Queer Places:
Wayne State University, 42 W Warren Ave, Detroit, MI 48202
Bramwell Ernest Franklin, Jr. (August 12, 1930 - May 17, 1995), better known to audiences as “Chi-Chi,” was a be-loved figure in Detroit'sgay and lesbian community for over 45 years. Interviewed in Detroit in 1993, Franklin discussed performing comedic routines at the Golden Slipper and the Ten Eleven in the 1950s and 1960s and being arrested at his apartment for accosting and soliciting and undercover decoy. From the late 1940s through the 1970s he performed under the stage name ChiChi at bars through-out the Metro area.
Bramwell Ernest Franklin, Jr. was born August 12, 1930 in Detroit, and grew up in Ferndale. He received a B.A. from Wayne State University, where he also did graduate work in the sociology of religion. While attending college part time, he worked as a typist, eventually running his own secretarial service for over twenty years. It was as ChiChi, however, that he was most celebrated. In the days before gay liberation, when gay life was centered almost solely in bars, he performed a specialty act which included jokes, comic vocals, and falsetto singing. "One might say that I impersonated homosexuals (a very swishy variety, but I'm not sure it was really an act," he said in his oral history interview. In an interview a few months before dying with Patrick Burton he described performing at the old Golden Slipper: "I used to screeeam at the customers, especially if they've never been there before. For instance, if a big motorcyclist with a studded bracelet came in, I would stop the show and draw everyone's attention to this person, and how masculine and handsome he was in his leather outfit. But isn't it a shame that his wrist is so limp that he has to wear a therapeutic device." ChiChi first appeared, while still in high school, with a popular drag revue at Uncle Tom's Plantation, a black and tan on Eight Mile near Livernois. He soon moved on to LaRosa's on Farmer Street, the only other bar that would accept his fake I.D. After he turned twenty-one he performed for gays and "tourists" at the Rio Grande, which later became the Ten Eleven, and was the featured entertainment for the opening of the Diplomat. During the 1950s and 1960s, when police harassment was routine, he often alerted the clientele to the presence of undercover vice. Franklin's last engagement as ChiChi was at the Town Pump in the late 1970s. When Burton asked what he would say to younger generations, Franklin responded, "I think it's very important if you are gay to recognize it and not particularly try to hide it."
Known to people in recent years as Ernie, Franklin operated the Little-Read Book Store, which also served as a community center of sorts for the Wayne campus neighborhood, until shortly before his death.
Franklin died of cancer May 17, 1495 at the Hospice of Southeast Michigan.
My published books:
