In the 1970s and 1980s, my father, Sam Merrill, had an interview segment on a local radio show in New York City: Direct News. When he passed away, he left a crate full of vinyl records, each with a radio show on it. I’m digitizing and archiving his interview segments here.
In 1947, a Canadian drag queen named John Herbert was arrested in Toronto—in drag. It was his second arrest—after his first one, he’d been robbed, and his assailants lied and said Herbert had solicited them for sex. This time, he was convicted of gross indecency.1 Herbert had an all-around horrible time in both of his prison stints, though he continued to perform in drag for his fellow prisoners. Based on his experiences, he wrote a play: Fortune and Men’s Eyes.
That play inspired a Broadway producer, David Rothenberg, to become an advocate for prisoners in the United States. In 1967, he founded the Fortune Society, a nod to Herbert.
In this segment, my dad interviews Rothenberg about incarceration and recidivism.
Prior to this interview, Rothenberg had acted as a civilian observer during the Attica Prison riot. The prisoners nominated him. In the years after this interview, Rothenberg helped distribute health literature to prisoners during the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, stepping around various prohibitions on using the word “gay.”
In 1978, the U.S. had about 300,000 prisoners, or 135 prisoners per 100,000 residents. Today, it has over 1.8 million, or 575 prisoners per 100,000 residents—more than four times the 1978 rate.
Rothenberg is still alive at 91 years old, and the Fortune Society continues to operate.
In 2018, the Governor General expunged the records of Canadians charged under various anti-LGBTQ laws, granting Herbert some posthumous justice. Today, Canada’s incarceration rate is 90 prisoners per 100,000 residents—about the same as it was in 1978.
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