Earlier this week I mentioned the University of Wisconsin students who were in NYC at the Stonewall and the LGBT Center studying gay american history. Well, they were also in Philadelphia, where one of the heroes of my youth, Mark Segal, showed them the first government sponsored historic marker honoring LGBT history, at the site of the first homosexual rights demonstration in Philadelphia on July 4th, 1965. You can actually see these students enacting a recreation of this march, with Mark giving them historic background, on YouTube.
I first met Mark at an anti-war protest (Viet Nam era) in 1970, where he was carrying a banner for Gay Youth. I took one look at him and his cadre of gay youthies and said, "Where have you been all my life?" Next year that time I was president of the group, succeeding Mark who had gone on to other adventures, most notably publishing Philadephia Gay News today. But not before he stopped by CBS News in the 1970s to interrupt a broadcast of Walter Cronkite delivering the evening news and chaining himself to the anchor desk to protest the silence on the issue of lgbt rights in the media. This is a gutsy man I have always admired.
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