40th Anniversary of 'The Battle Of The Sexes' Tennis Match

There was a huge tennis match that took place in my hometown on September 20, 1973 that had major implications for women's sports. 

40 years ago Billie Jean King in front of what is still the largest crowd to ever witness a tennis match in the United States, beat 55 year old Bobby Riggs at the Astrodome in front of 30, 472 people and a worldwide television audience of 90 million people. (50 million in the US who watched the ABC-TV broadcast with Howard Cosell as the lead announcer). 

Unfortunately the broadcast was blacked out here in Houston at the time and I had to see the tape delay later.   

What led up to this seriously hyped tennis match was Bobby Riggs flapping his gums and denigrating the game of women's tennis.   He claimed it was inferior to the men's game (oink, oink), his 55 year old self could beat the top ranked women's player in the world and challenged Billie Jean King to a match. 

When the then 29 year old King declined to take him on, then 30 year old Australian Margaret Court, the top ranked women's player at the time accepted the challenge.  They played the US televised match on May 13, 1973 (which happened to be Mother's Day) in Ramona, CA.  Riggs used lobs and drop shots to keep Court off balance and beat her in straight sets 6-2, 6-1.

It's also alleged that Court considered the match an exhibition and didn't take it seriously, but the male dominated media sure did. .The win over Margaret Court got Riggs on the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazines and he resumed his male chauvinist taunting of all female tennis players.  

After founding the Women's Tennis Association in June, King accepted a lucrative offer to play a winner take all best three of five set nationally televised match at the Astrodome that was dubbed by promoters as 'The Battle of The Sexes'.

And yes, the young TransGriot took the opportunity to put her allowance where her mouth in terms of my belief that King would win.  I made a few bets with my skeptical male classmates who believed Riggs' hype. 
 
On that September night before the match started King entered the Dome Cleopatra-style carried by four bodybuilders and Riggs followed in a rickshaw pulled by scantily clad models. The exchanged gifts, with Riggs giving her a large Sugar Daddy sucker and King presenting him with a piglet before they began playing the  match.

King had also prepared herself to counter the drop shot tactics Riggs used to great effect against Court.

Instead of her usual aggressive style of play, she stayed at the baseline and gave Riggs a taste of his own tennis medicine. She made him run all over the court and forced him to change tactics to a serve and volley style of game. 

King beat him in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 to claim the $100,000 prize for winning the match and defended the honor of professional women's tennis players everywhere.  

And the next day at school I collected the money I won with Billie Jean King's victory


King's win in addition to being profitable for teenage me also gave women's tennis the critical early credibility it needed and has used to grow the sport.   Women's tennis grew from that point to eventually garner its own television contracts and see women players like King, Chris Evert and countless others earning six and seven figure amounts in prize money.  They later won the battle to secure equal prize money for female tennis players.

And that happened in the wake of a tennis match played at the Astrodome. 

50th Anniversary of JFK's Civil Rights Speech

President John F. Kennedy on this night 50 years ago addressed the nation on African-American civil rights issues.   While we have come a long way since June 11, 1963, we still have a long way to go.

We have far too many people (including a few Supreme Court justices) in this country that think the progress we African-Americans and our allies have paid for in blood to the country that Dr. King envisioned needs to be rolled back or is 'racial entitlement'.

To remind you TransGriot readers the struggle continues, here is the speech President Kennedy made on that June evening 50 years ago.







***

Good evening, my fellow citizens:

This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro. That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.

I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

Today, we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops. It ought to to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal. It ought to to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the State in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.

This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?

Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.

We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the facts that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all. Those who do nothing are inviting shame, as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right, as well as reality.

Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. The Federal judiciary has upheld that proposition in a series of forthright cases. The Executive Branch has adopted that proposition in the conduct of its affairs, including the employment of Federal personnel, the use of Federal facilities, and the sale of federally financed housing. But there are other necessary measures which only the Congress can provide, and they must be provided at this session. The old code of equity law under which we live commands for every wrong a remedy, but in too many communities, in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is the street.

I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public -- hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do.

