Unsung Chicago LGBT Heroes

The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame — this year being rechristened the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame — is the only municipally supported institution of its kind in the nation. “There’s nothing like this,” says Mary Morten, cochair of the Hall of Fame board and herself a member. The Chicago Commission on Human Relations’ Advisory Council on Gay and Lesbian Issues established the hall in 1991 to honor the volunteer and professional achievements of LGBT people, their organizations, and their straight allies, the latter in a category called Friend of the Community. The hall was financially supported by the city for many years; in 2010 the city ceased providing funds due to budgetary considerations, but it continues to offer backing in other ways. A new group of members is inducted each year; this year’s class will be inducted in a ceremony November 10 at the Chicago History Museum. Click through to meet 25 members — LGBT heroes you might not know but should — and to learn more about the hall and see the full list of members, visit GLHallOfFame.org.

Transgender actress Billings has long been familiar to audiences in Chicago, New York, Boston, and elsewhere for her stage work, which includes the campy Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and the moving autobiographical solo show Before I Disappear. She's also known nationwide for TV appearances in Grey's Anatomy, ER, Eli Stone, Transparent, and the TV movie Romy and Michele: In the Beginning, which made her the first transgender actress playing a trans character on TV. Billings, who is living with AIDS, is a dedicated activist, helping educate young people about the disease and raising funds for AIDS services.

Variety once called playwright Claudia Allen "a master of small-town realism." She was born in the small town of Clare, Mich., in 1954, and moved to Chicago in 1979. Her work has been produced in many Chicago venues and all over the nation. Her plays often feature lesbian or bisexual characters and themes. One of her most popular works among lesbian audiences is Hannah Free, which depicts a complicated but enduring lesbian relationship. It has been performed on many stages and was adapted into a 2009 feature film with Sharon Gless in the title role. 

Sotomayor was a noted political cartoonist and AIDS activist, known for confronting mayors and other powerful people when he felt their response to the epidemic was inadequate. He was the first openly gay political cartoonist to be nationally syndicated, and his works were often "scathing" as well as humorous, notes his Hall of Fame biography. He died of AIDS complications in 1992, aged 33.

David Zak has long been a force in Chicago theater, especially in bringing plays with LGBT themes to the stage. He was artistic director of Bailiwick Repertory, which produced many LBGT-inclusive plays in its Pride Series, and is now executive director of Pride Films and Plays. He has won several awards for direction, a trade he has plied in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, London, Dublin, and Seoul, South Korea, in addition to Chicago. He directed and/or produced the Chicago premieres of such plays as Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey, Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi and Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Del Shores’s Southern Baptist Sissies. Other directorial efforts include At the Flash, which tells LGBT history through vignettes at a fictional bar, and Under a Rainbow Flag, based on the true experiences of a gay soldier in World War II.

Frank Galati has long been associated with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, one of the nation's leading regional theaters. Many of its productions have gone to Broadway, including The Grapes of Wrath, which brought Galati Tony Awards for adaptation and direction in 1990. He also was nominated for a Tony in 1998 for directing the musical Ragtime. And he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for 1988's The Accidental Tourist, based on Anne Tyler's novel (Galati shared screenplay credit with director Lawrence Kasdan). 

Frankie Knuckles won fame in Chicago and beyond as the "godfather of house." An influential music producer, remixer, and DJ, he is credited with inventing house music by mixing old disco hits with new drum-machine percussion. He worked at clubs in New York and Chicago before becoming a DJ of international renown. He also worked as a producer with artists including Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, and Depeche Mode. Knuckles died in 2014 at age 59.

Henry Gerber was a pioneer of the gay liberation movement. A German immigrant to Chicago, he founded the Society for Individual Rights in the Windy City in the 1920s. After a police raid resulted in Gerber's arrest and the loss of his job with the U.S. Postal Service, he moved to New York but continued his activism, writing for gay publications under a pseudonym and corresponding with other gay men around the nation. He died in 1972 at the age of 80, having lived to see the Stonewall riots give birth to a new era of organizing. His name lives on in Chicago's Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, a repository of records and resources about LGBT life.

A now-retired high school teacher and Navy veteran, Darby cofounded the Chicago chapter of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Veterans of America (now American Veterans of Equal Rights) in 1991. He has long been an advocate for equal treatment of LGBT military members and has coordinated commemorations of LGBT vets. His group was behind the first monument created by and for LGBT vets to sit on federal land, dedicated this past Memorial Day at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery near Chicago.

Flint is the founder of the Baton Show Lounge, a venerable Chicago club featuring drag performers, and has operated several other bars in the Windy City. He also has been active in Democratic politics and a benefactor of many LGBT and AIDS organizations.

Most anyone who took a high school history class has heard of Jane Addams, but many would be surprised to find her on this list. Addams was an advocate for progressive social change and established a so-called settlement house, Hull House, in 1890 on Chicago's South Side to assist immigrants and the poor. She also had at least two long-term same-sex relationships, something that was ignored for many years but has been brought to light recently by biographers and historians. Addams “spent her adult years, almost until her death, with other women, in long-term relationships that we would describe as lesbian today,” says historian Lillian Faderman. Addams was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor she received in 1931, four years before her death.

Albright, a retired Air Force master sergeant, is one of this year's class of inductees. She is being honored for her work with LGBT veterans and active-duty service members, and to overturn bans on military service by LGBT people.

John D'Emilio, a historian of national repute, has taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1999. Much of his work focuses on LGBT history, and one of his books, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (coauthored with Esther B. Freedman), was quoted by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which found state sodomy laws unconstitutional. D'Emilio was also the founding director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute.

