A night at the Sweet Gum Head Drag, drugs, disco, and Atlanta's gay revolution

A question: What on earth is a Sweet Gum Head? The answer: a 1970s Atlanta nightclub that billed itself as "The Showplace of the South" and was famous for its elaborate drag shows. The club does yeoman service as the setting for Padgett's deeply researched, fascinating history of gay life in Atlanta in the 1970s. Putting individual human faces on that life are three paradigmatic men: John Greenwell, who, as Rachel Wells, was arguably Atlanta's most celebrated drag queen and a staple performer at the Sweet Gum Head; next there's the often angry gay-rights advocate Bill Smith, who believed in challenging authority in any way he could and so helped spur the growth of Atlanta's gay civil-rights movement; and, lastly, there's the sometimes gay-friendly mayor of Atlanta at the time, Maynard Jackson. Making cameo appearances are Burt Reynolds, Liberace, and a young RuPaul. Though Atlanta is only one city, it serves here as an effective microcosm of American gay life in the '70s, and its story is an important addition to the history of gay life in America.

Journalist Padgett (Hummer) frames this hodgepodge history of 1970s gay Atlanta around the stories of a drag queen and a gay rights activist. Central to the South's role in the gay rights movement, Atlanta (a "city with just a single skyscraper" in 1969) was rife with police harassment and community hostility toward gays, but also ripe for transformation, thanks to white flight and the 1973 election of the city's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, who was determined to be "an ally of the gay community." In 1971, 20-year-old John Greenwell left Huntsville, Ala., for Atlanta and quickly rose to drag stardom, performing as Rachel Wells at the Sweet Gum Head nightclub. Meanwhile, Bill Smith, the son of devout Baptists who never accepted his sexuality, led the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, worked as a city commissioner, and published the South's leading gay newspaper before he "lost control" of his drug addictions. Padgett can be a little too on-the-nose (of drag, he writes, "Sometimes, to find out who we really are, we have to become someone else"), and his selection of profile subjects feels somewhat arbitrary. Still, LGBTQ history buffs will be thrilled to see the Deep South take a turn in the spotlight. (June)

A history of gay culture in 1970s Atlanta. Padgett revives a significant decade of the South's queer history through the experiences of two pivotal figures: activist Bill Smith and drag performer John Greenwell. The author dutifully paints his home city as a place formerly seething with open hostility toward queer communities, with rampant homophobic harassment, bar raids, and arrests. But change was inevitable, and Padgett leads us through the revolution via archival research and interview material. Greenwell, who left his Huntsville, Alabama, home a couple years after high school, found strength, solidarity, and unique stardom at the Sweet Gum Head nightclub as stage persona Rachel Wells. Meanwhile, Smith, despite being raised by devout Baptists ("his mother had begged him, and his military father had ordered him, to change"), "lurched into politics" and protested against anti-gay legislation while organizing the Georgia Gay Liberation Front group. His efforts were greatly aided by the election of Atlanta's first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, who advocated for gay rights. Smith became a city commissioner and went on to oversee the region's gay newspaper, the Atlanta Barb, often using its pages as an activist platform. Padgett sketches both profiles with evenhanded journalistic precision while grounding the book's core at the Sweet Gum Head, a venue incorporating "an intoxicating blend of drag, drugs, disco, and revolution" until its closure in 1981. The author illustrates both the intimacy and the nasty melodrama of nightclub life, and he demonstrates the significant achievements of Smith's activism, the scourge of Christian crusader Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaigns, and Smith's eventual downfall due to his drug addiction. Padgett also acknowledges Sweet Gum owner Frank Powell, who made his club a mecca of self-expression. The author's analysis also encompasses themes of identity and gender fluidity and creatively marks the progress made by Southern queer communities in terms of sexual freedom and equal rights. A balanced, colorfully depicted portrait of a Southern LGBTQ+ movement. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.