I have recently met with scores of business leaders urging them to take voluntary action to end this discrimination, and I have been encouraged by their response, and in the last two weeks over 75 cities have seen progress made in desegregating these kinds of facilities. But many are unwilling to act alone, and for this reason, nationwide legislation is needed if we are to move this problem from the streets to the courts.

I'm also asking the Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence. Today, a Negro is attending a State-supported institution in every one of our 50 States, but the pace is very slow.

Too many Negro children entering segregated grade schools at the time of the Supreme Court's decision nine years ago will enter segregated high schools this fall, having suffered a loss which can never be restored. The lack of an adequate education denies the Negro a chance to get a decent job.

The orderly implementation of the Supreme Court decision, therefore, cannot be left solely to those who may not have the economic resources to carry the legal action or who may be subject to harassment.

Other features will be also requested, including greater protection for the right to vote. But legislation, I repeat, cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country. In this respect I wanna pay tribute to those citizens North and South who've been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage.

My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all -- in every city of the North as well as the South. Today, there are Negroes unemployed, two or three times as many compared to whites, inadequate education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, young people particularly out of work without hope, denied equal rights, denied the opportunity to eat at a restaurant or a lunch counter or go to a movie theater, denied the right to a decent education, denied almost today the right to attend a State university even though qualified. It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely Presidents or Congressmen or Governors, but every citizen of the United States.

This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to ten percent of the population that you can't have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.

Therefore, I'm asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves; to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents.

As I've said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.

We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.

This is what we're talking about and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens.

Thank you very much.

Berlin Book Burning 80th Anniversary

"Where they burn books they will also ultimately burn people.'   Heinrich Heine

Today is the 80th anniversary of the day that 20,000 'un-German' books and 5000 images were burned in 1933 in what is now known as the Bebelplatz in Berlin. 

So what does that day have in common with us TBLG people? 

Many of those books that went up in flames that night as Nazi Propaganda Minster Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 40,000 that evening came from the recently raided sex institute of Magnus Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld was fortunately out of the country on a lecture tour in the United States when it happened, but he was doing much of the pioneering transsexual research there at the Berlin based institute and it went up in flames.   It's also speculated that the client lists and names seized in that Institute raid led to the murderous Operation Hummingbird purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA by the Gestapo and the SS a year later. 

And as a trans person, you are also left to ponder the question had Hirschfeld's institute and those books and papers survived, how much futher along trans related medical care and research wpuld be if it hadn't been burned that night in the Bebelplatz?
 
 

150th Anniversary Of The Emancipation Proclamation

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

150 years ago today on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln and took effect.  


The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed all those enslaved in Confederate territory to be forever free, and ordered the Army and all of the Executive branch of the US government  to treat as free all those enslaved in the ten states that were still in rebellion.

At that moment, 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the US according to the 1860 census were freed, but it did not apply to the five slave states that remained in the union nor to most regions already controlled by the Union army.

Of course, the Confederates reacted with predictable outrage.  They pointed to the Emancipation Proclamation as proof they were justified in seceding and launching their armed rebellion against the federal government to preserve slavery because in their minds Lincoln would have abolished it anyway.

But conversely, Lincoln probably would have had a tougher time doing so had all the Confederate states not seceded and stayed in the union.  

The Emancipation Proclamation had been discussed in the Lincoln Administration as early as the summer of 1862 as a way to cripple the Confederacy, who was dependent upon slave labor to drive their engine of war and agreed to, but Lincoln felt he needed to do so after a Union battlefield victory.

The strategic Union victory at Antietam in September 1862 gave President Lincoln an opportunity to announce his plans to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and hinder the Confederacy's efforts to gain international recognition and aid from Great Britain and France.   Five days after Antietam, on September 22 1862 the preliminary proclamation was announced that ordered the emancipation of any slaves in the CSA states that didn't return to federal control by January 1, 1863.  When none did so, it took effect on that date.

