” Mead said. “A lot of our clients had neuropathy and couldn’t walk. A lot had AIDS dementia because the virus in advanced stages caused people to have brain fog.” Volunteers would walk and feed the pets and sometimes even change sheets and do dishes. Some clients’ families disowned them, so they just needed someone to talk to.
Roy Mead
Good DEEDS PALS Atlanta volunteer returns to support pets and people
“They would call the PALS office,” Mead said. “I would answer the phones and talk with them for 30 minutes or an hour.”
Into the woods Mead could relate. He’s gay and was diagnosed with HIV in 1984. His family disowned him. “Back then, gay people helped gay people because nobody else would,” he said. “They talk about the song ‘We Are Family.’ Well, we were the family of all of these people that were dying of AIDS.” But it all became too much. Mead moved with his dogs to an A-frame cabin at the end of a dirt road in Northwest Georgia in 1999. There was no cellphone service and no internet.
By Patrick Saunders
“I needed to move for my sanity,” he said. “I just escaped. I isolated up there. I just had to.”
WHEN ROY MEAD FIRST STARTED VOLUNteering for Pets Are Loving Support 30 years ago, it was an HIV/AIDS war zone.
“It was like going home,” he said.
“Everybody was dying,” he told Project Q Atlanta. “I would come home from work on a Friday, and the first thing I’d do is go to my answering machine and find out who had died that week.” PALS was founded in 1990 to provide pet care so that people with HIV could keep their pets. The organization also helps the pets of people with terminal illnesses and the elderly.
In 2019, Mead returned and now lives in Morningside. And he returned to volunteering for PALS. The rise of antiretroviral medications and regimens like PrEP and PEP changed the landscape of HIV, but it’s still an epidemic. So the work continues at PALS. Volunteers like Mead are “gems,” said PALS executive director Buck Cooke.
“One of the ways that pets helped [people with HIV] was to give them comfort and emotional support, especially for those outcast from society,” Mead said. “The animals helped them survive a little longer and survive with less depression.”
“PALS could not do what we do without the help of our talented and dedicated volunteers,” Cooke said. “We welcome others to join our volunteer ranks, so if you’d like to help deliver pet food, walk dogs and cats at our monthly vaccine clinics, want to serve on our board of directors or one of our committees, please get in touch with me!”
Mead and other volunteers would deliver pet food
Visit palsatlanta.org theQatl.com 23
Instagram.com/theQatl
EUREKA AT X MIDTOWN
Full gallery on Project Q at theQatl.com
Q SHOTS
PHOTOS BY RUSS BOWEN-YOUNGBLOOD
theQatl.com 25
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Q Atlus Map
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26 theQatl.com
Bars
Restaurants North Ave. NW
North Ave. NW
Clubs Retail/Services
Not Shown
Future 50 Lower Alabama St SW, Suite 180
8. Henry’s Midtown Tavern 132 10th St NE
Mary’s 1287 Glenwood Ave SE
9. Joe’s onRalph Juniper McGill Blvd. NE 1049 Juniper St NE
Sister Louisa’s 466 Edgewood Ave SE
10. Zocalo Mexican Kitchen & Cantina 187 10th St NE Highland Ave. NE 11. Barking Leather After Dark 306 Ponce De Leon Ave NE (inside Eagle) 12. Urban Body Fitness 500 Amsterdam Ave NE
The T 465 Boulevard SE Swinging Richards 1400 Northside Dr NW Lips Drag Show Palace 3011 Buford Highway NE Lost ’n Found Youth Thift Store 2585 Chantilly Dr NE
Ponce De Leon Pl. NE
3
Key
Ponce De Leon Ave. NE
7. Flex 76 4th St NW
Ponce De Leon Pl. NE
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Charles Allen Dr. NE
11 6
St. Charles Ave.
Glen Iris Dr. NE
1. Blakes on the Park
NE
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Spring St. NW
7
2 Juniper St. NE
85
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75
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8th St. NE
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Cheshire Bridge Road 5. The Heretic 2069 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
9. Gravity Fitness 2201 Faulkner Rd NE
2. Tripp’s Bar 1931 Piedmont Circle NE
6. Las Margaritas 1842 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
10. Southern Nights 2205 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
3. Woof’s Sports Bar 494 Plasters Ave NE
7. Roxx Tavern 1824 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
11. Tokyo Valentino (Cheshire Bridge) 1739 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
4. BJ Rooster’s 2043 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
8. 2Qute Hair Salon 1927 Cheshire Bridge Road NE
3
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5. Barking Leather 1510 Piedmont Ave NE 6. Boy Next Door 1447 Piedmont Ave NE
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1. Felix’s on the Square 1510 Piedmont Ave NE
3. Midtown Moon 1510 Piedmont Ave NE
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7. Brushstrokes 1510 Piedmont Ave NE 8. Equilibrium Fitness 1529 Piedmont Ave NE
theQatl.com 27
Q Advice
Stepping IN My friend’s boyfriend did blackface
Q
My friend has a history of bad decisions, and I admit up front that parenting him is my go-to move. Recently, he mysteriously started dating someone and became Facebook official out of the blue.
Dear Judy: You are being a friend, indeed. Try being a friend in deed. There are times that I would suggest you not take on roles like therapist, for which you’re not qualified, or babysitter, for which you don’t have time. This is not one of those times. Go ahead and step in, and not lightly. Your friend needs to see that desperation for love and affection, and possibly renewed drug use, may have blocked his view.
I’m very critical of the company my friend keeps, because in the past he’s had a hard time judging people and trusting his instincts. With evidence from his history and their behavior, I’m afraid they’re doing meth – and that this romance will damage my fragile friend. He truly cannot withstand another emotional crisis. When he posted a new pic of himself with the dude, I seized an opportunity: “I see you are dating someone. That explains why you’ve been out of touch.” His response was, “I literally just met him Thursday. It got intense super fast lol.” “LOL.” Yeah no. So I did what any good Judy would do: Google the fuck out of this new guy. I found the usual stuff: disappointing educational background, slapdash work history, and most disturbingly, a photograph from 10 years ago of himself in blackface with “2Pac” and “thug life,” scrawled on his chest with a marker. Do I bring up the blackface, knowing that it might come off as my usual judgmental self, or do I let it slide and let the rage seethe deep inside me? Blackface a decade ago isn’t the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, I knew better back then, but this is Georgia, and slow people can be, well, slow. But it’s 2021. How tone deaf must he be to keep that photo posted?
You said it: It’s 2021, and this is Georgia. Atlanta is sometimes literally ablaze with messages that racist systems and attitudes of the past need to be abolished. If the blackface photo is easily accessible by anyone who looks, you can point it out to your friend and vocalize that this is not OK. No harm to say it, even repeat it. The issue isn’t just the blackface photo, though for the record, blackface is never, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, an OK thing to do. Not in tribute. Not as a joke. Never. But what about… Nope! Never. It’s also not OK to let a friend with substance abuse history fall back unchecked. Say something. You are still not his parent or his counselor, but there’ll be time to get him to somebody for the long haul later. The Q is for entertainment, not counseling. Send burning Qs to mike@theQatl.com. ILLUSTRATION BY BRAD GIBSON
theQatl.com 29
