"Seeing all kinds of people… people who were experiencing human anguish and confusion and hurt. They had the courage to look at what and where they wanted to be in their lives. I help shepherd them where they want to grow to their best self." – Freeman T. Freeman
Freeman Thomas Freeman was 75 years old and retired when he moved to Rhode Island as an LGBTQ elder with his husband in 2014. To build connections with the LBGTQ community in a new area and to face new challenges for him and his community, Freeman decided to volunteer at SAGE-RI (Service and Advocacy for Gay Elders RI), now known as Pride in Aging RI. He joined others to advocate, teach about and support the needs and concerns of LGBTQ elders aging alone. Born in Dover, Delaware, in 1939, Freeman was one of 16 living children. After graduating from the University of Delaware, he moved to Rochester, New York, where he met his husband. Together, they parented his nephew Charles from the age of five through adulthood. As he was raised in a segregated town, Freeman found it difficult raising an African-American child within an interracial gay relationship throughout the 1970s in upstate New York. His advocacy work began at The MOCHA (Men of Color Health Awareness) Center and AIDS Rochester (the AIDS Center at The University of Rochester Medical Center) as a social worker and volunteer for the Buddies Program. In 1988, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) selected The University of Rochester Medical Center as one of the first research sites in the United States to conduct HIV vaccine studies. Freeman volunteered to be a trial patient for the vaccine, and what began as a four-year commitment to regular blood work and interviews turned into a decade-long experiment. According to Freeman, “When I talked to my Black friends, they were horrified that I was doing this given the history of how the medical community had treated Black people in the past,” but he felt difficult times called for difficult decisions. Still, when he tried to recruit volunteers from the Black community, he would “be thrown out and called all kinds of names and [experienced] abusive behaviors because it was just…such strong condemnation of my participation in… these kinds of vaccine trials.” When a local paper in Rochester interviewed Freeman about his involvement in the trials, he lost friends, associates, and clients.After moving to RI and becoming a volunteer at Pride in Aging RI, Freeman’s offerings included building programs, joining the board, and helping to organize a conference. LGBTQ elders experience unique needs and issues; according to Freeman, “LGBTQ elders have been separated from their families or have no children and so as we get older, what do we do about long term care?” To address this, Freeman and his colleagues “asked gay elders to look at conversations about funeral arrangements, about social isolation, about who they considered as family, about abusive behaviors that they were enduring from friends and other people.” Pride in Aging RI also hosted training sessions for students in the medical field on how to treat gay elders, as LGBTQ elders still find it difficult to navigate the medical sector and interact with staff.Since moving to Rhode Island, Freeman has become an invaluable advocate for the community of LGBTQ elders, another chapter in a life of service to others: “I am honored and thankful [for] whatever this thing in the universe that gave me this impetus and this wanting to be helpful to other people.”]]>On November 18, 1949, at 56 Randall Street, in the mostly poor, mostly black, Randall Square neighborhood, local African Americans crowded into the new Celebrity Club bar. It wasn’t quite finished, but the crowd didn’t pay much attention to the details of interior decoration as it took in, according to historian Jason McGill, “the sounds of the first of innumerable jam sessions featuring some of Providence’s finest jazz talent.” White jazz lovers also came in to sit at the bar, enjoy the beer, and hear the best music in Providence.
The Celebrity Club was founded by Paul Filippi, an Italian American who loved jazz, and was eager to make a difference in a segregated city. It was the first interracial club in New England, welcoming black and white musicians and audiences. Before it opened, African Americans in Providence who wanted to listen to live jazz, or even just go out for dinner, had to cram into narrow, crowded black neighborhood clubs or travel to other cities.
The club was an immediate success. It tripled in size to accommodate over 300 guests. In its heyday, from 1949 to 1960, famous black and white jazz artists played the club, including Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, and Erroll Garner. It attracted African American community members and Providence’s white elite. The local black newspaper wrote about Nat King Cole’s 1951 appearance:
"People from all over New England have poured this way into this Randall street house of big name bands. … Judge Dooley and a party of six complimented Paul Filippi on his ability to bring nationally known entertainment to Providence. Other community leaders in the business and professional field are phoning in for reservations."
In addition to providing blacks and whites a chance to enjoy the best jazz music in Providence, the Celebrity Club worked for racial equality. It maintained, notes historian McGill, “a solid stance of openness and equality,” by providing its performers what one of them called “a musician’s paradise” and paying its African American employees top union wages.
But not everyone was happy to see a successful interracial club. The Providence police raided it regularly, harassing black club-goers. Filippi sold the Celebrity Club in 1958, and it closed in 1960. A commemorative plaque was erected in 2013 and can be viewed on the east side of the Marriott Hotel where Charles and Ashburton Streets merge.
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