Gay Democratic Caucus holds first meeting in Philly
Adapted from reporting by PGN staff
The Gay Democratic Caucus of Philadelphia held its first meeting in early March as the election year of 1976 continued to see increased activity by gay people in grassroots party politics around the state.
The group helped get gay people registered in time to vote in the April 27 primary in Pennsylvania and campaigned in support of the openly gay candidates who are running for Democratic division posts: Jeff Britten, Tom Tages, Jack Freil and Harry Langhorne, politics reporter for PGN.
Started by Britten, the Gay Democratic Caucus of Philadelphia made contacts with similar political groups across the country to get more gay people involved in political work.
Woman fights for fair treatment of women on Philly police force
Adapted from reporting by Denise Keiller
A woman who joined the Philadelphia Police Department in 1965 continued to fight discrimination against women on the force.
Penelope Brace said she and her lawyers were thinking of appealing an agreement made March 2, 1976, between Philadelphia and the Justice Department stipulating that the city police would hire 100 women as officers by the end of 1976 and study their performance over the following two years to evaluate them on beat patrols and other skills.
“I would suggest the Justice Department conduct its own two-year study to determine why it cannot comply with its own civil-rights obligations,” Brace said, “before it suggests that women are so inferior as a class that they must be studied.”
The agreement released $4 million in Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funds that were being withheld because of Brace’s sex-discrimination suit.
Brace said she passed promotion exams twice for the rank of sergeant, but she was never upgraded, despite police officials naming her one of the top 10 officers in the Delaware Valley in the mid-1960s. When Brace lodged a formal complaint in 1973, she said she was transferred to a division far from her home, making travel to work inconvenient.
— compiled by Paige Cooperstein