Society for Human Rights facts for kids
| Named after | Bund für Menschenrecht |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1924 |
| Founder | Henry Gerber |
| Dissolved | 1925 |
| Type | non-profit organization |
| Location |
The Society for Human Rights was an American gay-rights organization established in Chicago in 1924. Society founder Henry Gerber was inspired to create it by the work of German doctor Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and by the organisation Bund für Menschenrecht by Friedrich Radszuweit and Karl Schulz in Berlin. 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 small size, the Society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation movement.
Henry Gerber
Henry Gerber emigrated from Imperial Germany 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. After the war, he served 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. Gerber traveled to Berlin, which supported a thriving gay subculture, on several occasions and subscribed to at least one homophile magazine. He was particularly impressed with the work of Friedrich Radszuweit and Karl Schulz's group called Bund für Menschenrecht 'Association for Human Rights' and absorbed a number of Hirschfeld's ideas. Following his military service, Gerber returned to the United States and went to work for the post office in Chicago.
Founding the Society
Inspired by Officer Koester work with the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and the Bund für Menschenrecht in Berlin, Gerber resolved to found a similar organization in the United States. He called his group the Society for Human Rights (an English translation of Bund für Menschenrecht) and took on the role of secretary. Gerber filed an application for a charter as a non-profit organization with the state of Illinois on December 10, 1924. 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.
An African American 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 24, 1924, making the Society the first 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. 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.
- "Through a publication...we would keep the homophile 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."
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 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 contributors 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 for his effort.
Legacy
Henry Gerber and the Society for Human Rights serve as direct links between the LGBT-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 met Champ Simmons. 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. In June 2015 it was named a National Historic Landmark.
The Gerber/Hart Library at 6500 N. Clark St in Chicago is named in honor of Gerber and early civil rights defender Pearl M. Hart.
