The Society for Human Rights
Encyclopedia
The Society for Human Rights was an American homosexual rights organization established in Chicago
in 1924. Society founder Henry Gerber
was inspired to create the society by Germany's Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld
and his work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
. It was the first recognized gay rights organization in the United States, having received a charter from the state of Illinois
, and produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. A few months after being chartered, the group ceased to exist in the wake of the arrest of several of the Society's members. Despite its short existence and its small size, the Society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation
movement.
in 1913, settling with his family in Chicago because of its large German-speaking population. Within a few years of his arrival he experienced discrimination based on his sexual orientation when he was temporarily committed to a mental institution
in 1917 for being homosexual.
With the United States's entry into World War I
, Gerber enlisted in the United States Army
, serving as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Coblenz
, Germany, from 1920 to 1923.
During his time in Germany, Gerber learned about Magnus Hirschfeld
and the work he and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
were doing to reform anti-homosexual German law, especially Paragraph 175
, which criminalized sex between men. Gerber traveled to Berlin, which supported a thriving gay subculture, on several occasions and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine. Gerber marveled at the development of the gay community in Berlin and later wrote "I had always bitterly felt the injustice with which my own American society accused the homosexual of ‘immoral acts.’ What could be done about it, I thought. Unlike Germany, where the homosexual was partially organized and where sex legislation was uniform for the whole country, the United States was in a condition of chaos and misunderstanding concerning its sex laws, and no one was trying to unravel the tangle and bring relief to the abused." He was particularly impressed with the work of a group called Bund für Menschenrecht (Association for Human Right) and absorbed a number of Hirschfeld's ideas, including the notion that homosexual men were naturally effeminate.Despite being naturally masculine and disliking the company of women and effeminate men, (Bullough, p. 32) Gerber would continue to espouse the idea of gay men's effeminacy, writing in 1932, "The homosexual man does not shun women because he wants to flee from the reality of normal sex life, but because he himself is a woman and his normal sex life is directed to the other sex, another man." (Collected in Blasius and Phane, p. 220) Following his military service, Gerber returned to the United States and went to work for the post office
in Chicago.
with the state of Illinois
. The application outlined the goals and purposes of the Society:
clergyman named John T. Graves signed on as president of the new organization and Gerber, Graves and five others were listed as directors. The state granted the charter on December 10, 1924, making the Society the oldest documented homosexual organization in the nation. Despite deliberately keeping the goals of the Society vague and excluding any mention of homosexuality from its mission statement, Society members were still surprised that no one with the state investigated any further before issuing the charter.
The society's newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, was the first gay-interest publication in the United States. However, few Society members were willing to receive mailings of the newsletter, fearing that postal inspectors would deem the publication obscene under the Comstock Act. Indeed, all gay-interest publications were deemed obscene until 1958, when the Supreme Court
ruled in One, Inc. v. Olesen
that publishing homosexual content did not mean the content was automatically obscene. Two issues of Friendship and Freedom were written and produced, entirely by Gerber. No copies of the newsletter are known to exist.
Gerber formulated a three-point strategy for winning what he referred to as "homosexual emancipation":
Gerber set out to expand the Society's membership beyond the original seven but had difficulty interesting anyone other than poorer gays in joining; he was also unable to gain any financial support from the more affluent members of Chicago's gay community. Gerber sought out the support of people in the medical professions and sex education advocates and was frustrated when he was unable to secure it, because of their fear of ruining their reputations through the association with homosexuality. Contemplating this failure in 1962, Gerber stated,
for his effort. The Society sought affiliation with the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology
but the British Society declined, afraid of being linked with any organization that was specifically for homosexuals.
men and exclude bisexuals
. Unknown to them, the Society's vice-president Al Weininger, a man Gerber described as "an indigent laundry queen", was married with two children. Weininger's wife reported the Society to a social worker in the summer of 1925, calling them "degenerates" and making claims of "strange doings" in front of her children.
The police broke in on Gerber in the middle of the night with a reporter from the Chicago Examiner
in tow, interrogated him, seized his personal papers and arrested him. The next morning, Gerber arrived in court to learn that Graves, Weininger and Weininger's male companion had also been arrested. The Examiner reported the story under the headline "Strange Sex Cult Exposed". The paper erroneously reported that Weininger and other members of the Society had performed sex acts in front of Weininger's children and that Society literature encouraged men to abandon their wives and children. This latter statement was in direct contradiction to the Society's policy of only admitting men who were exclusively homosexual. Gerber was put through three separate trials, before charges against him were finally dismissed because he was arrested without a warrant
.
