- unitid
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{"value"=>"1858", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"MssCol 1858", "type"=>"local_call"}
- unitdate
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{"value"=>"1962-1986", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1962/1986"}
- date_inclusive_start
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1962
- date_inclusive_end
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1986
- keydate
-
1962
- date_start
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1962
- date_end
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1986
- unittitle
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{"value"=>"Morty Manford papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"22.5 linear ft. (59 boxes, 1 oversize folder)"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- repository
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{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.</span> <div class=\"address\"> <span class=\"addressline\">Stephen A. Schwarzman Building</span> <span class=\"addressline\">Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788</span></div>"}
- physloc
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{"value"=>"MssCol 1858"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"Morty Manford (1950-1992) was an activist and key strategist in the early days of the gay rights movement, a Legal Aid lawyer, and an Assistant Attorney General of New York State. While an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1971, he founded Gay People at Columbia, one of the first gay campus groups in the country. Subsequently, he began writing about the goals of the gay movement, speaking on college campuses and at gay clubs, and organizing protest demonstrations, parades, and rallies in support of gay rights legislation in New York City and throughout the United States. Among the many gay rights organizations he co-founded were the Gay Activists Alliance, which strove to bring gays together as a political force, the National Coalition of Gay Activists, which publicized and coordinated rallies and demonstrations on a national scale, and the clandestine Study Group, a New York-based think-tank which worked with the gay infrastructure in the state and local political establishments to influence political and public opinion and promote the state-wide activities of the gay rights movement. The papers of Morty Manford span the years 1962 to 1986 and chiefly document his activities as a leading activist and ideologist of the gay and lesbian rights movement. The collection consists of correspondence with other gay activists, gay organizations, and politicians; name and subject files; writings by Manford and others on gay and other subjects; photographs, sound recordings, artifacts, and personal papers."}
- langmaterial
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{"value"=>"Materials in English"}
- prefercite
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{"value"=>"<p>Morty Manford papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library</p>"}
- origination
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{"value"=>"Manford, Morty", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
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{"value"=>"<p>Morty Manford was an activist and key strategist in the early days of the gay rights movement, a Legal Aid lawyer, and an Assistant Attorney General of New York State. While an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1971, he founded Gay People at Columbia, one of the first gay campus groups in the country. Subsequently he began writing about the goals of the gay movement, and publicizing them on speaking tours of college campuses and gay clubs throughout the United states, as well as organizing protest demonstrations, parades, and rallies in support of gay rights legislation in New York City and across the country. Among the many gay rights organizations he co-founded were three very important ones, the Gay Alliance, which strove to bring gays together as a political force, the National Coalition of Gay Activists, which publicized and coordinated rallies and demonstrations on a national scale, and the clandestine Study Group, a New York-based think-tank which worked with the gay infrastructure in the state and local political establishments to influence political and public opinion and to promote the state-wide activities of the gay rights movement.</p> <p>Born in New York City in 1950, Manford was a graduate of Bayside High School in Queens. After a hiatus of several years, during which he was intensely involved in the gay rights movement, he graduated from Columbia in 1979.</p> <p>Manford was a pivotal figure in the growth of the gay and lesbian rights movement in the decade after Stonewall. He was also a Legal Aid attorney, and a New York State Assistant Attorney General. After Manford came out both his parents developed into outspoken movement activists, and were co-founders with him of Parents of Gays, the first support group of its kind in the world and the forerunner of the present-day Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). Manford continued his involvement as a movement ideologist, public speaker, and organizer, until 1983, but afterwards he played a less active role. Manford died in 1992 at the age of forty-two from AIDS-related complications.</p> <p>On the night of June 28, 1969, Manford was at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village when a police raid touched off spontaneous resistance by defiant gays. The rioting sent a shockwave through New York's gay community and the feeling of solidarity that was forged in its wake gave rise to the modern gay rights movement. Manford followed up his role as a witness to the riots by organizing one of the first campus gay groups in the country, Gay People at Columbia, around the issue of the gay lounge at Columbia University. He also began writing and publicly speaking on the principles and goals of the gay rights movement.</p> <p>In the early years of his active participation in the movement Manford championed the use of zaps-a vivid term he coined for applying persistent public pressure on liberal politicians-New York's mayor, John Lindsay, was one-to publicly support gay civil rights. Manford also was involved in the creation of a wide spectrum of gay support groups. The proliferation of such groups, and spinoffs such as employment counseling, legal and medical advice, and assistance with housing, culminated in the acquisition by the New York Gay Activists Alliance of a large building on Wooster Street for use as a social/advocacy meeting place for gay men and lesbians. A former City firehouse, the building, called The Gay Firehouse, was a communal hub where the different strands of gay culture-social, political, ideological, literary, musical, sexual-were brought together under one roof.