The China Mail - How a Chapman Student Revived the Forgotten History of San Francisco's Lavender Panthers

Long before Pride parades became corporate-sponsored civic events requiring city permits, the queer community in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district engaged in literal street defense. At the center of this violent and often overlooked chapter of history stands Reverend Ray Broshears, an ordained minister and self-published newspaper editor who founded the Lavender Panthers, an armed vigilante patrol. This historical narrative was nearly lost to time until Chapman University student Kaustubh "Vick" Singh produced a documentary that reconstructed Broshears’ life from fragmented archives and interviews.

Broshears, born Earl Raymond Allen in 1935 in Centreville, Illinois, was raised primarily by his grandmother and aunts after his mother remarried. He demonstrated early religious leadership, teaching Bible lessons at age 14 and serving as Sunday School superintendent shortly thereafter. He left school at 16 to support his family financially and later served in the U.S. Navy as a medical corpsman. His military service ended with a medical discharge in 1955, following what associates believe was a severe head injury.

By the late 1960s, Broshears had relocated to San Francisco and reinvented himself as "Reverend Ray." He became ordained through the Universal Life Church and later the Orthodox Episcopal Catholic Church. In 1971, he founded the Gay Activists Alliance and helped organize San Francisco’s first gay pride parade the following year. Operating out of a hotel room in the Tenderloin, he published a self-made newspaper called the *Gay Crusader*, which served as both a community bulletin and a platform for his personal views. He also established the Helping Hands Community Center and the Old Folks Defense League, dedicating resources to the neighborhood’s poor, elderly, and gay residents.

The formation of the Lavender Panthers was precipitated by an incident on July 4, 1973. Broshears was severely beaten outside his community center, an attack believed to be retaliation for reporting a group of local youths to police earlier that day. Two days later, while still recovering, he held a press conference at the Helping Hands Center. In front of reporters and drag queens, he raised a .410-gauge shotgun and announced the creation of the Lavender Panthers. The group was explicitly modeled on the Black Panthers, adopting a similar prowling-cat logo. Within months, the organization gained national attention, including a profile in the October 1973 issue of *TIME* magazine, which described them as a "stiff-wristed team of gay vigilantes."

Broshears remained a deeply polarizing figure throughout his life, entangled in lawsuits, public feuds, and mental health struggles linked to unprocessed trauma. He died of a stroke in his Tenderloin apartment in January 1982 at the age of 46. His obituary in the *Bay Area Reporter* reflected this duality, praising his compassionate ministry to vulnerable residents while simultaneously criticizing his outrageous and self-serving behavior.

This complexity is what motivated Kaustubh "Vick" Singh to undertake the project. As a student producer at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Singh worked on *That Was Ray* as part of the school’s annual social-issue documentary program, *Community Voices: America's Stories*. He served as the film’s producer, editor, and co-writer alongside directors Jordan Gorman and Brenten Brandenburg. The production team had to reconstruct Broshears’ story using limited fragments: interviews with his close friend Elisa Rleigh and historian Jim Van Buskirk, archival materials, and original animation to depict scenes not captured on camera.

The resulting 18-minute film was produced on a student budget of approximately $18,000. It premiered at Chapman University’s Folino Theater on May 2, 2019, with executive producer credit given to Singh’s mentor, Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker Sally Rubin. The film subsequently premiered at Frameline44, San Francisco’s International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and received a Student Academy Award nomination.

In 2019, the film was screened in Broshears’ former neighborhood, followed by a panel discussion at the Tenderloin Museum. Participants included filmmakers Brandenburg and Singh, historian Paul Gabriel, activist Jim van Buskirk, and academic Susan Stryker. The screening highlighted the tension between historical memory and contemporary celebration.

Broshears did not fit the tidy image of a movement hero, a fact that is central to the documentary’s argument. San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ history is often simplified into celebrated chapters such as Pride, the West Coast echoes of Stonewall, or the political rise of figures like Harvey Milk, with whom Broshears corresponded. The narrative of Broshears reveals the messier, contradictory work of early activists who armed neighborhoods against violence while simultaneously alienating the communities they sought to protect.

For Singh, reviving this history was not an exercise in redemption or condemnation. It was an effort to prevent a significant but complicated piece of San Francisco’s past from disappearing simply because its central figure could not be easily celebrated. Singh has continued to produce work through his company, Obluda Films, focusing on bringing such nuanced historical narratives to light.

The documentary *That Was Ray* is available for viewing on Vimeo.

D.Pan--ThChM