By Olivia Gruber
Doing research is hard – this is a surprise to absolutely no one. Doing research on a topic that’s actively trying to hide itself? That’s nearly impossible. When I say “a topic that’s actively trying to hide itself” I mean a place or thing that didn’t particularly want to be known for fear of retribution, and in this instance in particular I mean queer history.
For the better part of thirteen weeks now our class has been doing research on Howard Street. We’ve delved into the world of jazz as it was seen in Akron’s history and its impact on the historically Black community there. In turn, this led us to wanting to delve deeper and uncover the secrets of other hidden places relevant to Akron’s history.
As such, I’ve been actively investigating a place called The Lincoln Bar. The Lincoln Bar – or, as my group and I have affectionately taken to calling it, simply, The Lincoln – was a gay bar at first 13 and later 28 South Howard Street from 1948 to 1967. It was part of Akron’s jazz neighborhood. Not only was The Lincoln a gay bar, but it’s often considered to be Akron’s first gay bar. That being said, finding out just about anything else about it has been nearly impossible.
With the help of two fairly detailed theses and a small handful of articles from the Akron Beacon Journal, I was able to paste together a half-baked semi-story about this place that had existed for nearly twenty years, but beyond that? Nothing. Despite my best efforts, The Lincoln remains more like an urban legend than the real, four-walled, possibly brick-built building it was.
The information I did manage to scrounge up was rudimentary at best. I learned that the bar moved at some point, but not the exact year during which it did. I learned that it had three different owners and was only able to find when it changed hands thanks to obituaries in The Akron Beacon Journal. I learned that it was host to a number of unsavory events – muggings, beatings, illegal liquor sales, the death of its owner – via one or two sentences sprinkled across a number of papers. Past that? Zilch.
For being Akron’s first recorded gay bar you’d think there might be more information on the place, but, in a way, it makes sense that there’s not. Gay marriage became legal less than a decade ago and even now – in 2024, almost sixty years since the closing of The Lincoln – queer people face discrimination.
So why, then, would The Lincoln want to draw attention to itself, especially when most of the press coverage it was getting was negative? One upsetting fact of history is that it tends to be written by the victors and in cases like these where the battles lay hidden between police raids and bad press the victor just so happens to be the majority, so it only makes sense that a place inhabited by the minority would want to avoid being actively known.
The Lincoln, and many other queer spaces during its time, may have remained hidden for its own safety and that of its patrons. On the other hand, it could have just as easily been purposefully erased like so many places are when the majority wants them to remain so. The loss of documentation and recordings of historically minority-inhabited spaces is a common enough occurrence that it wouldn’t entirely be surprising to hear this had happened in this case.
All that being said, unlike history, the future can change, and I hope that as time moves forward we can aim to tell stories from other perspectives so that The Lincolns of The Now can be known to those in the future.
Have information or stories about the Lincoln Bar? Contact us at [email protected].
Sources:
Monegan, Max Turner. 2018. A Different Kind of Community: Queerness and Urban Ambiguity in Northeast Ohio, 1945-1980.
“Asks Again To Shift His Liquor Permit.” Akron Beacon Journal. October 25, 1967.
“State Board Cites 2 Akron Drink Spots.” Akron Beacon Journal. April 17, 1955.