Poland identified with nudist ideals while also embracing the sensual pleasures of going naked among groups of men and women. Like nudists, he believed that the “body was naturally invigorated by sunshine, fresh air, and water,” and he repeated nudists’ arguments that the acceptance of nudity in everyday life would “break the vicious cycle which produces sexual criminals.”36 He also identified with the struggle to make nudism legal in the United States when he asserted that the “question of nudity is essentially the right to come and go without having one’s own desires restricted by others who are unwilling to adopt the same desires.”37 Yet he also critiqued the sexual reticence of nudist clubs. He objected to the assumption that men who were “erotically stimulated” would be “inclined to impose themselves sexually on another.” Instead, he believed that signs of “sexual excitement” were “normal and may be construed as a compliment if no coercion or force is involved.”38 Poland believed the eroticism of the naked body needed to be accepted rather than denied in order to remove the shame and guilt attached to sex.
Poland saw nudists as allies in his struggle for sexual freedom. In 1964, he sent an open letter to three hundred nudist clubs and groups introducing the New York City League for Sexual Freedom and soliciting support for a campaign to make “marked-off sections of public beaches” available to nudists.39 He encouraged nudists across the country to make formal applications to their local and state governments to “use at least part of their tax-supported public beaches in the nude.” Through this campaign, he hoped to attract newspaper and television attention and to create public discussion and debate. Inspired by his experiences working with CORE, he called on nudist organizations to “press for their rights by means of demonstrations” including the types of “nonviolent civil disobedience in the tradition of the negro freedom movement.”40 He suggested a “nude wade-in at a public beach similar to Negro wade-ins at white beaches,” where clothed and unclothed demonstrators who were willing to “suffer arrest” demanded the right to sunbathe nude at public beaches.41 Calling on nudists to advocate for nude sunbathing at public beaches, to participate in public demonstrations and campaigns, and to embrace the struggle for racial equality, Poland outlined a new vision for American nudism.
Poland’s letters drew mixed responses from nudists. Many club directors worried that public demonstrations would ultimately undermine the respectable character of the movement. The director of the Sunny Sands Resort, “A Family Nudist Resort with the Accent on Comfort” located in Daytona Beach, Florida, expressed interest in Poland’s “wade-ins,” but he hesitated to “connect [the] club with anything as radical as a wade-in.”42 A member of the Christian Naturalist Society, located in Baltimore, Maryland, agreed with Poland that “all beaches, parks, or recreation areas should be available to nudists” but doubted that “‘wade ins’ would be effective in the same sense as ‘sit-ins’” since a “roped off section” would just create a “morbid body consciousness among the non-nudists.”43 Other nudists expressed outright hostility to the activist goals of the League for Sexual Freedom. A member of the Shangri-La Guest Ranch in Phoenix, Arizona, asserted that nudists “would never go to a beach, and be in the nude, if non-nudists were allowed to attend.” Casting aspersions on Poland’s character, he wrote that it seemed unlikely that members of the League for Sexual Freedom had ever been to a nudist resort, and if they had, he speculated it “must have been a rotten one” since a good nudist resort is for “clean minded people.” The letter writer made little effort to hide his disdain for young nudists interested in sexual liberation. He wrote that his club had “expelled 3 couples that should have made application to join [Poland’s] sexual freedom league” and warned Poland, “keep your homos there as they could get their neck broke if they show up here.”44 With varying degrees of vitriol, the older, more established nudist membership rejected Poland’s calls for activism on behalf of nude beaches.
Other responses to Poland’s open letter revealed a substantial number of nudists, young and old, black and white, who supported a more vocal, sexually permissive, and racially tolerant nudist movement. The director of the Stonehenge nudist club in New York admired the “progressive courage” of the League for Sexual Freedom and chose to include Poland’s letter in his newsletter along with a short summary of the group’s goals. He believed that the group “may be an answer to our needs” to “bring our world out of its dark-age ignorant mentality.”45 Another letter, from an African American married nudist couple, asserted their commitment to “freedom in all of its phases.” They felt “there was too much repression in regard to sex” and applauded Poland’s efforts to create an “organized resistance to this.”46 Although most nudists chose to ignore Poland’s calls for a more activist nudist movement, the support he did receive encouraged him to make public nudity one of the defining issues of his League for Sexual Freedom.
Despite the mixed support of organized nudism, on August 25, 1965, Jefferson Poland, wearing a flower in his hair and joined by two twenty-one-year-old women and a number of clothed picketers, carried out his nude “wade-in” at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.47 The League for Sexual Freedom’s first planned act of civil disobedience drew a number of reporters and a large crowd of spectators. The three nervous demonstrators made their way through the crowd to the water behind a placard that read, “WHY BE ASHAMED OF YOUR BODY?” After removing their clothes under the water, the three swam around the bay while reporters and the crowd urged them to return to shore. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity for publicity, Poland and his two fellow demonstrators came out of the water, holding hands, showing their naked bodies, and posing for the cameras. The police quickly arrived, covered the three with blankets, and arrested them for violating Section 115 of San Francisco’s Municipal Code, which punished individuals for “swimming without proper attire.” Although the event required Poland to spend five weekends in jail, it generated unprecedented interest in nude sunbathing at public beaches and recreational areas. At the very least, Poland felt confident that the “nudist message had reached San Francisco’s large and growing ‘hippy’ minority through the mass media.”48 Encouraged by the success of his nude “wade-in,” Poland continued his campaign for public nudity in Golden Gate Park, on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, and at several local Bay Area beaches.
