Before the National LGBTQ Task Force, before the Human Rights Campaign, and even before the Stonewall uprising, there was the Mattachine Society. Founded in Los Angeles in 1950, the Mattachine Society became the first enduring gay rights organization in U.S. history, lasting into the 1970s. While not the very first, that distinction belongs to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights in 1924, Mattachine built a national movement at a time when being openly gay was dangerous.
Its founders included labor organizer Harry Hay, along with Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, Konrad Stevens, James Gruber, and fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. Early on, the group operated in secrecy, supporting mostly gay men and educating them on surviving and resisting postwar repression. Mattachine worked inside the legal system, organized sip-ins at bars, warned members about police entrapment, and published ONE Magazine, the first widely distributed gay publication. Today, Mattachine’s legacy lives on through archives, activism, and LGBTQ history itself.