There have been spirited arguments from 20th century African-American scholars such as W.E.B.Du Bois, James Baldwin, Julius Lester and Lerone Bennett over just how effective the Emancipation Proclamation was in terms of emancipating our ancestors.   Some called it a worthless piece of paper, while Bennett went even farther in his criticisms in this 2000 book Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.  Bennett asserted in the book that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms the radical abolitionists were pushing for.

In the short term it had several effects.  It converted the Civil War into not only a cause to reunify the country, but added the moral component of ending slavery.  

It put a permanent halt into Confederate efforts to get Great Britain and France, nations that had abolished slavery, into recognizing a treasonous group of American states trying to form a nation based on the principle of perpetuating slavery.

As Lincoln had hoped, as word of the Emancipation Proclamation spread throughout the South, slaves began to escape and headed to the Union lines in anticipation of freedom.  They enlisted in the US Colored Troops, providing a brand new source of manpower for the Union efforts while depleting the manpower of the slave labor dependent Confederacy. 

As the Union armies advanced into formerly CSA held territory, they were also freed.  Unfortunately in my home state of Texas, freedom didn't come for my ancestors until June 19, 1865, two months after the War To Perpetuate Slavery was over. 

The Emancipation Proclamation did not make slavery illegal in the United States.  It merely provided the legal framework for emancipation of slaves as the Union armies successfully advanced.  It also created the political conditions that led to the passage in Congress and ratification of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.

President Johnson referenced this during the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation's issuance during a Memorial Day 1963 speech at Gettysburg, PA and connected it to the ongoing Civil Rights movement activity.

"One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. ...In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake--it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision....Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.
 
President Johnson also referenced the proclamation again during a March 15, 1965 congressional speech announcing the introduction of the 1965 Voting Rights Act one week after Bloody Sunday. 

It seems fitting that 150 years later, we have an African-American president who is also an Illinois resident  issuing a proclamation of his own commemorating what President Lincoln did back in 1863.


But the Emancipation Proclamation was the precursor for the 'new birth of freedom' as Lincoln called it in his Gettysburg Address, although it came for African-Americans at a bloody cost and a 'with all deliberate speed' pace.

50th Anniversary of The Cuban Missile Crisis

On this date in 1962 a USAF U-2 reconnaissance aircraft mission flown by Major Richard Heyser took 928 photos in six minutes over the San Cristobal, Cuba area.   His flight captured images of what turned out to be a Soviet SS-4 medium range nuclear missile site under construction. 

That discovery triggered what has become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It was thirteen intense days in which the US military went to Defcon 2 alert for the first and only time in its history, and the world nervously watched as the United States and Soviet Union came dangerously close to global nuclear war.

The TransGriot was a mere five months old when all of this drama was unfolding, and the SS-4 missiles were there as part of Operation Anadyr, the Soviet mission to secretly introduce three MRBM and two IRBM regiments to Cuba that totalled 80 missiles, Ilyushin Il-28 Beagle medium range bombers, and the troops, SA-2 surface to air missiles and MiG fighters to protect those installations.

There was an advance guard of four Foxtrot diesel-electric attack subs deployed each armed a 10 kiloton nuclear-tipped torpedo.  Ominously they were issued conflicting rules of engagement before leaving the Soviet Union as part of the plan to establish the forward deployment ballistic missile sub base at Mariel. 
 
Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership were not too happy about being surrounded by American Jupiter missiles based on the soil of NATO allies such as Turkey and the Polaris missile sub base at Holy Loch, Scotland. 

Because of the then Soviet leader bragging that their factories were producing nuclear missiles 'like sausages' the perceived missile gap became an issue in the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy presidential campaign that once Kennedy won the presidency, he began to address it by expanding what was in reality an American missile lead.

The increasing hostility between Cuba's Fidel Castro and the US, the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and Castro's embrace of communism and seeking out the Soviets as an ally against the American bully gave the Soviet Union an opportunity to redress the missile gap imbalance as they saw it.

The USSR would do so by installing ballistic missiles into Cuba, setting up a forward deployment naval base at Mariel similar to Holy Loch for their ballistic missile subs and keep it secret until the IRBM and MRBM missile launch sites were operational.  That would force the Americans and President Kennedy to accept the fait accompli situation.

