Queer Places:
12026 Outer Dr W, Detroit, MI 48223
Gerald
"Jerry"
Abraham Moore aka Lady Jai (April 24, 1928 - May 22, 2020) was a tireless advocate for civil liberties and social justice, and the last surviving officer of the Detroit Area Council of the Mattachine Society of the late 1950s.
At age 28, Moore joined with fellow Detroiters
Hal Lawson and David Brewer
to launch the Detroit Mattachine Society, the first formal organization
for gay people in Michigan. The chapter lasted 17 months, producing a
monthly newsletter, holding public meetings and seeking allied
professionals to help counter the era’s prevailing stereotypes about
homosexuality. Moore was the last living link to Detroit’s earliest LGBTQ
activism. Moore is also the author of the 1954 The Lady Jai Recommended List,
listing safe places for gays to gather together.
Gerald Moore was born April 24, 1928, in Piketon, Ohio, the son of Lee Ora
Moore and Joel Brough Moore. He recalled moving to Detroit on Dec. 7,
1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He graduated from
Redford High School in the June class of 1946. His mother worked at Sears
to help pay his tuition at Wayne University, as Wayne State was then
known. He interned with two teachers who were involved in producing the
“Lone Ranger” and “Green Hornet” radio programs and befriended Bill Cornell, who worked on
sound effects. Cornell became Moore’s mentor, who he called his “gay
mother.” Moore focused more on extracurriculars than classes. Despite
warnings from the dean, his grades were such that the Army drafted him in
1950. He barely missed being sent into combat during the Korean War.
Instead, he was stationed at Camp McCoy in western Wisconsin, where some
other soldiers introduced him to gay nightlife in LaCrosse and nearby
towns, as well as to a vibrant circuit of female impersonators that toured
the Midwest. “We had a nice gay environment because it happened to be
within the Jewish group, Jewish queens and a couple of others,” Moore
explained in a 2005 oral history interview. “We’d go into a local hotel,
stay overnight, we’d go to the bars. We had our own little campy circles.”
After his stint in the service, Moore steeped himself in Detroit’s
thriving downtown gay bar scene. He became part of the “Golden Slipper
crowd” that spent Saturday nights at the Golden Slipper show bar on Grand
River. The club featured Moore’s friend
Bramwell Franklin, known
to Detroit gay audiences as Chi Chi, as its mainstay performer. On
occasion, Moore adopted the drag persona of Lady Jai, and his gay friends
knew him as Jai. Around the same time, Moore became a gopher and assistant
for his friend Bill Cornell, who had begun his own public relations agency
specializing in promotion for the entertainment world. Through Moore’s
involvement with Cornell, he met many celebrities on their stops in
Detroit, including Cab Calloway,
Tallulah Bankhead,
Mae West, Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye
and Harry Belafonte.
Back at Wayne, Moore became the first-ever Jewish pledge to the local Tau
Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He became friends with his TKE brother Hal
Lawson, who he learned was also gay, and the two rented an apartment
together near campus for a year before Moore moved into an all-gay rooming
house on 2nd Boulevard. Not long after that, in August 1958, Lawson urged
Moore to help him and David Brewer to establish the Detroit Mattachine
Society. Moore served as secretary, handling correspondence and typing two
sets of minutes, one with their real names, the other with pseudonyms for
fear that the authorities might find them. At a time when gay and bisexual
men faced routine arrest for acting on their sexuality, members feared
police would infiltrate the group. But the Motor City was not yet ready
for organized gay activism. After struggling to garner members, the group
disbanded in March 1960. “We do not know who is to blame,” Moore wrote to
the Society’s leaders in San Francisco, “We, the members, or the flighty
gay populace.” Brewer died in 2001. Lawson died in 2003.
While involved with the Society, Moore landed a job with an insurance
firm. He later taught real estate and operated a coffee shop near the
Redford Theater before moving to the Tampa Bay area in 1978. Moore’s
activism in Florida was devoted and varied. He served on the board of the
Florida ACLU, was an early supporter of Equality Florida, belonged to
Atheists of Florida and founded the South Pinellas chapter of Americans
United for the Separation of Church and State. As it happened, he
discovered Humanistic Judaism and became close with Sherwin Wine of
Birmingham Temple only after leaving Detroit. Moore went through training
over three years with Wine, which brought him back to Metro Detroit on a
regular basis, to become a madrich, a sort of lay leader. In 2014, the
Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, which holds the Detroit
Mattachine Society records, brought Moore to Ann Arbor to share his
memories in a public conversation at the Hatcher Library. During the
evening, Moore enjoyed the spotlight, remembering his involvement with
Mattachine and bar life from long ago. He seemed to particularly enjoy
regaling the crowd with stories about his contact with famous
entertainers, when he secured a place to house Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger,
or when Paul Lynde sat in silence
at the Ten Eleven bar terrified the vice squad would come in at any
minute. “It has been my pleasure,” Moore said in parting, a phrase that
was something of a slogan for him. “Some people say I’ll probably have
that on my tombstone. But it has been a pleasure.”
Jerry Abraham Moore died on May 22, 2020, at his home in Clearwater,
Florida. He was 92 and had been in diminishing health for several months.
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