Vanguard
by Susan Stryker, Director, GLBT Historical Society
In 1966, two unrelated gay youth groups formed on opposite coasts of the
United States -- Vanguard in San Francisco and Gay Youth of New York in
New York City. These are the first known youth groups of their kind, and --
equally significantly -- the earliest known groups to use the word "gay" in the
more political sense that became familiar a few years later after the
Stonewall Riots and the emergence of a liberation movement.
"Gay" in the 1960s was like "queer" in the 1990s: an older, sometimes
disparaged term adopted and reinterpreted by the rising generation as a
way of distinguishing themselves from their older and presumably more
conservative predecessors. It's altogether fitting that the word "gay"
should appear in youth groups a few years prior to entering more
mainstream usage.
Little documention has survived from the founding period of Gay Youth of
New York, but organizational records from the early 1970s now housed in the
International Gay Information Center Collection at the New York Public
Library claim the group was founded in 1966. Marc Segal, who was later a
prominent gay liberationist in Philadelphia, was an early member. The
group later affiliated with the National Gay Youth Committee, a
Philadelphia-based umbrella group headed by Segal's lover, Phillip Janison.
Much more is known about Vanguard, an organization of gay hustlers,
street queens, "hair fairies," and runaway youth that formed in San Francisco in
May, 1966. Progressive Christian ministers associated with Glide Memorial
Methodist Church provided the initial spark that led to the group's
formation, but the young people themselves quickly began running Vanguard
on their own behalf. They held dances, organized pickets lines and other
demonstrations to protest discriminatory treatment, and published a
beautifully illustrated newsletter, an early example of which is pictured
above. Like Gay Youth of New York, Vanguard survived into the early 1970s
before it lost its sense of purpose and disbanded.
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