In 1945 Wendell started his private law practice in Denver. Wendell was too young to serve in World War I, too old for World War II (although in 1942, at age 37, he registered for the draft). Part of the estate was to be used to acquire suitable places and accommodations where people could find food and lodging without being rejected because of their race. When his father died in 1956, he left an estate of $115,000, the equivalent of more than a million dollars in 2019. Wendell’s mother was an active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and other organizations. Freshman photo of Wendell Sayers, second from top left, in the Washburn College yearbook, School of Law, The Kaw (Topeka, Kansas: Washburn College, 1904–1933: 55). William and Sarah had been married for almost 10 years without having children of their own George and Mary gave their youngest son to their childless siblings, who would go on to adopt two more children, both girls.įollowing in his father’s footsteps, Wendell attended Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, where he later also obtained his JD. Wendell’s birth parents were William’s older brother George and Sarah’s older sister Mary, who had eight children. William and Sarah both came from large families each had nine siblings. Wendell was the adopted son of William L. Wendell’s grandparents were all former slaves. Wendell Phillip Sayers was born April 29, 1904, in Nicodemus, Kansas-a town created after the Civil War specifically for ex-slaves. Leclerc was able to fill in a few more gaps for us-and provide a photo of Sayers as well: However, in August 2019, genealogist Michael J. That’s about all we knew about Sayers, based on what he’d shared in his original 1989 interview for the Making Gay History book and the little we’d found in our research. In the late 1950s he attended several meetings of the Denver chapter of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights organization, as well as the Mattachine Society’s sixth annual national convention, which was held in Denver in September 1959. He was, as he notes in the episode, the first Black attorney to be hired to work in the Colorado state attorney general’s office. Wendell Sayers was born in western Kansas on April 29, 1904, and died on March 27, 1998.
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I hope that revealing Wendell’s true identity is the decision he would have made for himself if he were still alive and that by doing so 18 years after his death I’m not causing any harm. There’s also a part of me that feels the world should know who Wendell was, without the scrim of anonymity, because he was such an extraordinary person. To honor his wish, I used the name “Paul Phillips.” So why reveal his true identity now? The world has changed so dramatically since the late 1980s for LGBTQ people that I like to think Wendell’s feelings about remaining hidden would have evolved, too, and that he’d have taken pride in who he was, what he risked, and what he accomplished without feeling the need to hide behind a pseudonym.
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Note from Eric Marcus: In my introduction to the episode, I explain that Wendell Sayers asked me not to use his real name in my book, Making Gay History.