A Sad, Gay Day: Gay Rights Pioneer Jack Nichols Dies

[Eve]

From today’s NY Times:

Jack Nichols, a writer and early gay activist who campaigned publicly for gay rights nearly a decade before the Stonewall riots of 1969, died on Monday in Cocoa Beach, Fla., where he lived. He was 67. With Frank Kameny, Mr. Nichols founded the Mattachine Society, an early gay advocacy group, in Washington in 1961. (They adopted the name of an older gay organization, founded in 1950 by Harry Hay in Los Angeles, that had officially disbanded several months earlier.) He also successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to rescind its definition of homosexuality as a form of mental illness.

“At one point, I would really say that he was just about the most visible gay person in the country, if we go back to the mid-1960’s,” said Rodger Streitmatter, a professor of journalism at American University and the author of “Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America” (Faber & Faber, 1995). “He was always willing to be identified as a gay person, and that was still an era when many people were not.” When Mr. Nichols and Mr. Kameny started the Washington Mattachine Society in 1961, identifying oneself in public as gay posed serious risks. Homosexual acts were against the law in every state, and gay men and lesbians who came out risked being jailed or institutionalized. In 1967, Mr. Nichols became one of the first Americans to talk openly about his homosexuality on national television when he appeared in “The Homosexuals,” a CBS documentary.

[Otto]

With all the gay history I’ve read I don’t recall ever seeing his name before last week in a blurb on 365gay.com noting his birthday in its “Today in Gay History” section. I’m gonna have to look through a few books when I get home.