But a complex and large undertaking such as Operation Anadyr wasn't going to remain a secret forever, and enough intel started leaking out of Cuba to the point that the CIA began stepping up U-2 overflights of the island in August 1962 with the missions being taken over by the Air Force two months later..

The Cuban Missile Crisis was thirteen days of nerve racking military moves, countermoves and diplomacy at the United Nations and behind the scenes.  Florida became a staging ground for a major US military buildup and what would have been had it been launched the biggest amphibious invasion since D-Day. 

In the hindsight we thankfully have today, the ground invasion would have been a disaster.  Little did we know at the time there was a 40,000 man deployed Soviet motorized combat brigade in Cuba armed with 12 nuclear tipped FROG-2 battlefield missiles and orders that allowed the Soviet commander on the scene to use them without getting clearance from Moscow first.




The US military at the beginning of the crisis went on Defcon 3 alert as B-52 bombers and Polaris ballistic missile subs were dispatched and ICBM's were prepped for launch.  ExComm met at the White House as the hawks and doves debated and argued over what to do about the situation.  

President Kennedy eventually settled on a naval blockade as a first step short of launching the bombing raid and invasion of Cuba to remove them.

The news that missiles were in Cuba was announced to the American public and the world during an October 22 White House address to the nation. 

As the announcement to the American public and the world of the quarantine zone and its establishment by US naval forces was occurring 27 Soviet ships were steaming toward it as the world watched and wondered if World War III was imminent.

On October 23 the first hopes that sanity was breaking out occurred as several Soviet ships approaching the quarantine line stopped and turned back. 

But the crisis was far from over.  While political pressure was mounting with the November 1962 midterm elections fast approaching, and our hawks including SAC commander General Curtis LeMay were pressuring President Kennedy to use military action to remove the missiles, on the other side Castro was urging Khrushchev to use the missiles if Cuba was invaded.

An Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane being shot down over Cuba on the orders of a local Soviet commander on October 27 only added to the stress level the leaders of both superpowers faced. 

A new message was received from Moscow offering a deal by which the missiles in both Turkey and Cuba would be removed and the USA and Soviet Union would jointly guarantee the security of both nations.

President Kennedy insisted that the missiles in Cuba must be removed, offered to end the naval blockade and pledged not to invade Cuba if that happened.  If the deal was rejected, the US would commence with the invasion of Cuba in 24 hours  .

But when the message was delivered to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Attorney General Robert Kennedy added a private message that once this was done, the Jupiter missiles in Turkey that was one of the Soviet sore points instigated the crisis would be withdrawn a few months later.

The deal was done, Khrushchev announced on October 28 they were withdrawing the missiles from Cuba to the disgust of Castro, the crisis wound down over the next few months and in April 1963 the Jupiter missiles were quietly withdrawn from Turkey.

The 'hotline' between Washington and Moscow was installed to ensure rapid direct communications in future conflicts between the two superpowers. The Nuclear Test Ban treaty was negotiated and eventually signed and the world exhaled afer coming dangerously close to nuclear annihilation.

It's TBLG History Month!

As a child and godchild of historians, I have always believed it is important to know your history.

It not only fortifies your self-esteem against the inevitable micro and macroaggressive attacks that will be leveled at you and your self esteem by your oppressors, but it also helps you as the marginalized person to know where you've come from, where you've been, know that people like you have played major roles in building this community and fighting for its human rights and help chart the course for the future.

October is LGBT History, month, and what I will do since this month will probably disproportionately be focused on the L:G end of the community, is laser beam focus it on the 'T' end of the community.

I'm going to focus it on the African-American trans end as well since we get even less coverage of our accomplishments and our trans history has been whitewashed out of the predominately vanillacentric trans narrative.  It's important for us and the next generations of African descended transpeople that we not only know our history, but honor our trans elders who helped write it, be cognizant of the fact we are at this moment in time ourselves making history and pass it on.

So to get this edition of TBLG History Month started off properly, here's some links to some previous posts I wrote here that you can peruse to get this month off to a proper transcentric start. 

