Don Lucas: Pioneering Gay Activist
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Don Lucas in his persona Jus Foo Ling, circa 1950.
Photo: Kennell-Ellis, Tacoma, WA.
Copyright 1999, GLBT Historical Society
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Don Lucas served for many years as executive
director of the early gay civil rights organization, the Mattachine
Society. Lucas's career as an activist demonstrates the interconnections
between the gay movement and other progressive social movements in
mid-twentieth-century America.
Through Mattachine, Lucas helped found the Council on Religion and the
Homosexual (CRH) in San Francisco in 1964. The CRH built bridges between
liberal ministers and national gay leaders. These ministers made an
important public show of support for the gay community after a CRH
fundraising dance was harassed by police in 1965.
Lucas's involvement with the CRH, which was headquartered at Glide
Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco's impoverished Tenderloin
district, led him to recognize the daily injustices faced by the
disenfranchised citizens of that neighborhood. When the opportunity
arose in 1967 for him to direct the new Central City Anti-Poverty
Program -- formed in large part through gay activism and organizing in
the Tenderloin -- Lucas leapt at the chance. As director, Lucas pioneered the
provision of social services to groups that most service agencies simply wouldn't
touch: queer street youth, transsexuals, prostitutes, and drug addicts.
A skilled amateur magician as well as a dedicated public servant, Don
Lucas was adept at creating the illusion of conformity while engaged in
truly radical social work. Now in his 70s and long-since retired, Lucas
continues to volunteer his time to a number of causes in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
In addition to his more serious political work, Lucas branched out
into theater, taking turns as an actor, a director, a sound and light
technician, a maker of educational films, a professional illusionist, and
a part-time drag performer.
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