Gerber's defense cost him his life savings, some or all of which may have been in the form of bribes paid through his lawyer. The police never returned Gerber's personal papers, his typewriter
or his remaining copies of Friendship and Freedom despite a court order compelling their return. The only concrete record of the newsletter's existence is a photograph of one issue in a German homophile magazine and a review of the issue in a French homophile publication.
Although Gerber avoided prosecution for obscenity
under the Comstock Act, he lost his post office job for "conduct unbecoming a postal worker". Weininger paid a $10 fine for "disorderly conduct". With Gerber feeling he had hit a "solid wall of ignorance, hypocrisy, meanness and corruption" and unable to continue his financial support, the Society was destroyed, and Gerber was left embittered that none of the wealthier gays of Chicago had come to his aid for a cause he believed was designed to advance the common good. He left Chicago for New York City
, where he re-enlisted in the Army, serving for 17 years before being honorably discharged.
-related activism of the Weimar Republic
and the American homophile movement of the 1950s. In 1929, a young man named Harry Hay
was living in Los Angeles
. He soon discovered the cruising
scene in Pershing Square
, where he met Champ Simmons, a man who had been a lover of one of Gerber's Society compatriots. This man told Hay about the Society's brief history, warning Hay of the futility of trying to organize gay men. Although Hay would later deny that he had any knowledge of previous LGBT activism, he was inspired by this knowledge to conceive in 1948 a proposal for a gay men's political and social group. In 1950 Hay's idea reached fruition when he and several other men founded the Mattachine Society
, the first enduring LGBT rights organization in the United States.
Gerber was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame
in 1992. The Henry Gerber House
, located at 1710 N. Crilly Court, Chicago, contains the apartment in which Gerber lived when he founded the Society. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 1, 2001. The Gerber/Hart Library
at 1127 West Granville Avenue is named in honor of Gerber and early civil rights defender Pearl M. Hart
.
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1924. Society founder Henry Gerber
Henry Gerber
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, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights in 1924, the nation's first known homosexual organization, and Friendship and...
was inspired to create the society by Germany's Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
and his work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded in Berlin on the 14th or 15 May, 1897, to campaign for social recognition of homosexual, bisexual and transgender men and women, and against their legal persecution...
. It was the first recognized gay rights organization in the United States, having received a charter from the state of Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, and produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. A few months after being chartered, the group ceased to exist in the wake of the arrest of several of the Society's members. Despite its short existence and its small size, the Society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation
Gay Liberation
Gay liberation is the name used to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand...
movement.
Henry Gerber
Henry Gerber emigrated from GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1913, settling with his family in Chicago because of its large German-speaking population. Within a few years of his arrival he experienced discrimination based on his sexual orientation when he was temporarily committed to a mental institution
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
in 1917 for being homosexual.
With the United States's entry into World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Gerber enlisted in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, serving as a printer and proofreader with the Allied Army of Occupation in Coblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...
, Germany, from 1920 to 1923.
During his time in Germany, Gerber learned about Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
and the work he and his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was founded in Berlin on the 14th or 15 May, 1897, to campaign for social recognition of homosexual, bisexual and transgender men and women, and against their legal persecution...
were doing to reform anti-homosexual German law, especially Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175
Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. All in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.The statute was amended several...
, which criminalized sex between men. Gerber traveled to Berlin, which supported a thriving gay subculture, on several occasions and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine. Gerber marveled at the development of the gay community in Berlin and later wrote "I had always bitterly felt the injustice with which my own American society accused the homosexual of ‘immoral acts.’ What could be done about it, I thought. Unlike Germany, where the homosexual was partially organized and where sex legislation was uniform for the whole country, the United States was in a condition of chaos and misunderstanding concerning its sex laws, and no one was trying to unravel the tangle and bring relief to the abused." He was particularly impressed with the work of a group called Bund für Menschenrecht (Association for Human Right) and absorbed a number of Hirschfeld's ideas, including the notion that homosexual men were naturally effeminate.Despite being naturally masculine and disliking the company of women and effeminate men, (Bullough, p. 32) Gerber would continue to espouse the idea of gay men's effeminacy, writing in 1932, "The homosexual man does not shun women because he wants to flee from the reality of normal sex life, but because he himself is a woman and his normal sex life is directed to the other sex, another man." (Collected in Blasius and Phane, p. 220) Following his military service, Gerber returned to the United States and went to work for the post office
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
in Chicago.
