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...
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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.
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