Henry Gerber House

“(The Mattachine Society was composed predominantly of gay men, although Chicago's Pearl Hart was involved in the founding of a Chicago chapter in 1965. The Daughters of Bilitis, begun in 1955, was the first national lesbian rights group.) Gerber corresponded with many leaders in the pre-Stonewall gay rights movement in the 1940s-60s, among them Dorr Legg who in Los Angeles in the 1950s had founded ONE, another early gay rights organization.”

“The Henry Gerber House served as the founding "headquarters" of the Society for Human Rights, the nation's first gay civil-rights organization. It was here in 1924 that Henry Gerber organized and formed the Society, held meetings, and wrote at least the first of the two issues he produced of the Society's newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, the first-documented gay periodical in America.”

“Henry Gerber was a pioneering gay civil-rights activist who in this house in 1924 to 1925 founded the nation's first gay civil-rights organization and published the nation's first-documented gay periodical.”

“Gerber's contributions to the gay and lesbian civil-rights movement have been nationally recognized. The Midwest Gay and Lesbian Archive located here in Chicago was renamed for Henry Gerber and pioneering female civil rights attorney Pearl Hart (Gerber/Hart Library) to honor the significant contributions of these individuals to the gay and lesbian community.”

“In 1956 Gerber was also briefly involved in the New York Chapter of the Mattachine Society, begun in 1950 by Harry Hay in Los Angeles and the first American gay civil-rights organization after Chicago's Society for Human Rights.”

“According to Gerber's writings, he envisioned the newsletter as a way to rally the gay community around the Society's efforts, and Friendship and Freedom represents the first-documented gay periodical in America.”

“From this house in 1924 Gerber organized and formed the nation's first gay civil-rights organization, the Society for Human Rights, some 25 years before the next successful attempt at forming a gay rights organization and 44 years before the Stonewall "uprising" in New York City which signaled the emergence of the modern gay rights movement.”

“(now demolished). According to Gerber's own account in 1962, it was here that the police (possibly in July of 1925) raided his apartment without a warrant and, accompanied by a reporter from Hearst's Chicago Examiner, seized his typewriter, all materials pertaining to the Society, and his personal diaries-effectively marking the abrupt end of the nation's first gay-rights organization.”