Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay. Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Page from ONE Magazine, April 1955. Photo courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
The name, ONE, came from a Victorian poem by Thomas Carlyle: “A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men ONE.” It was suggested by Guy Rousseau, and was an inspirational statement to all gay people, reminding them of the power of collective action and encouraging them to stand up to the intense discrimination and harassment the gay community was facing.
Masthead from the inaugural edition of ONE Magazine. The quote would be featured in every issue. Image courtesy of Google Images.
Articles of Incorporation. Image Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
The official Articles of Incorporation for ONE, Incorporated state that “the specific and primary purposes for which this corporation was formed are to publish and disseminate a magazine dealing primarily with homosexuality from the scientific, historical and critical point of view, and to aid in the social integration of the sexual variant." Indeed, the founders claimed to be interested in the "social integration" of gay people into society, but in reality they were dedicated to social activism against the oppression and persecution of gay people.
The founders sought to help improve the lives of gay men and lesbians, a cause to which they remained dedicated for decades to come as they sought to overcome prejudice and ignorance. They had no idea at the time that their little publication would end up in the Supreme Court five years later, and it is undeniable that this event had profound impacts on the future of gay activism both politically and socially, and therefore, on the lives of millions of American gay men and lesbians.
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Inaugural issue of ONE Magazine 1954. Image Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
The ONE Exhibition,
The Roots of the LGBT Equality Movement
ONE Magazine &
The First Gay Supreme Court Case In U.S. History
1943-1958
In the late 1940s and throughout 1950s gays and lesbians were experiencing enormous pressure as they, along with their friends and loved ones, faced losing their jobs, arrest, fines, incarceration, deportment, and public humiliation at the hands of unsympathetic government officials and police.
The FBI and local police vice squads coordinated with government agencies, including industrial contractors, who were among the largest employers in the nation, and private sector employers all over the country in the effort. They, and even the U.S. Post Office, were intent upon rooting out gay men and lesbians wherever they might try to find a safe haven during the brutal purges of the era sometimes referred to as the "Lavender Scare." This was a dual reference to a term used to describe the fear of communists at the time, the "Red Scare," and a pejorative joke about gay men that labelled them as "Lavender Lads."
Before this time, homosexuals who were content to maintain a low profile were generally tolerated in society, and gay men, lesbians, and homosexuality had been subjects that most Americans rarely, if ever, spoke of or encountered.
Due to the intense new government campaigns against gays at the time, some began to see themselves as members of a persecuted minority group. For many, hiding no longer offered any real guarantee of safety, and the repercussions fighting back became less prohibitive because many felt they had little to lose.
After experiencing these brutal attacks and harsh discriminatory and punitive policies, a small group of gay men, led by Harry Hay, formed the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles.
Early photo of ONE Magazine founders. Front row, L-R Dale Jennings, Tony Reyes, Chuck Roland, and W. Dorr Legg. Photo Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California..
Don Slater picketing with the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), protesting “Fagots (sic) Stay Out” signs at Barneys Beanery in West Hollywood, 1969. Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Don Slater with longtime partner Tony Reyes. Undated photo courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Jim Kepner (on left) and W. Dorr Legg stand in front of the ONE, Incorporated offices on Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles. Undated photo Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
W. Dorr Legg stands before ONE staffers, Ca. 1957-1958. Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Harry Hay and Jim Kepner. 1981. Photo Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
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ONE staff visits ruins while in Mexico. At the time, the staff was contemplating moving ONE to Mexico. Chuck Rowland, (L-R) Bob Hall, Jim Kepner, and 2 unknown people. Undated photo Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Page from ONE Magazine, April 1954. Image Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
James Barr Fugate. Pic from October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine, Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
Rare group photo of Mattachine Society members at a holiday party. Founder Hay, upper left, and ONE magazine founder Dale Jennings, front row, second from left. Courtesy of the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles, California.
The mask was a powerful symbol to gay men and lesbians in the era. It described a duality many of them lived with. They were able to be themselves in private, among friends and lovers, but donned “masks” to go out into society. Masks that allowed them to blend in, as part of a compromise that was imperative to most who wanted to keep their jobs, and maintain relationships with heterosexual friends, neighbors, and family.
Hay was motivated to establish the society in 1950 by stories he had heard and read in the news, and from stories told to him by gay friends, of government purges that began in 1948 in Washington D.C.
Hay explained, “It ‘was obvious McCarthy was setting up the pattern of a new scapegoat, and it was going to be us - gays.’ Blacks were already organized, he reasoned, and Jews could not be attacked because of the ‘painful example of Germany.’”
The Mattachine was a secret society, originally modeled after communist cells several of them had previously belonged to. The membership and society were secretive and anonymous specifically because of the dangerous environment of repression homosexuals were facing at the time. The group briefly engaged in activism, before disavowing any political involvement while relying on educational and research efforts to further their cause, in an attempt to portray an aura of respectability.