Cassidy has been an activist for women's and LGBT rights for more than 20 years and a member of the Illinois House of Representatives since 2011. She helped pass marriage equality legislation in the state in 2013 and, this year, a bill banning the use of "conversion therapy" on minors by state-licensed therapists and classifying it as a form of consumer fraud.   

Larry McKeon was elected in 1996 as the first openly gay member of the Illinois legislature, and he was also the first openly HIV-positive member. A former police officer and social services administrator, McKeon served five terms in the Illinois House, during which he helped pass a statewide gay rights bill, then became a part-time lobbyist with clients including the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. He died of a stroke in 2008.

Theater fans know Lorraine Hansberry as the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun, a now-classic work about a black Chicago family moving into a white neighborhood, which in 1959 made her the first African-American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Most, though, don't know that Hansberry had relationships with women (although married to a man) and that some of her less famous works dealt with same-sex attraction. A crusader for equal rights for all, Hansberry died in 1965.

Lorrainne Sade Baskerville, a professional social worker, is a longtime advocate for transgender people. In 1995 she founded transGenesis in 1995 as an agency to address concerns of transgender Chicagoans, included, substance abuse, HIV and AIDS, sex work, harm reduction, and self-empowerment.

Pearl Hart was a pioneering activist who, along with Henry Gerber, is the namesake of the city's Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. She was a graduate of John Marshall Law School in Chicago and went on to teach there for many years while also practicing law. She advocated for women's and gay rights, among many other social justice causes, and often defended gay victims of harassment and entrapment for little or no fee. She also helped found gay rights groups, including the Mattachine Society. She worked up until a few weeks before her death in 1975, at age 85.

Randy Duncan is one of the world's most renowned choreographers, having created dances that draw on ballet, jazz, and African infuences. He began his career as a dancer with the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, where he became artistic director after the death of founder Holmes. His works have been performed by the Joffrey Ballet, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, River North Chicago Dance Company, Bat-Dor Dance Company of Israel, and many others. He has donated his time to Dance for Life, a fundraiser for HIV and AIDS services, for many years. The award-winning choreographer is on the faculty of the Chicago Academy of the Arts and teaches at other schools around the world.

In 1954 Renee Hanover was kicked out of law school for being a lesbian, but she eventually returned to graduate, and she used her law practice to advocate for LGBT rights, women's rights, racial justice, and many other causes, always emphasizing the intersectionality of these interests. She often worked pro bono, and she also volunteered her time with organizations too numerous to list, many of them involved with LGBT issues or HIV and AIDS. She protested at Anita Bryant's appearance in Chicago in 1977, at the height of Bryant's antigay campaigning, joined in marches on Washington, and pushed for LGBT rights legislation at municipal and other levels. Hanover died in 2011 at the age of 84.

Robert Castillo was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001, when he was only 33, and he already had a decade of activism behind him. He has worked with Queer Nation, ACT UP, and many other organizations; helped organize queer contingents in St. Patrick's Day and Mexican Independence Day parades; and advocated for many pieces of legislation, including a gay-inclusive human rights ordinance for Cook County, which includes Chicago. He and his partner, John Pennycuff, also brought the first antigay discrimination case under the ordinance after being arrested for dancing together in a suburban bar. Pennycuff, now deceased, is also a Hall of Fame member. Castillo has continued to add to his activist résumé.

Free is a key figure in the homocore music genre. Known for punk music, drag shows, and performance art, he founded both Homolatte, the longest-running queer performance series in the nation, and Alt Q, another of the nation’s longest-running festivals for LGBTQ performers. He's helped raise funds for LGBT and AIDS organizations, and protested antigay musicians. He has been active in Black and White Men Together/Men of All Colors Together and the Gay Liberation Network, and in 2009 he was named OUTMusician of the Year at the OUTMusic Awards. 

In 1994, when he was elected to a judgeship on the Cook County Circuit Court, Chiola became the first openly gay person elected to public office in Illinois. He retired in 2009 and began a second career as an actor, and he's made frequent appearances on Chicago stages. He also is active in gay sports and has volunteered with a variety of LGBT and AIDS organizations, and he helped develop pro bono legal services for people with AIDS.

Baim began her career in Chicago LGBT media immediately upon graduating from Drake University in 1984, and she's never stopped. She helped found Windy City Times in 1985, then in 1987 became managing editor and founding publisher of Outlines. In 2000 her company bought Windy City Times and merged it with Outlines, and the publication continues under the Windy City Times name. She has launched a variety of other publications — BlackLines, Nightspots, Clout! — and also has written books on Chicago LGBT figures, and produced TV documentaries and the feature film Hannah Free.

Toward the end of Vernita Gray's life, she and her partner, Pat Ewert, became the first same-sex couple married in Illinois. It was November 2013, and the state's marriage equality bill had been signed into law but was not scheduled to go into effect until the following June, but Gray, suffering from cancer, was not expected to live that long — so she and Ewert obtained a court order allowing them to marry. Before that, though, Gray had a career of more than 40 years as an LGBT rights advocate. She started a gay and lesbian hotline in 1969 and hosted support groups in her home, then went on to make her presence known as virtually every LGBT event in Chicago. Professionally, she spent 18 years working for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, holding positions including victim/witness advocate and outreach worker on LGBT issues. She died in March 2014.

William B. Kelley advocated for LGBT rights on the local, state, and national levels from the 1960s until his death in 2015. He helped organize the first national gay and lesbian conference, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, in 1966, and attended the first meeting of gay activists at the White House, held in 1977, during President Carter’s administration. He chaired the Cook County Commission on Human Relations for the first 10 years of its existence and volunteered with many Chicago LGBT groups, earning him induction into the Hall of Fame in its first class in 1991. He worked as a legal assistant and then a lawyer, and he also wrote for LGBT publications and edited books on LGBT history.