Black Trans History Compilations

Kylar Broadus Makes History In DC Today

The 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit In

Tyra Hunter Anniversary

The Story of Georgia Black

40th Anniversary Of The Munich Olympic Massacre

If you younglings are wondering why security is a major issue at every Olympic Games and what the moment of silence kerfluffle was about in the runup to the recently concluded London Games, it's because of what happened during the XX Olympic Games in Munich 40 years ago today.

On this date 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation and a German policeman died during a failed attempt to end the hostage standoff and rescue nine athletes being held in two helicopters at the NATO Fürstenfeldbruck airbase.  Five of the eight PLO terrorists also died during the failed rescue mission with three survivors being captured..

When Munich won the Olympic bid on April 26, 1966 to host the Games over Madrid, Montreal and Detroit concerns were expressed over the facts this would be the first Summer Olympics held in Germany since the 1936 Berlin Games and Munich was where the Nazi Party was founded and headquartered.

The (West) Germans were extremely sensitive to that history and when the Games opened on August 26, 1972 they wanted to make certain they took every opportunity to present an optimistic, happy, non-militaristic and democratic Germany to the world. 

But there were stormy political clouds intruding on that sunny picture the Germans planned to present to the world.  The IOC denied a request by the Palestine Liberation Organization for it to send a Palestinian team to the Olympic Games, and in response chatter started that retaliation would take place during the Games. There were rumblings and intelligence warnings before the Munich Games started that were unfortunately ignored that some kind of terrorist attack would take place as late as September 2. 

The Israeli Olympic delegation was understandably nervous in the runup to the Munich Games, had asked to have their own security team present, a request that for some reason was denied.   They were concerned during the Games about the lack of armed security guards patrolling the fences surrounding the Olympic Village and lax security procedures to enter and exit it once the Games started on August 26. 

In the early morning hours of September 5 eight members of the PLO terrorist group Black September scaled the two meter (six foot) fence surrounding the Olympic Village dressed in track suits, made it to the apartment building at 31 Connollystrasse housing the Israeli Olympic team, broke in, killed Youssef Romano and Moshe Weinberg, two members of the team that tried to resist the apartment invasion and took the remaining nine members hostage.  Fortunately the female members of the Israeli team were housed in a separate section of the Olympic Village, and the team members participating in the sailing events were 400 km away in Kiel.

It triggered an almost 18 hour standoff between the Black September terrorists and German authorities in which the PLO terrorists demanded the release of over 200 of their comrades in Israeli jails, Germany release the notorious Red Army Faction founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof and be given safe passage out of the country in exchange for the Israeli hostages.

Later that evening the terrorists and their hostages were helicoptered to Fürstenfeldbruck airbase  to ostensibly be transported by air to Egypt but in reality were flying into a planned German ambush that went horribly wrong.

A firefight ensued with Anton Fliegerbauer, one of the undermanned German police team members snipers conducting the rescue operation being shot and killed in the control tower along with five of the eight Black September terrorists. 

When the remaining terrorists saw armored cars being deployed they realized their chances of holding out were over.  They shot four of the Israeli hostages on one of the helicopters and then detonated a grenade that resulted in their incineration.   The five remaining Israeli hostages on the second helicopter were then machine-gunned by another terrorist.



In the wake of the attack and amongst mounting international pressure to do so, the IOC suspended Olympic competition for 24 hours and a memorial service was held September 6 in the Olympic stadium for the slain athletes.  The three captured surviving terrorists were later released by the German government October 29 in response to demands by terrorists who hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.  

Two of the released Munich Massacre terrorists were later allegedly assassinated by Israeli Mossad agents and Jamal Al-Gashey, the surviving Munich Black September attacker is alleged to be still in hiding somewhere in Syria or an unnamed North African nation.

In addition to the Munich Olympic Massacre leading to heightened security at every subsequent Olympic Games, the failed rescue mission led to a German government reassessment of their anti-terrorism policies and forming the elite GSG-9 unit in response to the multiple failures of September 5.  

