Jefferson Poland
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John Jefferson Poland (b. July 12, 1942) was the founder of the Sexual Freedom League in 1963 in New York City. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay area and focused his organizing efforts at the University of California, Berkeley. Poland founded various Sexual Freedom Leagues, including the East Bay Sexual Freedom League, the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League, the Campus Sexual Freedom League, the Berkeley Sexual Freedom League and the San Diego Sexual Freedom League. However, he never tried to run these organizations himself. He would found them and then promptly turn them over to others to run them.
Poland first made national news in August, 1965 with the "Nude Wade-in" led by Poland, aged 23, Ina Saslow, 21, and Shirley Einseidel, 21, at Aquatic Park, a public beach in San Francisco. This event was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and in Time Magazine.[1]
He turned over his archives to the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, where they are now available for public viewing by academic researchers. Poland now lives in San Francisco, where he is monitored as a registered sex offender.
[edit] Sex offense, flight, and name change
In the early 1980s, Poland was charged with child molestation. Apparently, a nudist couple had entrusted Poland with the care of their daughter while they were nude sunbathing on Black's Beach in La Jolla, a neighborhood of San Diego, California. Some time later, the nudist couple accused Poland of having performed cunnilingus on their daughter while they were sunbathing.
Poland fled the USA and he lived for five years as a fugitive in Australia until 1988, when he was extradited back to America. By that time he had changed his name legally to “Clitlick”. He plead guilty to the felony “lewd or lascivious act with a child” charge. He served about nine months in San Diego County Jail. [2][3] Upon his release, he returned to live in San Francisco.
[edit] Books
- Sex Marchers (with Jefferson Poland, Sam Sloan eds., first published by Ed Lange and his Elysium, Inc. in 1968), reprinted in 2006 ISBN 0-923891-13-7
- The Records of the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League by Jefferson F. Poland and Valerie Alison with preface by Herbert Gold, Olympia Press, 1971
