Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in History

Department

History

First Reader/Committee Chair

Alicia Gutierrez-Romine

Abstract

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 14, 1937, a group of deputy sheriffs and military police surrounded a secluded cabin on the outskirts of Riverside and forced their way inside, arresting everyone on the premises for conspiracy to violate California Penal Code sections 288a and 286: oral copulation and sodomy. Though same-sex relations were outlawed, these men had sought to create a place of privacy for themselves—only to have it surveilled and raided by members of law enforcement. The subsequent trial, People v. Jordan, was a landmark case for the city of Riverside. Many histories of LGBTQ Californians focus on San Francisco or Los Angeles; however, the expansion of roads, military bases, and migration should encourage us to widen our lens. This coordinated arrest, by civilian and military police, was unusual, but significant in its suggestion that even before World War II began, the military was interested in purging presumed homosexuals from its ranks. The documents from this trial, as set out in the Clerk’s and Reporter’s transcripts, provide a clear view of how LGBTQ people were treated in the Inland Empire during the late 1930s after the end of the “Pansy Craze” and before the beginning of the Second World War.

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