Born on the Fifth of July: Life Comes in Stages: A Gay Man's Odyssey and Family History

Born on the Fifth of July: A Gay Man’s Odyssey and Family History follows the journey of a gay man who grew up in a small town in North Carolina and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1958. Just as Atlanta’s business leaders, educators, and politicians had to deal with desegregation in the 1960s, in the decades to follow they were also faced the bigotry and discrimination that Atlanta’s LGBT population endured for years. In remembering fondly those relationships that enriched his life, Arthur Wilhelm recalls his coming-out experiences and the many gay bars, restaurants, and retailers that served a large gay population during the last four decades of the twentieth century. Having traced his ancestry to the colonial period when his forefathers came to Pennsylvania and ultimately to North Carolina in search of opportunity and freedom from oppression, Wilhelm suggests metaphorically that, born on the fifth of July rather than on the fourth, he was denied full citizenship because of his sexual orientation. Arthur Wilhelm’s travels take the reader through five decades of his life, inviting the reader to remember her or his own journey as well.