</p> <p>Manford also arranged and coordinated demonstrations on local and national issues. Manford traveled extensively across the country speaking at colleges, liberal political meetings, and gay social clubs on the historical importance of the gay rights movement and the issues with which it was concerned and encouraged audiences to take an active part in movement demonstrations, especially against anti-gay laws and politicians in their areas. He also traveled to England and Holland where he met with gay leaders.</p> <p>One of the founders in 1969 of the Gay Activists Alliance, Manford later served in parts of 1973 and 1974 as its president. In May of 1972 he accused Michael Maye, President of the Firefighters' Union, and a former prizefighter, of assaulting him at a gay rights demonstration. When Maye was acquitted of the assault charges, the case, known as the Inner Circle Affair, became a <em>cause-célèbre</em> in the gay community and civil liberties circles, and helped to publicize the need for a gay rights bill. In the summer of that year Manford was elected president of the National Coalition of Gay Activists, which disseminated movement news, ideas, and information, and coordinated civil rights drives throughout the United States.</p> <p>Also in 1972, Manford was one of the leaders of the gay and lesbian demonstrators gathered at the Presidential National Conventions of both the Democratic and Republican parties held in Miami Beach. Earlier in the year, as a preparation for these demonstrations, he had attended the National Gay Conference held at Chicago. This important colloquium, billed as \"A Strategy Session for Election '72\", was organized and co-hosted by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York and the Chicago Gay Alliance. One of the purposes of the conference was to come up with strategies and tactics to be employed by delegates inside the convention halls and methods of confrontation to be used by demonstrators outside. Manford commented that it was important that the gay community be fully informed on the views of every candidate, and that the disparity between a candidate's civil rights position and refusal to take a strong position on gay rights should be made public.</p> <p>Manford was a founder and president of the Lambda Club, a large community center for gays which offered medical and psychological counseling programs, and a director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a separate alliance of attorneys and educators which sought to ensure the civil rights of gay people. In 1973 he became a trustee of the National New Orleans Memorial Fund, which was created after a fire at a gay bar in the French Quarter in which 32 people died. In the same year Manford also served as the campaign manager for James Owles, the first openly gay candidate, for a seat on the New York City Council. Though Owles was not elected, his campaign made an impact on politicians by demonstrating the potential power of gays at the ballot box and emphasizing their determination to win political and statutory equality. In the process of patiently working to raise the consciousness of gay and non-gay voters the Owles campaign helped create a timely groundswell of articulate and resolute support that paved the way for the eventual passage in 1986 of a gay rights bill in the New York City Council.</p> <p>By the end of the 1970s, after a decade of demonstrations, marches, picketing, sit-ins, and zaps, the gay rights movement had achieved a foothold in the back rooms and corners of the political arena where policy traditionally is made. Manford had taken a decisive step in this direction in 1975 when he became a member of the controversial Study Group (1: Lee Solomon broadcast over New York radio station WBAI in 1977. (See Audio cassette 02825). Lee Solomon, who had just finished an article on the Study Group, says that it was \"originally a consciousness-raising group for gay politicians formed during Bella Abzug's campaign for the U. S. Senate in 1970\", and charges it with being an anti-democratic elite covertly intervening in gay politics. Manford telephones to vehemently deny that there is anything covert, sinister, or manipulative about the Study Group, and other listeners call to support or oppose Solomon's charges. On this interesting question also see Subjects Files under Study Group and Audio cassettes 02822, 02824, and 02848.), a nucleus of predominantly gay and lesbian New York intellectuals with ties to state and local political parties. The core leadership was composed almost entirely of openly gay men and lesbians, among them Manford, Kenneth Sherrill, Ethan Geto, Michele de Milly, Howard Brown, Douglas Ireland, and Allen Roskoff. The members were either primarily activists, like Manford and de Milly, or were, like Howard Brown and Ethan Geto, veteran members of a politically sophisticated gay infrastructure inside New York's labyrinthine permanent government of career civil servants. Members of the Study Group used their political savvy and scholarly resources to gain crucial ideological access to the powerful state and local policy-making establishments where they conducted a campaign to raise the political consciousness of both parties and to garner support at City Hall and in Albany for state-wide pro-gay demonstrations and other movement activities.</p> <p>In 1978 Manford worked as a director of the summer Comprehensive Employment & Training Act (CETA) youth programs of the New York City Department of General Services. From late 1978 through September 1979 he was a staff analyst at the Office of Project Management and Analysis, Department of General Services. Two years later he graduated from the Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University and in 1983 he was accepted before the Bar of the State of New York. Subsequently he was a staff attorney and supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York where he worked with indigent defendants. In 1987 he became an Assistant Attorney General of the State of New York. Manford died in 1992 at the age of forty-two from AIDS-related complications.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The papers of Morty Manford span the years 1962 to 1986 and chiefly document his activities as a leading gay activist and ideologist of the gay and lesbian rights movement. Included are correspondence with other gay activists, gay organizations, and politicians; name and subject files; writings by Manford and others on gay and other subjects; computer printouts; artifacts; and personal papers.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Morty Manford papers are arranged in ten series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1049825'>1. General Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1962-1986</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>With organizations and individuals involved in the gay and lesbian rights movement, city, state, and federal government departments and officials, and friends and relatives. The bulk of the correspondence reflects the development of the gay rights movement and the role that Manford played in it. Organized by year.