Wilda White
Wilda White was president of the University of Vermont Gay Student Union in the late 1970s. Today, she is a Mad Activist, Chair of Vermont’s Mental Health Crisis Response Commission, and the former executive director of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors. An attorney, she was also the inaugural executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, her alma mater.
The Gay Student Union was the only organization in the whole state of Vermont that was advocating on behalf of gay and lesbian people. When I got to UVM - so I came in 76. That was why I started that at UVM and there was a gay student union and it met on campus, but drew people from outside campus. So that was the place where people who weren't even affiliated with the university would come to meet other gay people outside of a bar. So at the time, the bar in Vermont or Burlington was the Taj Mahal. It was Indian restaurant by day and a gay bar by night.
Where was it located?
It was in downtown. It's not—wasn't on Pearl Street, because Pearl's became another gay bar. But I think it was on a street that ran parallel to Pearls. Maybe the next street over. I can't exactly remember the street. So that's where people went for the bar. And when they wanted kind of more something outside of a bar with the lights out, they attended UVM events. We would have some dances on campus, but we also convened conferences that attracted people from around the state and sometimes New England. So. Gay life was, was well, there were—you asked me what life was like for me. I mean, I met—most of the people I met who were lesbians were not students. So let's say there were fewer out lesbians on campus. Mostly people were closeted, but there were I found it, I mean, it was somewhat of a supportive community. Most of the people I met were men, frankly. So there were a lot more men involved.
Well, for most of the time I was at UVM, I was president of the Gay Student Union. And in that position I was pretty visible and I can remember being contacted by people from across the state who wanted to just meet me. And they would, you know back then there was no email. So I would get letters or telephone calls and people would drive to Burlington and I would meet them in the Howard Johnson's and just talk to them about their own personal experiences and struggles with coming out, trying to give them, you know, encourage them and support them. So that was a lot of what I did was just talk to other gay people about coming out and what to do about, you know, what was it like? I had parents who called me on behalf of their children wanting me to talk to them about coming out. And then we did—and then I just thought of myself as an activist, really. I mean, I wrote frequent letters to the editor. Like I said, I would convene these conferences, I would travel to other states for conferences. And that's kind of what I saw my role was just being who I was trying to advance the cause of social justice for gay and lesbians.
Organizing speakers’ bureaus, and then we'd go and talk to classrooms or churches or whoever wanted us. You know, other people on campus, we would talk to classes. Also, what was happening around that time was the Anita Bryant. And so we would kind of organize around that. We wrote letters to the editor. We—there was a group of gay people who, I think the minister would say stormed the church. But, so there was this very homophobic minister. One Sunday, about 35 gay and lesbian people showed up in his congregation. And he found that very uncomfortable. I remember he wrote a letter to the editor about it. So, I mean, we were, it was, I was—it was a good experience. I mean, I was happy with it. I thought it was a nice blend of people who wanted to be together kind of as an affinity group, but also wanted to do political work.