After the nude “wade-in,” student sexual freedom groups formed on college campuses around the country and advocated for students’ access to birth control, called for an end to university policies that regulated sex on campus, and experimented with social nudity. The East Bay Sexual Freedom League, located near the University of California–Berkeley campus, sponsored a number of “nude parties” held at private residences where couples could attend, go naked if they chose to, and engage in sexual activity with willing partners.49 In contrast to the secretive “swinging” activities at nudist clubs, the orgies held around the Berkeley campus in 1966 and 1967 were widely publicized and attracted single men and women, gay men and lesbians, African Americans, and respectable middle-aged married couples. Richard Thorne, a twenty-nine-year-old African American and the head of the East Bay Sexual Freedom League, explained that the parties helped attendees to free themselves from the shame and guilt attached to sex. He declared, “man will only become free when he can overcome his own guilt and when society stops trying to manage his sex life for him.” An article in Time magazine reported that the emergence of the nude parties continued an effort by students and nonstudents to “test limits of the permissible at Berkeley.”50 Through activist organizations, public demonstrations, and notorious sex parties, a new generation of young nudists rejected the heteronormative boundaries that had long defined American nudism and transformed the movement into a vehicle for sexual liberation.
On August 25, 1965, Jefferson Poland, wearing a flower in his hair and joined by two twenty-one-year-old women and a number of clothed picketers, carried out his nude “wade-in” at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park. (Lee Baxandall, W
orld Guide to Nude Beaches and Recreation [New York: Stonehill, 1980], 40)
The Free Beach Movement
After Jefferson Poland’s nude “wade-in,” groups of young men and women as well as members of local nudist clubs and dedicated beachgoers began looking for accessible beaches that provided enough privacy to go naked without offending other visitors or local residents. They searched for beaches surrounded by high cliffs, located far away from busy roads, and with few overlooking houses. A small, informal community quickly emerged and provided interested nude beachgoers information about safe, convenient locations and offered transportation to distant locales through ride sharing. This filled a void left by the reluctance of organized nudism to advocate for nude beach use. In the late 1950s, a weekend nudist event held at a beach near Santa Cruz, California, failed to persuade members to put aside their concerns about the social and financial risks of engaging in public activism.51 By the mid-1960s, groups all along the California coast gathered at secluded beach sites with guitars, bongo drums, harmonicas, and flutes and enjoyed the sun, surf, and ocean air both with and without clothing. Sunbathing, socializing, holding heated discussions, dancing, drinking, using recreational drugs, and occasionally engaging in a variety of sexual behaviors, nude beachgoers encouraged a far more open and inclusive environment than the restrictive atmosphere enforced at most nudist clubs.
The growing informal interest in nude beaches led to the formation of an organization dedicated to identifying ideal nude beach sites and to making these locations permanent and legal. Darrell Tarver, a twenty-eight-year-old air force veteran from Texas and a graduate of San Francisco State University, established the Committee for Free Beaches in 1965. Like many members of the ASA, he found nude swimming and sunbathing “exhilarating, refreshing, and entirely wholesome.” Tarver believed that people should be “permitted to use . . . beaches in this manner without suffering the harassments of indecent exposure laws.” He applauded the many “free beaches” in Europe that legally permitted men and women to swim and sunbathe naked.52 At these beaches, each individual chose “for himself what to wear, or not to wear.” In contrast to nudist clubs, free beaches maintained a “free and open atmosphere” that lacked the rules and social pressures forcing people to remove their clothes.53 Women, often a minority at nudist clubs and frequently pressured by husbands or boyfriends to join and participate in nudist activities, found the lack of coercion at free beaches especially appealing. The acceptance of clothing at the beach removed some of the discomfort and fear of undressing in front of the opposite sex and made free beaches far more welcoming for women who had a casual interest in nude swimming or sunbathing. Using European free beaches as a model, the Committee for Free Beaches began locating “areas suitable for nude bathing,” sponsoring a “number of beach parties,” and negotiating with property owners and public officials for the purpose of establishing a permanent free beach.”54
Thirty miles south of San Francisco, the San Gregario State Beach provided the ideal setting for the parties and activities hosted by the Committee for Free Beaches. The committee identified a stretch of beach about a mile and a half long that ran just north of the state beach and south of several private residences. Hidden away by towering cliffs and a safe distance from the main highway, casual skinny-dippers had long frequented the site to swim and sunbathe in the nude without upsetting other beachgoers, attracting police attention, or disturbing neighbors living in the area. Tarver arranged for legal access to the site by negotiating an arrangement with a local landowner named Walter Bridge, who allowed visitors to use his road and park in exchange for a one-dollar fee per car. To avoid trouble with police and local residents, organizers also established a lookout system in which two volunteers, armed with field glasses and walkie-talkies, stood guard and quickly alerted nude bathers of approaching visitors or police. At first, news of the site spread by word-of-mouth, and small groups of thirty or forty people visited the site on weekends and arrived in carpools organized by the Committee for Free Beaches or the East Bay Sexual Freedom League. As word spread and underground newspapers such as the Berkeley Barb began advertising the location and its activities, crowds of five hundred or more began making the trek to San Gregorio Beach.55
