William B. Kelley | |
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Born | 1942 |
Died | May 17, 2015 72–73) | (aged
William B. Kelley was a gay activist and lawyer from Chicago, Illinois. [1] [2] Many laud him as an important figure in gaining rights for gay people in the United States, as he was actively involved in gay activism for 50 years. [3] [4]
Kelley was born in 1942 and grew up in Dunkin County near Kennett, Missouri. [2] [5] He had known from high school that he was gay, and he spent as much time as he could trying to learn about being gay in his local library. [2] Kelley also said that being from a de facto segregated town and growing up during the McCarthy Era made him interested in civil rights, and that he was a member of the ACLU while he was in high school. [2] [6] [3] Kelley said that he used to write letters to the editor against segregation. [3]
He attended the University of Chicago starting in 1959 for undergraduate studies. [2] [6] He said that he wanted to move to this new environment to test if he was really gay, or if it was just due to his high school. [6] He decided he was indeed gay, and would go to the Rare Books Room at the University of Chicago to read "gay books." [6] He said that the first "gay book" he remembered reading there was The Homosexual in America. [2] [6] It was two more years after his move to Chicago that the state legalized same-sex sexual activity. [3] [6]
Kelley's parents divorced when he was in college. His mother became a recluse later in her life, and claimed that other women in her small town disliked her because of her son's gayness. His father told Kelley that he did not accept his "lifestyle," but accepted his partner Chen Ooi and let the couple come visit him and stay in his house. [3]
Kelley met his partner Chen Ooi at Cheeks, a gay bar in Chicago, in July 1979. [2] [7] The couple was together until Kelley's death in 2015. Kelley said in an interview for younger activists that Ooi was an important part in his activism, as he both encouraged and challenged him. [6] Both Kelley and Ooi were involved in volunteerism throughout their lives, for gay rights issues and Asian immigration issues. [7] A collection at the Gerber/Hart Archives is currently named after Kelley and Ooi. [8] [9]
Kelley became involved with gay activism in 1965, after he had learned of a 1964 raid on a gay bar where the police had arrested over 100 men and 6 women, and then published the arrested parties' names and home addresses. [1] [2] [8] With several others, Kelley became interested in founding a chapter of the Mattachine Society in Chicago, which became Mattachine Midwest. [8] [10] [9] He was an active member and wrote for the organization's newsletter. [11] [12] After this he began to come out at college. [2] He came out "to the world" in 1966 on a radio broadcast that went out around all of the Midwestern United States. [2] [5] He was involved with the Mattachine Society until 1970. [6]
In 1966, Kelley helped organize the first national gay and lesbian conference in the United States, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. [1] [2] [4] [13] [14]
After he left the Mattachine Society in 1970, Kelley formed an organization called Homosexuals Organized for Political Education, or HOPE. Shortly after he became involved with the Chicago Gay Alliance, until it ended in 1973. [6]
In 1973, Kelley helped create the Chicago Gay Crusader , a periodical about gay issues in Chicago and the United States. [1] [6] [15] During this time he also co-chaired the group Illinois Gays for Legislative action. [11] Later in the same decade Kelley also co-chaired the Illinois Gay Rights Task Force. [11]
In 1977 Kelley attended the first meeting with the White House about LGBT issues. [2] [4] [14] [16] Kelley presented a paper at this meeting about issues that gay organizations had with procuring tax exemptions. [6]
Kelley was recognized by the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1991. [13] Kelley also wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Reader supporting the controversial Hall of Fame. [17]
In 1976, Kelley began working as a legal assistant for Chuck Renslow. [6] At Renslow's urging, Kelley went to law school at Chicago-Kent College of law, and graduated in 1987. [2] [6] [13] Kelley wanted to go into corporate law, international law, or intellectual property law, but did not fit in well with the industry and could not get hired at any firms for these fields, possibly because he was so involved in gay activism. [3]
In the 1990s Kelley worked as a clerk for the Illinois Appellate Court. [13]
In 1988, Kelley co-founded the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association. [15] [6] He was also a member of the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, Cook County State's Attorney's Task Force on Gay and Lesbian Issues, and the National Committee for Sexual Civil Liberties, all of which mixed his interest in gay activism and the law. [6]
Kelley died May 17, 2015, at age 72. He died at home due to natural causes, possibly influenced by a heart condition, as he had had a heart attack years prior. [2] [14] [18] [19]
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities, and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.
The Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) is a community archives, library, and museum located in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Chuck Renslow and Tony DeBlase in 1991, its mission is "making leather, kink, BDSM, and fetish accessible through research, preservation, education and community engagement." Renslow and DeBlase founded the museum in response to the AIDS crisis, during which the leather and fetish communities' history and belongings were frequently lost or intentionally suppressed and discarded.
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LGBT movements in the United States comprise an interwoven history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied social movements in the United States of America, beginning in the early 20th century. A commonly stated goal among these movements is social equality for LGBT people. Some have also focused on building LGBT communities or worked towards liberation for the broader society from biphobia, homophobia, and transphobia. LGBT movements organized today are made up of a wide range of political activism and cultural activity, including lobbying, street marches, social groups, media, art, and research. Sociologist Mary Bernstein writes: "For the lesbian and gay movement, then, cultural goals include challenging dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity, homophobia, and the primacy of the gendered heterosexual nuclear family (heteronormativity). Political goals include changing laws and policies in order to gain new rights, benefits, and protections from harm." Bernstein emphasizes that activists seek both types of goals in both the civil and political spheres.
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Craig L. Rodwell was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967 - the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors - and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City gay pride demonstration. Rodwell, who was already an activist when he participated in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early, pre-Stonewall, homophile movement of the 1960s.
Harold Leland "Hal" Call was an American businessperson, LGBT rights activist, and U.S. Army veteran. He served as president of the Mattachine Society and in the 1950s, was one of the first gay activists to speak publicly on television. Call founded printing presses for LGBT publications and later opened gay adult shops and pornographic film screening venues. He received a Purple Heart for his service in the Pacific War.
Henry Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the United States. Inspired by the work of Germany's Magnus Hirschfeld and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and by the organisation Bund für Menschenrecht by Friedrich Radszuweit and Karl Schulz, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights (SHR) in 1924, the nation's first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and Freedom, the first known American homosexual publication. SHR was short-lived, as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated. Although embittered by his experiences, Gerber maintained contacts within the fledgling homophile movement of the 1950s and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to the LGBT movement.
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Charles "Chuck" Renslow was an American businessman, known for pioneering homoerotic male photography in the mid-20th-century US, and establishing many landmarks of late-20th-century gay culture and leather culture, especially in the Chicago area. His accomplishments included the cofounding with Tony DeBlase of the Leather Archives and Museum, the co-founding with Dom Orejudos of the Gold Coast bar, Man's Country bathhouse, and the International Mr. Leather competition, and the founding by himself alone of Chicago's August White Party, and the magazines Triumph, Rawhide, and Mars. He was a romantic partner of Dom Orejudos as well as Chuck Arnett, Samuel Steward, David Grooms, and Ron Ehemann.
Chicago Gay Crusader was a periodical about gay issues in Chicago and the United States. It was created in 1973 by Michael Bergeron and William B. Kelley, becoming defunct in 1976. The first issue in May 1973 marked Chicago's "first successful attempt at producing a serious gay newspaper", following another paper that only lasted two issues. Richard W. Pfeiffer wrote a monthly column for the newspaper.
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Joanne E. Trapani was an American activist and politician. She was the first open lesbian elected official in Illinois when she won a seat on the village board of Oak Park in 1997, and she was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 1993.
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