"I got here like June 16th, 1970 ... When I came from Columbus, I came with three white drag queens from Columbus, OH.  You know, it was like this was something to do.  But I wanted something more.  I always thought that there has to be something powerful to it ... I heard something about GLF [Gay Liberation Front] and they were having meetings at Grace church and so I felt that was the meaning."   from the oral history, recorded June 2003

Whether you called him Theodore, Theo, Ted, or Teddy, you didn't forget Theodore Kirkland once you'd met him.  As others have noted, he had an enormous capacity for friendship.  He also seemed to be somewhere around the center of things.  When he came to DC from Ohio in 1970, it didn't take him long to find his place in the gay community as one of the founders of Washington, DC's Gay Liberation Front.

Theodore didn't sit on the sidelines.  He didn't take small positions or hold small opinions.

As he tells the story in his oral history, Theodore arrived in DC just two weeks after his 18th birthday with three white drag queen friends from Columbus, Ohio.  They were on a mission to see the new Pier Nine, word of which had reached Columbus.  They stayed on M St. NW, at 1416, for two months.  June 1970 was also the beginning of DC's Gay Liberation Front, which met at Grace Church in Georgetown.  In short order, Theodore was attending meetings of GLF and ,as he said in his oral history, "that was where I met Bruce [Pennington] and David Aiken and Chuck Hall and Frank Kameny and Chuck Hicks, too, and that was where we all sort of meshed".  In GLF, he participated in the Black Panthers' People's Revolutionary Constitutional Convention (1970) and the first local gay pride celebration (May 1972).  He was a familiar figure in activist circles, friend to Margo McGregor, and involved with successor activist activities in the city.

For the next six years, Theodore Kirkland was an integral part of DC's gay activist community as a member of the Gay Liberation Front living first at the GLF house at 1620 S St. NW.  After the GLF split in 1972, he moved into the Skyline Faggots house at 1614 S St NW, with other former members of GLF house.  In the same year as the GLF split, Theodore, who was working at Kramer Books, joined The Gents, one of DC's African-American social clubs, which he characterized as more open than some of the other social clubs: "We were a group that really wanted to include everybody ... We wanted people to be able to join because this was what they comfortable with."  Kirkland remained a member until 1987.

From 1976 to 1986, Kirkland served in the US Navy but spent much of his free time in DC, keeping up with what was going on with former colleagues from gay liberation.  In the late 1980s, he was part of the effervescent circle of artists, writers, and performance artists at the ENIKAlley Coffeehouse in NE and at dcspace. He was intimately involved with the circle of Essex Hemphill, Larry Duckette, Wayson Jones, Ray Melrose, and others.  In his oral history, Kirkland recalls the group held introspective, consciousness raising weekends at a small cottage in Virginia.  He lived for a time in an apartment on North Capitol with Ray Melrose, Marlon Riggs, and others.

When AIDS struck, Kirkland became part of the community's response, working in ICAN (the Inner City AIDS Network) and as one of the pillars of Best Friends.  Of Best Friends, Kirkland said, "It was Walter Bennett, Chuck Hicks, Welmore Cook, Stewart Washington, Ernest Hopkins, and myself.  And what we did was when someone got sick we literally went into their house.  We cleaned.  We did whatever it was that we felt that we needed to do.  We took care of their utility bills.  We did whatever.  And that was when there weren't those dollars out there to do that ..."

With Ernest Hopkins and Welmore Cook, Theodore Kirkland created DC's first Black Gay Pride in May 1991.  Black Pride grew out of a Best Friends meeting attended by only the three of them:  "... and we said why don't we do, why don't we have a festival.  Why don't we do whatever they're doing in Gay Pride, and that was what we did."

Theodore moved back and forth between the West Coast, where he died, and DC, with a brief interlude in Alabama.  But you could always count on seeing him at the annual Black Gay Pride celebration.
 

1993: Margo MacGregor, Theodore Kirkland, Michael Ferri, Bruce Pennington

1971:  GLF/DC celebrates Christopher Street Liberation Day, New York
Theodore at far right

REMEMBERING THEODORE

email memories of Theodore Kirkland and tributes to info@rainbowhistory.org

• Michael Ferri:    "Friendship was Theodore's gift ... Theodore and I met each other in June 1970 at the founding meeting of the Gay Liberation Front in Washington, DC.  We became best friends and "sisterbrothers" during our time as housemates at the GLF Commune (1620 S St. NW) and then at the Skyline Faggots Collective (1614 S St NW).  Theodore was 18 and I was 23."
• Stuart Washington: "During those years and into the early 90s, Theodore, Cornelius, myself, Lamont Lee and Ernest at our homes, and the homes of Carol Schwartz, Darryl Gorman, and some others would have annual Easter fundraisers that would raise money for various AIDS organizations in the community, such as Best Friends of DC, The AIDS Foundation of Whitman-Walker Clinic, Max Robinson Center of WWC, the AIDS National Interfaith Network, Grandma's House, Food and Friends and the Episcopal Caring Response Fund ... I remember Tehodore working as a dental hygienist at the Homr for Retired Army and Airmen (The Soldiers Home) and as a nurses aid for several people who he always seemed so fond of."