The Israelis in addition to the Mossad unleashed an anti-terrorism campaign called Operation Act of God with the goal of assassinating individuals in the PLO either directly or indirectly involved with the 1972 Munich Massacre.   

September 5, 1972 still remains 40 years later one of the most horrific days ever for the modern Olympic movement.  I agree with many people including the widows of those 11 Israeli athletes there should have been a moment of silence at the London Games opening ceremony.

Andre Spitzer, Kehat Shorr, Youssef Gutfreund, Amitzur Shapira, Yakov Springer, David Berger, Ze'ev Friedman, Mark Slavin and Eliezer Halfin, those of us who remember what happened on that horrific September 5 day, the world shall never forget you.  

Youssef Romano and Moshe Weinberg, we'll never forget your heroism in sacrificing your lives and giving enough of a warning to your teammates that it allowed several members of your delegation to escape. 

German police officer Anton Fliegerbauer also gave his life in order to rescue the Israeli Olympians.

And shame on you IOC for not taking the time during these just concluded games to remember the September 5 attack and all the people who died in it.

A Cristan History Minute- RadFems And Trans Folks

As I've pointed out along with other trans people, after 40 years, ain't no love lost between trans women and rad fems and that war has been going on since the early 70's.

They also hate the fact that their ability to just lie like Republicans  about us without being confronted about it is over thanks to the Net and legions of trans bloggers who ain't 'scurred' to call their butts out.

Cristan has come up with another interesting post shedding more light on our trans history light at Ehipassiko that deserves signal boosting and your attention. entitled 1974: Rad Fems and Trans Folks

It's ICTLEP's 20th Anniversary!

Twenty years ago this month at a southwest Houston Hilton hotel in August 1992 a groundbreaking event occurred that not only laid the foundation for trans human rights law and employment policy, it sowed the seeds that resulted in a trans inclusive ENDA and the EEOC trans ruling.

The conference was called the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, and it was created by Judge Phyllis Frye, 'the grandmother of the trans rights national transgender legal and political movement' to bring activists together to discuss transgender equality legislation seriously needed in the areas of housing, insurance, probate, employment, healthcare, military service, as well as criminal and family law..     

The first of six annual ICTLEP conferences were held in Houston and I first became aware of it not long after I began my own transition in April 1994.  Unfortunately my work schedule at the time kept me from going to the 1995, 1996 and 1997 ICTLEP conferences as my desire to get more politically involved in fighting for trans human rights increased.

ICTLEP was born out of Phyllis' idea in 1991 to start a moveable transgender conference specifically targeting transgender law issues.   The Gulf Coast Transgender Community (GCTC) group of which Phyllis was vice president at the time was receptive to the idea when she presented it to the GCTC board in early 1992 and provided funding for it.  

Since this was the pre-Internet days, mailing lists and ads were the primary way to get the word out about events in the trans community and we were fortunate in the Lone Star State to have one of the then biggest trans themed events happening in San Antonio in the Texas T-Party 


The Texas T-Party was organized by Linda and Cynthia Phillips and was drawing upwards of 300 people from Texas and around the country to come to the San Antonio area based event.  Its mailing list was vital in publicizing the nascent ICTLEP conferences and the Phillpses made sure when Judge Frye attended the T-Party she always got T-Party workshop space, waived fees, and brochures placed in all of the Phillips mail-outs.

“Without the Texas T-Party, I would have only reached half of the people I reached,” says Frye in a recent OutSmart magazine interview..



The first ICTLEP conference was a success and led to five other events based in Houston as well. 

Out of those ICTLEP events came not only papers such as the International Bill of Gender Rights and countless others that are the basis for much of the legal principles and policies we fight for as trans activists today, it also provided the means to train the early activists who later passed on the lessons and training they learned at the six ICTLEP conferences to people like myself who came on board starting in 1998 and later.  ICTLEP also led to our inclusion in the National LGBT Bar Association and their trans inclusive stances. 

So yes, it's past time we recognize ICTLEP's critical role in providing the foundations for us to build the modern trans rights movement and salute the 20th anniversary of the first ICTLEP conference this month.