Fun Lounge police raid
Bars were often targeted in police raids, with those arrested often having their names and personal information published in local newspapers, leading to the loss of jobs and relationships.
In the early morning of April 25, 1964, the Fun Lounge was the target of one such raid, with deputies of Cook County Sheriff Richard B. Ogilvie arresting 109 individuals and seizing several hundred dollars-worth of illegal drugs.
The group published newsletters and operated a hotline for people to report police harassment, and historians regard its formation as the beginning of modern gay activism in the area.
The Chicago metropolitan area following World War II was home to numerous gay bars and other nightclubs and drinking establishments that catered to the local LGBT community.
[3] Louie's Fun Lounge was a gay bar located on Mannheim Road near O'Hare International Airport, outside of Chicago's city limits.
[note 1] The bar had been founded in the mid-1940s and was located in an area known as Glitter Gulch,[4] which, according to author and LGBT historian St. Sukie de la Croix, was "a notorious strip of syndicate-owned cheap motels and seedy nightclubs".
[13] However, in addition to the gay crowd, the bar also attracted a clientele that included members of the area's criminal underworld, such as gangsters, drug dealers, and sex workers.
[14] These criminal connections and the bar's clientele made Gager a target of Richard B. Ogilvie, an Illinois politician who was elected Cook County Sheriff in 1962.
... Gager advertises special parties which start at 5 a.m. Under-age drinkers, including high school students, mingle with degenerates to watch indecent shows.
"[15] Leading up to April 1964,[note 3] the club had been under surveillance by investigators from the Cook County Sheriff's Office, with Ogilvie stating that the activities occurring in the bar were "too loathsome"[16] and "revolting to describe".
[4] According to an article published the same day by the Chicago Daily News, Cain said his officers had found 500 barbiturate pills and cannabis valued at $500 (equivalent to $4,912 in 2020) inside the lounge, as well as men "dancing together and engaging in lewd acts".
[15] On May 15, 1964, Judge Wayne Olson of the Circuit Court of Cook County in Oak Park, Illinois, dismissed charges against 99 of the people who had been arrested, stating that there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
On the same day that the raid occurred, the Chicago Daily News, an afternoon paper, reported on it with a two-tier headline on their front page that read, "8 teachers, suburb principal seized / 109 arrested in vice den.
[4][12] Speaking about the impact that the raid had on those involved, de la Croix stated in a 2012 historical book that many of those who had been arrested later lost their jobs, as well as their relationships with friends and family members.
[8] Mattachine Midwest saw considerable growth in the aftermath of the raid and provided several services to the local LGBT community, including publishing a newsletter and operating a hotline that individuals could use to report police harassment.
[25] According to historian John D. Poling, Mattachine Midwest's growth "represented not only the beginning of centralized gay activism in Chicago but also offered a sense of community to a population that in many ways epitomized the disenfranchised".
[5] Ogilvie, meanwhile, benefited politically from the raid, as it demonstrated his hardline stance against vice, and he was elected president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 1966 and governor of Illinois in 1968.
[5] The raid prompted gay and lesbian activists to conduct outreach efforts to mobilize voters against Ogilvie during his unsuccessful 1972 reelection bid..[6][22] Activists in Chicago widely distributed a flyer that spoke out against his actions, including the Fun Lounge raid, stating in part that "... people were disgraced, reputations were ruined, jobs were lost, lives were destroyed and even suicides were committed".
