A LETTER to the Editor in the January-February 2010 issue of this magazine sparked my interest in the Knights of the Clock, America’s first integrated gay and lesbian social club, founded in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. In the words of a 1956 publication titled Homosexuals Today; A Handbook of Organizations & Publications, its aim was “to promote fellowship and understanding between homosexuals themselves, specifically between other races and the Negro. … Special attention was given to the housing problems of interracial couples, of which there were several in the group.”
Archivists at ONE, Inc., in L.A. provided me with photocopies of original material, including full names of men, first names of women, addresses of members of the organization, and notes about meetings and social events. (At an early meeting it was known as the “Cloistered Loyal Order of Conclaved Knights of Sophisticracy,” and its organizational structure was inspired by Freemasonry. Those trappings soon faded away.) The article based on my research, “Unearthing the ‘Knights of the Clock,” was published in the May-June 2010 issue. A decade later, another Letter to the Editor (November-December 2020) inspired me to revisit my research and see what might have surfaced in the intervening years.
In my original research, I consulted Jonathan Katz’ book Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (1976), in which he stated that no articles of incorporation for the group could be found. In 2012, ONE was given a copy of those very papers, and I was able to obtain them. On June 11, 1951, a group using the name “The Clocks” filed articles of incorporation in the office of the Secretary of State of California. It was termed a “social, educational, and recreational corporation.” Signatories were Merton L. Byrd, Louis J. Wells, and Donald Grant. Byrd’s home address was given as the “location of its principal office.” Lorenzo Wilson was named President, and William Legg was named Secretary. The group also received a letter from the state exempting them from franchise tax.
Byrd and W. Dorr Legg, who are usually considered co-founders of the Knights of the Clock, were lovers. Byrd, an African-American man, and Legg, who was white, had left Legg’s hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in search of a place where they could find some semblance of acceptance as a mixed-race gay couple. They landed in L.A. in the late 1940s. Legg, who himself used multiple pseudonyms, including William Legg, was always very generous about giving Byrd credit for his role in the founding of the organization, stating that Byrd was the “person with the concept” for an integrated social club for gay men and lesbians. He called Byrd “friendly [and]outgoing” with a “sort of a quiet authority that everybody listened to,” but “a very enigmatic person in a way.” Legg, who had started his professional life as a landscape architect, died in 1994 at the age of 89. He was survived by his partner of many years, John (Johnny) Nojima, who had supported Legg financially, as earlier lovers had usually done as well. During World War II, Nojima had been incarcerated at the Manzanar Relocation Camp in California.
Michael J. Leclerc, a Massachusetts-based genealogist, responded to a request for research from the “Making Gay History” podcast, and unearthed hitherto-unknown background on Merton Byrd, who was born in Xenia, Ohio, in 1918, the youngest of eight children and the grandson of an enslaved man. Byrd enlisted in the Army in 1942 but was “released” from service less than a month later. Notes Leclerc: “Most of the Army service records from that period were destroyed in a fire.” A recent look in the Ancestry.com database turned up the fact that Byrd was a bartender at the time of his enlistment. In the late 1950s, while working as a bookkeeper for a demolition company in California, he was convicted of check forgery. He appealed the conviction but was denied a new trial. He died at an unknown location in 1976.
According to the Knights of the Clock file at ONE, Inc., at least one social event was scheduled to take place at the Wilfandel Club in L.A., which was founded in 1948 to provide “people of all races with a public meeting place.” It was—and still is—located in an elegant building where some of the biggest names of the day spoke or entertained. The NAACP is mentioned in the Knights meeting notes, but without any details. It is impossible to state with accuracy the number of people who attended meetings or events. In a 1982 lecture that Legg gave in L.A. to PFLAG, he mentioned attending very large parties, sometimes with members’ relatives or employers joining in. (Other former members of the group recall only small gatherings.) On a more serious note, Legg spoke at length about how difficult it was for people in interracial relationships to find housing or employment.
The desire to publish a newsletter or magazine seems to be one of the goals that led several members of the Knights—including Legg, Byrd, and flamenco dancer Antonio “Tony” Reyes—to join the Mattachine Society, which began publishing ONE magazine in 1953.
Ten years ago, I wrote about the need to explore the collections of other repositories. ONE, Inc. maintains extensive files in which one can find the papers of Legg and Reyes, among others. Did any of the Knights’ files migrate to other gay organizations following a very celebrated “heist” of papers in 1965 by another ONE, Inc. founder, Don Slater, due to personal and professional disputes with Legg? (Slater and Reyes were lovers.) What might the archives of the Wilfandel Club, and of the L.A. branch of the NAACP, reveal? Who were the lesbians whose first names appear in meeting notes? More research is waiting to be done on this fascinating and pioneering organization.
The author wishes to thank the archivists at ONE, Inc., for their assistance.
Martha E. Stone is the literary editor of this magazine.
