 |
Co-Founder of Original Mattachine A Giant Figure Among the Earliest American Gay Pioneers Won First Case against Police Enticement & Entrapment |
|
By Jack Nichols
It was in 1952 that Jennings mounted, for the very first time, a court challenge to the Los Angeles Police Department's busied enticement and entrapment of gay men. Refusing to back down in the face of acute police intimidation, he became known by fellow activists in the 1950s as "The Rosa Parks of the Gay Rights Movement." Jennings had been followed home from a Los Angeles park by a plainclothes vice officer who arrested him in his own apartment and charged him with indecent behavior. Demoralized at first, he chose to fight the charge in a previously unheard of course of action. Doing so, he earned a widespread respect for the newly-formed Mattachine Society, California's first gay-identified organization and, thereafter, because it had formed chapters in Denver, Chicago, and New York, and elsewhere, the first with a national membership. Jennings was born October 21, 1917 in Amarillo, Texas, though his parents soon moved and he grew to maturity in Denver, Colorado. Following his graduation from high school, he moved to Los Angeles where his lifelong fascination with stage and screen began to bloom. In Pasadena, he distinguished himself as writer, producer and director.
ONE's collision with the postal censors reached its apex in 1958 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a serious magazine discussing homosexual issues is not, by itself, obscene, thus laying the foundation for press freedoms enjoyed by gay and lesbian publications today. In the 1960s, Jennings was a member of The Homosexual Information Center where he sat, with Don Slater on the governing board. "Dale Jennings was a very significant figure in the history of our movement," said William Glover, who had worked side by side with Slater. "He was a giant among the founders of the movement on America's West Coast." Jennings' writings included a novel, The Cowboys, which was later turned into a movie of the same name, starring John Wayne. He also published both The Ronin and The Sinking of the Sarah Diamond. Memorial Service for Dale Jennings: Date: Sunday, June 25, 2000 Time: 2 p.m. Admission: Free. Public welcome Donations Welcome: Help preserve Dale Jennings' work with a donation to ONE Institute & Archives. Place: ONE Institute & Archives University of Southern California 909 West Adams Los Angeles, California 90007 |
