What was Marie Equi doing in jail on Christmas Eve? She felt she had no other choice with a blatant injustice inflicted upon those whose cause she championed. Here’s what went down:

“While many Portlanders spent the day before Christmas in 1913 preparing for the holiday, Equi learned that unemployed men arrested for demanding food and lodging were being relegated to the rock pile. She rushed to the courthouse, where she found the judge mumbling the sentences. When she asked him three times to speak louder, he gave her a five-day fine for contempt of court. She tried to shame him with the news that the old man he had sentenced the day before had died after only a few hours’ busting rocks. For her impertinence, the judge increased her jail time. She refused to post the bail offered by her supporters.

“Equi spent a few hours in jail before the judge offered to release her if she apologized. She declined. The Christmas Eve standoff was resolved only when hundreds of men – “her army,” the newspapers reported – packed the courtroom and hallways with a low, grumbling protest over the holding of the woman who had stood up for them. The judge relented and freed Equi. Although the dailies reported that Equi had apologized first, Helen Lawrence Walters, a Bohemian artist and socialist familiar with the incident, advised in her journal, “Don’t believe it.”

Excerpted from Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions
by Michael Helquist, OSU Press, 2015.

Shopping for the holidays? Find Marie Equi at bookstores and online, in print and digital formats including Kindle on Amazon. 

The official mock-up of Marie Equi’s plaque for San Francisco’s Rainbow Honor Walk was unveiled last month during a presentation by author Michael Helquist (Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions). The rendering reveals Equi’s likeness, her signature, and a description of her efforts to achieve a more just society. In spring 2018 the 3’ by 3’ bronze plaque will be installed in the sidewalk along Market Street, San Francisco’s primary thoroughfare, as part of a tribute to deceased LGBTQ individuals worldwide who made significant contributions to their fields.   

Equi will join a stellar group of nearly three dozen individuals who have already been recognized with plaques, ranging from activists Bayard Rustin, Harry Hay, and Jane Addams; artists Frida Kahlo and Keith Haring, authors Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, and Federico Garcia Lorca; scientist Alan Turing, singer Sylvester James, and Jose Sarria, founder of the Imperial Court System.

The Rainbow Honor Walk is an all-volunteer project based in San Francisco’s LGBTQ community. Begun in 2011, the organization funds production and placement of the bronze plaques through community outreach and private donations. (Each plaque costs about $5000).  The City and County of San Francisco collaborates with planning and installation and the city’s art commission approved the design. Artist Carlos Casuso of Madrid, Spain was selected to design the plaques following an international design competition. The first 24 plaques were installed mostly along Castro Street in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood, then organizers extended the route on either side of Market Street with the next batch of twenty-four plaques.  

In November 2017 Helquist and historian Paula Lichtenberg presented a talk at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco that illustrated the shift in the general public’s attitudes toward same-sex intimate relationships from the late 1890s to the 1920s. Helquist referred to the Oregon public’s general acceptance of Marie Equi’s relationship with her companion Bessie Holcomb in the mid-1890s contrasted with the harsh disapproval she encountered during a public inheritance dispute involving her intimate companion in Portland in 1906.

Although Marie Equi’s reputation extends far beyond the Pacific Northwest, she was not particularly well-known in San Francisco’s activist, women’s and LGBTQ communities. Her recent biography significantly changed that.  

For more information on Marie Equi see michaelhelquist.com and for the Rainbow Honor Walk (including bios of the first round of honorees) see rainbowhonorwalk.org,