Founding the Society
Inspired by Hirschfeld's work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, Gerber resolved to found a similar organization in the United States. He called his group the Society for Human Rights (the English translation of Bund für Menschenrect) and took on the role of secretary. Gerber filed an application for a charter as a non-profit organizationNon-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
with the state of Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. The application outlined the goals and purposes of the Society:
[T]o promote and protect the interests of people who by reasons of mental and physical abnormalities are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence and to combat the public prejudices against them by dissemination of factors according to modern science among intellectuals of mature age. The Society stands only for law and order; it is in harmony with any and all general laws insofar as they protect the rights of others, and does in no manner recommend any acts in violation of present laws nor advocate any manner inimical to the public welfare.Of course, since sodomy was illegal in every state in 1924An African AmericanSodomy laws in the United StatesSodomy laws in the United States, which outlawed a variety of sexual acts, were historically universal. While they often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex, many statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes as well,...
, any participation in or advocacy of sex with other men would constitute a recommendation of an act in violation of a present law. Illinois was the first state to repeal its law but did not do so until 1962 (Hogan and Hudson, p. 634).
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
clergyman named John T. Graves signed on as president of the new organization and Gerber, Graves and five others were listed as directors. The state granted the charter on December 10, 1924, making the Society the oldest documented homosexual organization in the nation. Despite deliberately keeping the goals of the Society vague and excluding any mention of homosexuality from its mission statement, Society members were still surprised that no one with the state investigated any further before issuing the charter.
The society's newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, was the first gay-interest publication in the United States. However, few Society members were willing to receive mailings of the newsletter, fearing that postal inspectors would deem the publication obscene under the Comstock Act. Indeed, all gay-interest publications were deemed obscene until 1958, when the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
ruled in One, Inc. v. Olesen
One, Inc. v. Olesen
One, Inc. v. Olesen is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision for LGBT rights in the United States. ONE, Inc., a spinoff of the Mattachine Society, published the early pro-gay "ONE: The Homosexual Magazine" beginning in 1953. After a campaign of harassment from the U.S...
that publishing homosexual content did not mean the content was automatically obscene. Two issues of Friendship and Freedom were written and produced, entirely by Gerber. No copies of the newsletter are known to exist.
Gerber formulated a three-point strategy for winning what he referred to as "homosexual emancipation":
- "...engage in a series of lectures pointing out the attitude of society in relation to their own behavior and especially urging against the seduction of adolescents.
- "Through a publication...we would keep the homophileHomophileThe word homophile is an alternative to the word for homosexual or gay. The homophile movement also refers to the gay rights movement of the 1950s and '60s....
world in touch with the progress of our efforts.... - "Through self-discipline, homophiles would win the confidence and assistance of legal authorities and legislators in understanding the problem: that these authorities should be educated on the futility and folly of long prison terms for those committing homosexual acts."With this strategy, Gerber anticipated by some three decades the strategies that would be adopted by such early homophile organizations as the Mattachine SocietyMattachine SocietyThe Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights . Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals...
, ONE, Inc.ONE, Inc.ONE, Inc. was an early gay rights organization in the United States.The idea for a publication dedicated to homosexuals emerged from a Mattachine Society discussion meeting held on October 15, 1952....
and the Daughters of BilitisDaughters of BilitisThe Daughters of Bilitis , was the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955, conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment...
. Each of these organizations organized lectures, published nationally-distributed magazines and sought legal reforms by exploiting the disease model of homosexuality, reasoning that homosexuals should not be punished for something over which they had no control (Bianco, pp. 136–37, 143; Loughery, p. 235–37).
Gerber set out to expand the Society's membership beyond the original seven but had difficulty interesting anyone other than poorer gays in joining; he was also unable to gain any financial support from the more affluent members of Chicago's gay community. Gerber sought out the support of people in the medical professions and sex education advocates and was frustrated when he was unable to secure it, because of their fear of ruining their reputations through the association with homosexuality. Contemplating this failure in 1962, Gerber stated,
The first difficulty was in rounding up enough members and contributers so the work could go forward. The average homosexual, I found, was ignorant concerning himself. Others were fearful. Still others were frantic or depraved. Some were blasé. Many homosexuals told me that their search for forbidden fruit was the real spice of life. With this argument, they rejected our aims. We wondered how we could accomplish anything with such resistance from our own people.Gerber shouldered all of the labor and financial obligations for the Society and for production of Friendship and Freedom, something he was willing to do in service of the cause, believing it possible he would be remembered as the gay Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
for his effort. The Society sought affiliation with the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology
British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology
The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology was founded in 1913, "to advance a particularly radical agenda in the field of sex reform, based on the writings of gurus such as [Edward] Carpenter and [Havelock] Ellis." In 1931 the Society was renamed the British Sexological Society.It seems...
but the British Society declined, afraid of being linked with any organization that was specifically for homosexuals.
