“FREEDOM FOR HOMOS NOW,” Gale Chester Whittington and members of the Committee for Homos
“FREEDOM FOR HOMOS NOW,” Gale Chester Whittington and members of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom protest States Steamship Company, San Francisco, California, March 1969. Photo by Marsha-Ann Woof Sebay Hill..In late March 1969, the States Steamship Company (better known as States Line) fired Gale Chester Whittington from his administrative position, citing as cause the fact that Whittington was an open homosexual. Within days, San Francisco’s first highly-visible direct-action gay liberation organization, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF), had formed. To be clear, CHF was not San Francisco’s first organization committed to social justice for the queer community; it was, however, the first organization in San Francisco successfully to take the fight to the streets for a sustained period, marking a shift in the movement’s tactics..For months, CHF and affiliated organizations held daily protests outside of States Line and, in so doing, galvanized the Bay Area’s queer community into political action..Because of the work of CHF, which built on the earlier work of San Francisco’s homophile organizations, the city’s queer community had a grassroots infrastructure that was able to seize the momentum started by the Stonewall Riots in June 1969..Gale Chester Whittington, a pioneering force in San Francisco’s queer liberation movement, died on August 11, 2013. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at San Francisco, California) -- source link
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