hall meeting. Only 11 persons were arrested, but they suffered at the hands of drunken policemen who broke one fellow's ribs, cut his eye and rolled him in poison ivy. A complete account of the raid appeared in the L. I. Press, complete with pictures, names, addresses and occupations. Most of those involved were executives of sorts.

The police announced future raids but denied brutality. The Islanders have engaged a lawyer to investigate the situation and go to court if necessary. Ten of the defendants pleaded guilty and paid $25.00 fines. One man pleaded not guilty and plans to fight the charge. He has a good case; the "rack" has a road leading to another community (The Pines) and the man claims he was on the road going to the grove for a visit.

The 4th was more crowded than ever. Many new faces said that they had read about Cherry Grove in Jess Stearn's book The Sixth Man and went to find out if it was true.

Many weekenders came from Atlantic City where police harrassment has gone to extremes.

A new gay area is developing known as Water Island. However, most of the ones who developed and built up The Grove are tired of being pioneers and are trying to preserve what they have.

The annual Drag Show, "Odds and Ends" was a smash sell-out. Female Impersonators Lynne Carter and T. C. Jones appeared at the hotel.

Everything is still tres gai.

TAMPA TEMPEST

Many readers not living in Southern California admonish this reporter for talking so much about

one

unfair treatment of homosexuals. These readers naively believe that there are no problems except in Los Angeles. But other readers who remember the "Miami Hurricane" of 1954 in which homosexuals of that city were persecuted, threatened, arrested, murdered, etc., as vagrant crackpots and perverts without constitutional rights realize that homosexuals everywhere are top candidates for any new and large scale witch-hunt, and likely victims of vice-squad malpractices and badly written laws when corrupt politicians and opportunistic officials stampede any community that permits itself to be so used.

The current Tampa situation illustrates what trumped up hysteria can do in a few weeks to any city. The first of June after a year of snooping through the use of twoway mirrors, still and motion picture cameras, and radio equipment installed in a rest room of a North Tampa shopping center where Sheriff Ed Blackburn's deputies lurked, peeping and listening. straining for every juicy detail as they adjusted their mirrors for better viewing, turned the knobs of their recording devices to tune in more clearly every slurp or whisperassiduously gathering their evidence (exhibits A to Z) only out of a sense of duty, of course, 30 persons were arrested on morals charges. The actual arrests took place in a series of early morning raids by a team of city-county-state agents.

Sheriff Blackburn said, "It's the biggest morals crackdown, to my knowledge, in the history of the state of Florida."

Among those arrested were an elementary school principal, a Doctor and operator of a school for boys, a former Air Force Major and many others of professional stand-

24