Aristide Laurent

Who was Aristide Laurent?

Aristide "A.J." Laurent was an American publisher and LGBT civil rights advocate. He co-founded The Los Angeles Advocate in 1967 with Sam Allen, Bill Rau, and Richard Mitch.

He was born in Magnolia Springs, Alabama to Duval “Buck” Laurent, a farm hand, and Elizabeth “Betty” Weeks, and was of Creole ancestry. Joining the Air Force in 1960, serving for four years as an instructor and signals intelligence operator in Karamursel, Turkey, and being discharged, he moved to California and came out.

Between 1964 and 1967, he worked for KABC in Los Angeles. He allegedly participated in the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot in San Francisco, and participated in the riots following the police raid on Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles. In the wake of the two incidents, he joined Steve Ginsberg's PRIDE organization and co-founded The Los Angeles Advocate. While helping to publish the early editions of the paper, he wrote a nightlife column under the pseudonym “P. Nutz.”

In 1975, Laurent was one of 40 arrested after a police raid on the Mark IV Gay Bathhouse following a mistaken tip that the charity "slave auction" being held at the locale to benefit was an actual, illegal slave auction. That same year, when The Advocate was sold and relocated to the Bay Area, he relocated to the Bay Area for a short time before returning to Los Angeles to establish NewsWest to fill the void left by The Advocate.