Jack Nichols biographical papers

Jack Nichols was born John Richard Nichols on 16 March 1938 in Washington, D.C., and raised in Maryland and Florida. During high school in the 1950s, he explored a gay identity in Washington D.C. gay bars and after leaving school, became an early activist in the homophile movement. I late 1960, Nicols met Franklin Kameny who had recently lost his job in the Army Map Service because of his homosexuality. When Kameny's brief to the Supreme Court to hear his challenge to dismissal was refused in 1961, Kameny and Nichols founded the Mattachine Society of Washignton, D.C. The Society openly demonstrated for civil rights for homosexuals at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963. Nichols worked intermittently with the Mattachine Society of Washington until 1964, and founded the Florida Mattachine Society in 1965. He was also active in developing the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), which was a loose affiliation with East Coast Daughters of Bilitis, as well as the New York Mattachine Society, and the Janus Society of Philadelphia. He chaired the Washington Mattachine Committee on Religious Concerns, urging the area ministers, priests, and rabbis to join in dialogue with representatives of the homosexual community. In 1967 he appeared as a self-identified gay in an interview with Mike Wallace on the CBS television network.

Nichols became a major gay voice in the countercultural movement after 1964. He moved to Manhattan, New York City, with only sporadic contact with the Mattachine Society. He began editing work, and co-authored with his lover Lige Clark, a gay column for Al Goldstein's notorious pornographic paper SCREW, becoming its editor by 1969. He also reported for the West Coast publication, The Advocate, notably publicizing the rebellion at Stonewall in June 1969. With Clark, he also edited the first weekly gay magazine, GAY, until its demise in 1973. During the 1970s, he authored several books, listed below. During the 1980s, Nichols moved to San Francisco and wrote a column in the Weekly News. He was a public spokesperson for the gay community during the AIDS epidemic. He returned to Florida in 1992, writing columns and editing the online magazine, GayToday.com until 2004. He died in 2005.