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1049831'>2. Name and Subject Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Included in this series are files of the Chelsea Gay Association, Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Community Services Center of Los Angeles, Gay Liberation Front of London, Gay Nazis, Gay People at Columbia, Lesbian Feminist Liberation of New York City, Maine Task Force, National Coalition of Gay Activists, National Gay Task Force, New York State Coalition of Gay Organizations, the Study Group, and other gay political groups, and non-gay organizations that supported the movement; files on topics of special interest to Manford and other gay men and lesbians, such as the changing attitudes to homosexuality, the episode of the television program, Marcus Welby, M.D., depicting the aftermath of the rape of a young boy by a homosexual, the ideological position of the Socialist Workers' Party on the gay movement, the stereotyping of gay men in American films, the mass murders in Houston, Texas in 1973, lesbian mothers and child custody, the Anita Bryant campaign against homosexuals, gay marriage, gay pride and the development throughout the country of organizations to help homosexuals come out, gay rights bills, especially in the New York City Council, and gay political strategy, and the Inner Circle affair, relating to the aftermath of a demonstration at which Manford was assaulted and which led to an important court case; files of leading activists in the gay rights movement such as Ethan Geto, Jean O'Leary, Jim Owles, Michele de Milly, Edward Egan, John Paul Hudson, Morris Kight, Sarah Montgomery (who was instrumental in the creation of Parents of Gays and Lesbians) and others; and files of gay and other publications including <em>Advocate, Fifth Freedom, Insight On Ice, Oz, Radical Queen, and Us...,writings from prisons</em>..</p> <p>Titles of publications are italicized.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050108'>3. Writings</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Includes articles by Manford on gay and other subjects such as bi-sexuality in the movement, the Jim Owles campaign for the New York City Council, the gay political movement in New York City, gay students at Columbia, a research project on homophobia, and a comparative study of Eugene Debs and Douglas Fraser. In this series there are also writings by others on gay and non-gay subjects such as Tina Crosby on the Stonewall riot, Arthur Evans on the oppression of gays, the screenplay of William Friedkin's film, <em>Cruising</em>, John Lauritsen and David Thorstad on the gay rights movement, and Marcia Tremmel's Marxist critique of the gay and feminist liberation movements.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050149'>4. Press clippings and press releases</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The clippings and releases relate almost exclusively to gay subjects.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050152'>5. Audio Tapes</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This material is shelved separately from the rest of the collection, and must be accessed using the Control Number provided in the Audio Name List. Many of the recordings were made by Manford using nonprofessional equipment and as a consequence the audio quality varies from tape to tape. The recordings include street talks with gays on the state of the movement; interviews with Tom Duane, Jean O'Leary, Sarah Montgomery, Ken Sherrill, Jim Shenton, and others; interviews and speeches at the National Gay Conference held in Chicago in 1972, at which one of the speakers was Dr. Benjamin Spock; marchers at the Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Rights march and rally, 1978; speech by, and interview with Doug Fraser, President of the United Auto Workers; interview on the Pat Collins radio show with Jeanne Manford, Jules Manford, and Sarah Montgomery concerning parents of gays; a taped telephone conversation between Manford and Mario Cuomo regarding the alleged homophobic and anti-Italian nature of the New York City Democratic Party mayoral primary race of 1977; a talk by Rosaline Davies on the difficulties facing lesbians who apply forth legal custody of children; a discussion about the Study Group by Lee Solomon and callers on radio station WBAI; and Manford speeches at the University of Texas-Austin, and the Gay Activists Alliance of New Jersey.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050197'>6. Photographs</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050200'>7. Computer Printouts</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Statistical analysis of reactions to gays and a statistical survey relating to the Dade County, Florida vote in 1977.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050202'>8. Artifacts</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>T-shirts and balloons relating to gay subjects; eye patch; pink triangle armband; banner used in the Reno City Revolt, June 1970; shoulder patches; buttons.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050204'>9. Mattachine Review</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/1858#c1050206'>10. Personal Papers</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Files relating to Manford's high school and college education, his law degree and preparation for the New York State Bar, and his employment. Photographs of Manford as a child, of his parents, and friends.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>In ten series: 1. Correspondence; 2. Name and Subject Files; 3. Writings; 4. Press Clippins and Releases; 5. Audiotapes; 6. Photographs; 7. Computer Printouts; 8. Artifacts; 9. Mattachine Review; 10. Personal Papers</p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
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{"value"=>"<p>Gift of Jeanne Manford, 1993</p>"}
- processinfo
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{"type"=>"processing", "value"=>"<p>Richard Salvato, September 1997</p>"}
- accessrestrict
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{"value"=>"<p>Box 57 is closed until the year 2070.</p>"}
- relatedmaterial
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{"value"=>"<p>His parents' papers relating to their participation in the gay and lesbian rights movement and the creation of Parents of Gays, also are housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division. (See the Jeanne Manford Papers.)</p>"}
- extent_statement
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22.5 linear feet (59 boxes, 1 oversize folder)