The more open atmosphere and relaxed social setting of the San Gregorio Free Beach attracted many local nudists in addition to rebellious Bay Area university students. After visiting the site, Poland reported that the “most eager participants were several families from local nudist parks.” The nudists visiting San Gregorio, according to Poland, disliked the “social cliques, racial barriers, and emotional blocks often found in nudist parks” and saw the free beach environment as a welcome alternative.56 While many members of the ASA remained reluctant to advocate for nude sunbathing on public beaches, other nudists felt that the establishment of a “free beach” in the United States marked a new era of acceptance for nudism. Cec Cinder, a nudist active in the ASA since the mid-1950s and a frequent contributor to several nudist publications, felt compelled to visit San Gregorio in the summer of 1967 after hearing about the nude beach from fellow nudists. When he saw about eighty nudists and an equal number of clothed men and women gallivanting on the beach without any fighting or police harassment and only a limited number of voyeurs, Cinder declared that the “movement had entered a new phase”: “We had broken out of our ghettoes. We had taken wing. Now our future was limitless.” It made no difference to him that “this pioneering effort was the result of Bay Area students and hippies rather than the American Sunbathing Association.”57 The popularity of “free beaches” among nudists reflected a growing dissatisfaction with the restrictive policies of nudist clubs and their insular social environment as well as a greater willingness to openly practice nudism.
The sexually liberated atmosphere of the “free beach” especially appealed to many gay men and women, who saw the sites as an opportunity to relocate the naked social interactions they enjoyed in urban bathhouses to a more open and enjoyable setting. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, gay men had appropriated urban public bathhouses that Progressive Era reformers originally set up to provide bathing facilities for tenement dwellers. Hidden away from public view, bathhouses afforded privacy and protection for men looking to engage in sexual activity with other men.58 The central place that the bathhouse occupied in the urban gay community for much of the twentieth century likely influenced homophile activists and organizations in the postwar period to embrace public nudity as a way of articulating homosexual liberation. Rudolf Gernreich, one of the cofounders of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s, openly identified himself as a nudist, and according to the historian David Allyn, he considered “freeing people from bodily shame . . . an important first step in preventing political repression.”59 The emergence of a more visible and vocal gay liberation movement after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 led to numerous instances of homosexual men and women publicly removing their clothes to advocate for sexual freedom and to communicate gay pride. In the spring of 1970, the Gay Liberation Front, a Marxist gay rights group, grabbed headlines when it participated in an antiwar rally in Washington, D.C., by wading naked in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.60 The opportunity to go naked with other men and women on a beach rather than in cramped, crowded, and dark bathhouses represented another way to advocate for gay liberation.
Gay men and lesbians interested in nude sunbathing found a place in the sun alongside student-led organizations such as the Sexual Freedom League and progressive nudist families. The influential role that Poland’s Sexual Freedom League played in establishing free beaches in California reassured gay men and lesbians that they would be welcome at the beach. Poland identified himself as bisexual, and he vocally stressed the importance of gay rights. He even attempted to strip off his clothes at the first gay pride parade in Los Angeles, only to be stopped by the head of the gay rights organization ONE, Inc., who feared that this would lead to police harassment.61 Beginning in
the late 1960s, Baker Beach in San Francisco, Brooks Avenue Beach near Venice in Los Angeles, and Riis Beach in New York City developed reputations as popular places for gay men and women to sunbathe in the nude and to cruise for sexual companionship. Armistead Maupin captured the growing popularity of the free beach among San Francisco’s vibrant gay and lesbian community in the 1970s in his iconic Tales of the City. He described a visit to “Devil’s Slide beach” through the fictional character Michael, a homosexual, and his roommate and close friend, Mona, a lesbian. The “flowered hippie vans, city clunkers, organic pickups with shingled gypsy houses, and a dusty pack of Harley-Davidsons” that “jammed” the parking lot signaled to readers that Devil’s Slide was a “free beach” that entertained the hippie community as much as gay men and women.62 Maupin’s description of Michael and Mona walking a great distance from the highway, paying a ticket taker a dollar for both of them to enter, climbing over rocks, and then settling down on a “sandy cove nestled amid the rocks” captured the free beach experience introduced at the San Gregorio Free Beach. Maupin also alluded to the potential for cruising and the opportunity to meet new sexual companions when Michael answers Mona’s complaint that it must be “wall to wall flesh down there” with a leering “I hope so.”63
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