Demise
Gerber and Graves decided to limit Society membership to gayGay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
men and exclude bisexuals
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
. Unknown to them, the Society's vice-president Al Weininger, a man Gerber described as "an indigent laundry queen", was married with two children. Weininger's wife reported the Society to a social worker in the summer of 1925, calling them "degenerates" and making claims of "strange doings" in front of her children.
The police broke in on Gerber in the middle of the night with a reporter from the Chicago Examiner
Chicago's American
Chicago American, an afternoon newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, was the last flowering of the aggressive journalistic tradition depicted in the play and movie The Front Page....
in tow, interrogated him, seized his personal papers and arrested him. The next morning, Gerber arrived in court to learn that Graves, Weininger and Weininger's male companion had also been arrested. The Examiner reported the story under the headline "Strange Sex Cult Exposed". The paper erroneously reported that Weininger and other members of the Society had performed sex acts in front of Weininger's children and that Society literature encouraged men to abandon their wives and children. This latter statement was in direct contradiction to the Society's policy of only admitting men who were exclusively homosexual. Gerber was put through three separate trials, before charges against him were finally dismissed because he was arrested without a warrant
Warrant (law)
Most often, the term warrant refers to a specific type of authorization; a writ issued by a competent officer, usually a judge or magistrate, which permits an otherwise illegal act that would violate individual rights and affords the person executing the writ protection from damages if the act is...
.
Gerber's defense cost him his life savings, some or all of which may have been in the form of bribes paid through his lawyer. The police never returned Gerber's personal papers, his typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
or his remaining copies of Friendship and Freedom despite a court order compelling their return. The only concrete record of the newsletter's existence is a photograph of one issue in a German homophile magazine and a review of the issue in a French homophile publication.
Although Gerber avoided prosecution for obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
under the Comstock Act, he lost his post office job for "conduct unbecoming a postal worker". Weininger paid a $10 fine for "disorderly conduct". With Gerber feeling he had hit a "solid wall of ignorance, hypocrisy, meanness and corruption" and unable to continue his financial support, the Society was destroyed, and Gerber was left embittered that none of the wealthier gays of Chicago had come to his aid for a cause he believed was designed to advance the common good. He left Chicago for New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he re-enlisted in the Army, serving for 17 years before being honorably discharged.
Legacy
Henry Gerber and the Society for Human Rights serve as direct links between the LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
-related activism of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
and the American homophile movement of the 1950s. In 1929, a young man named Harry Hay
Harry Hay
Henry "Harry" Hay, Jr. was a labor advocate, teacher and early leader in the American LGBT rights movement. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organizations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States.Hay was exposed early in...
was living in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. He soon discovered the cruising
Cruising for sex
Cruising for sex, or cruising is the act of walking or driving about a locality in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one-time variety...
scene in Pershing Square
Pershing Square (Los Angeles)
Pershing Square is a public park in downtown Los Angeles, California. The park is exactly one square block in size, bounded by 5th Street to the north, 6th Street to the south, Hill Street to the east, and Olive Street to the west...
, where he met Champ Simmons, a man who had been a lover of one of Gerber's Society compatriots. This man told Hay about the Society's brief history, warning Hay of the futility of trying to organize gay men. Although Hay would later deny that he had any knowledge of previous LGBT activism, he was inspired by this knowledge to conceive in 1948 a proposal for a gay men's political and social group. In 1950 Hay's idea reached fruition when he and several other men founded the Mattachine Society
Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights . Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals...
, the first enduring LGBT rights organization in the United States.
Gerber was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame
Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame
The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame is an institution founded in 1991 to honor persons and entities who have made significant contributions to the quality of life or well-being of the LGBT community in Chicago. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley attended nearly every installation ceremony each...
in 1992. The Henry Gerber House
Henry Gerber House
The Henry Gerber House is a house at 1710 North Crilly Court in the Old Town Triangle Chicago Landmark District of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The house was built in 1885. In the 1920s it housed the apartment occupied by Henry Gerber, founder of the short-lived Society for Human Rights,...
, located at 1710 N. Crilly Court, Chicago, contains the apartment in which Gerber lived when he founded the Society. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 1, 2001. The Gerber/Hart Library
Gerber/Hart Library
The Gerber/Hart Library , founded in 1981, is the largest circulating library of gay and lesbian titles in the Midwestern United States...
at 1127 West Granville Avenue is named in honor of Gerber and early civil rights defender Pearl M. Hart
Pearl M. Hart
Pearl M. Hart was a Chicago attorney notable for her work defending oppressed minority groups. Hart was the first woman in Chicago to be appointed Public Defender in the Morals Court. Most notably, she represented children, women, immigrants, lesbians, and gay men, often without fee or for a...
.