By John Mack Freeman
Two places of importance in LGBT history have received new landmark statuses in the past two weeks. The Henry Gerber House in Chicago has become a national landmark per the Department of the Interior, and the Stonewall Inn in New York City has been made a city landmark.
From the Department of Interior release about the Gerber House:
The house also served as the headquarters and meeting place for the Society for Human Rights. The Society’s members held lectures, published a newsletter that was the earliest-documented gay-oriented periodical in the country, and worked to change the minds of legal and political authorities. They hoped to challenge, through educational programs and community outreach, the contemporary discourse that discriminated against LGBT people.
The Society’s chartered status and newsletter were unprecedented in the history of the gay rights movement in the U.S. and preceded better-known efforts by more than two decades. Although the house was the site of the earliest documented efforts toward LGBT emancipation, the social and political climate led to the swift dissolution of the Society in 1925 after police arrested Henry Gerber and several other members. Although no warrant was produced, Mr. Gerber was taken into custody and his belongings confiscated. The organization’s collapse illustrates substantial obstacles in the struggle for civil rights.
