GLR September-October 2025

would be sent to Napa State Hospital or denied pa role. The atmosphere was said to be one of hysteria and “seething unrest.” Around mid-morning, a girl confined to an isolation room kicked through a metal ventilator to free herself, then helped another do the same. Police quickly subdued them. A third girl, age fifteen, climbed through a window and made a break across the schoolyard. She was halted by a sheriff’s deputy, who fired a shot over her head, handcuffed her, and dragged her back inside. Security officers began clearing girls out of the more raucous dorms and herding them to an out door compound, warning that tear gas would be de ployed if they didn’t quiet down. A record player was set up to calm them—in a canny move, the music played was bebop and jazz, rather than the soothing sounds typically used in adult prisons.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat , 3/23/1953. “Injured Los Guilucos girl is removed to county hospital.”

ated at the Southern Michigan Prison, Warden Julian Frisbie told the press that homosexuality was responsible for 98 per cent of disciplinary problems. Similar blame had been lain on homosexuals in earlier riots at the New Mexico State Peniten tiary in 1950 and at South Carolina’s Boykin State Prison in 1947. Violence often flared when someone or something came between established partners. Los Guilucos was no different. Hours before the mayhem there, two girls had been trans ferred to the Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric institution in tended for adults. They’d been sent to Los Guilucos with thirteen others over the previous few weeks from detention homes in L.A. School officials blamed them for several recent problems, including a rise in lesbian activity. The girls were sent to Napa for treatment as sexual deviants. The transfers not only tore apart the partnerships formed at Los Guilucos but disrupted the social structure and made other lesbian girls fearful they might be sent away next. “You wanna know how it started?” a girl had asked a reporter for Santa Rosa’s Press Democrat ,well into the riot Thursday night. “It was over two girls we liked a lot. They told ’em they were crazy and they wasn’t. And today they sent ’em to Napa. That’s what started it.” § H EMAN S TARK , a director of the CYA, arrived at Los Guilucos around 10:30 Thursday night with two of his chief executives, driving 85 miles from Sacramento. The next morning, school officials met to discuss their response. Stark planned to “break the back of this thing” by cracking down on the riot’s alleged ringleaders. Thirty girls from O & T were brought into the su perintendent’s office individually and quickly removed in hand cuffs, screaming insults and profanity. Wreckage from the revolt was visible everywhere. Broken glass and chipped tile littered the concrete walkway outside the administration building. Chunks of mud were tracked through the lobby. Trash cans were filled with debris. In the dormito ries, beds piled high with rumpled sheets lined the halls. Blood was spattered on floor tiles, window frames, the walls of the O & T ward. “I’ve worked in three different insane asylums in this state,” a cook told a reporter, “and I never saw anything as bad as this.” Soon violence erupted again. Rumors had been flying through the school since daybreak: It was feared that rioters

Meanwhile, the CYA plotted its next move. By noon, four more girls had been transferred to Napa and four had been sent to Mendocino State Hospital, another adult psychiatric institution that was Northern California’s primary dumping ground for ho mosexuals and other “psychopaths.” Early in the afternoon, fifteen girls escaped O & T by wrap ping sweaters around their hands and smashing through the re maining windows. They armed themselves with shards of broken glass, and as police and security officers scrambled to contain them, five girls passed stolen kitchen knives through the windows to those still inside. Again the school called Santa Rosa police to add to the more than twenty sheriff’s deputies, highway patrolmen, and special officers already on scene. California Governor Earl Warren authorized use of the Na tional Guard. Twenty-five men from the Santa Rosa battalion were put on standby. The unit’s commander drove to the school but concluded the situation didn’t require military action. The police barrier enclosing the grounds was kept in place through the night, which passed quietly, although many girls were still armed with knives and broken glass. Stark said the school was a potential powder keg, but the weekend passed in relative peace. Medical and psychiatric advisors met with administrators Sunday morning to develop a plan for weeding out trouble makers before they were admitted to the school. The group dis cussed security improvements, particularly with regard to shatterproof windows. It also settled the fates of nine girls tem porarily housed in the Sonoma County Juvenile Detention Home. Three would be returned to Los Guilucos. Four would be sent to the Ventura School for Girls, a facility for slightly older offenders that had better security. The final two had already been transferred to Napa. § M ENTAL HOSPITALS were big business in 1953. More than half of U.S. hospital beds were occupied by mental patients: Home care and outpatient services were not the norm. Before the advent of psychotropic drugs, it was felt that many patients couldn’t be managed without constant supervision. It was estimated that one in twenty Americans would spend time in an institution. The California State Hospital system alone housed 40,000 people across its nine facilities. Half were hospitalized longer than eight years. The vast majority were committed by court

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