News
2006-10-07
Gay rights
pioneer presents archive to nation
Longtime gay
rights activist Franklin Edward Kameny officially presented
in excess of 70,000 letters, documents, and other artifacts
Longtime gay
rights activist Franklin Edward Kameny officially presented
in excess of 70,000 letters, documents, and other artifacts
to the nation on Friday. Kameny’s personal
papers will be housed by the Manuscript Division of
the Library of Congress, while several protest and picket
signs will go to the collection of the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of American History as well as other
gay and lesbian history archives across the country.
“Nearly 50
years ago, the United States government banned me from
employment in public service because I am a
homosexual,” Kameny said in a statement.
“This archive is not simply my story; it also shows
how gay and lesbian Americans have joined the American
mainstream story of expanded civil liberties in the
20th century. Today, by accepting these papers, the
nation preserves not only our history but marks how far gay
and lesbian Americans have traveled on the road to civil
equality.”
The Kameny
archive includes numerous letters, government
correspondence, testimony, photographs, picket signs,
and other objects. Together they trace the rarely told
history of the gay rights movement through Kameny’s
life from the 1950s to the present.
The collection
contains original photographs of gay men and lesbians
picketing the White House in 1965 along with the original
picket signs, the original policy statement of the
United States Civil Service Commission explaining to
Kameny the legal justification for barring gays from
federal employment, documents from the American Psychiatric
Association and the fight to remove homosexuality from the
list of mental disorders, as well as many other
historically significant documents.
The gift was
realized through the financial gifts of a wide array of
donors, including bisexual former congressman Michael
Huffington, the Human Rights Campaign, the Log Cabin
Republicans, and journalist Jonathan Rauch. (The
Advocate)
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