Although this story is about the experience of gay men and lesbians at the time, communists are an important factor in a parallel discourse, because the media, McCarthy, and other members of the government sought to intertwine homosexuals and communists as co-conspirators. This was true to the extent that in the eyes of many members of the public, the two became virtually synonymous.
An example of the absurdity that was so common in the rationale behind the attacks on gays themselves, is that homosexuals were barred from the Communist Party. But this did not stop the accusations in the media and from government officials. They believed that communists and homosexuals were working together to infiltrate government agencies, as part of a huge, shadowy conspiracy to destroy American security. In fact, several members of the Mattachine Society had been kicked out of the Communist Party when it was learned that they were homosexuals.
This decision to downplay activism provided the impetus for a small group to break away from the Mattachine Society to found ONE, incorporated, the nonprofit dedicated to, among other things, publishing ONE, The Homosexual Magazine.
As such, several of the Mattachine Society’s members, frustrated by the secrecy of the group, and its reluctance to fight the system, decided to establish a magazine dedicated to helping improve the lives of gay people everywhere.
ONE magazine was founded and largely run by a small group of hard working, dedicated activists, none of whom had any experience running a magazine, including Dale Jennings, a WWII veteran and playwright who had grown up in Colorado before moving to Los Angeles in his late teens.
The concept of the magazine arose when Jennings, who was one of the early members of the Mattachine Society, realized that a group of gay men talking alone in the secret meetings of the Mattachine Society about their problems was not enough; it was not going to change anything or help them improve their lives.
He thought that something significant had to be done; they needed to organize and reach a larger audience. They would do so through the nation's first gay magazine.
Key Members of ONE Magazine
ONE Magazine and its Founders
Don Slater was born and raised in Pasadena. Slater was a WWII veteran, and a graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. in literature. He was also known to have a “confrontational personality and was defiantly libertarian in his worldview," and served as an editor and helped coordinate distribution for ONE magazine.
Slater's partner Tony Reyes was another founder, and a Vice-Chairman of the magazine. Slater believed that the founding of ONE magazine represented the genesis of the LGBT equality movement, as it was the first time gay men could interact and articulate outside of the shadows they had been relegated to for so long.
W. Dorr Legg was ONE’s business manager and a frequent editorialist. Legg had an African American boyfriend, and they had been swept up in a police raid in their hometown of Detroit. Legg stated later that the ensuing legal and social ramifications destroyed his life, so he relocated to Los Angeles and eventually joined the Mattachine Society.
Legg disliked the society’s secrecy, so when a few of the members decided to branch off and found a magazine, he joined the organization and dedicated the rest of his life to the magazine and the cause of LGBT equality.
Other important figures in the magazine's history are founding Chairman Martin Block, Guy Rousseau, Merton Bird, Eve Elloree, and Ann Carll Reid.
Jim Kepner was a major gay activist who reportedly wrote more than 2,000 articles on gay history and culture in dozens of publications before he died in 1997. Kepner was from Texas, had been abandoned as a baby, and was adopted and raised by fundamentalist Christian parents. After a brief period in the military, he wandered the country working odd jobs, and in 1942 witnessed a brutal police raid on a gay bar in San Francisco, which inspired him to begin collecting documents on homosexuality.
Kepner had no formal education. Nonetheless, he became the first historian and archivist of gay culture in the United States, writing about these subjects long before it was academically acceptable.
His immense volume of published work in the gay press from the 1950s to the 1990s is thought to have shaped all subsequent writing on American gay history. It is in great part thanks to the work of Kepner that such a large volume of ephemera on gay history exists today at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at USC, and reflects a lifetime of collecting and activism.
Additionally, as a nonprofit, the magazine relied on dozens of volunteers to get each issue out, as well as contributors who wrote in original essays and short stories from across the country.
One of the most well known writers was novelist James Barr Fugate, notable for his fearlessness in his use of his given name, as well as for having his photograph printed in the April 1954 issue of the magazine. This was the first time an openly gay men volunteered his photograph to appear in a nationally distributed publication - no photos of Legg, Kepner, or Slater ever appeared in the magazine during the 1950s.
The bravery of this resident of Kansas was remarkable; the photo was included again, in the October 1954 issue, but un-cropped. In the photo he appears trim, clean cut, smiling and confidant, accompanied by his dog, wearing a fashionable suit and bow tie.
The photo reflects the efforts of these early activists. They were trying to advertise to their peers, and to American society, that they were just like anybody else. It also reflected an unusual bravery and defiance of the oppressive system that was in place attempting to eradicate any freedom or equality for gay people.
Cover of Mattachine Review, 1959. The Mattachine Society followed the example of ONE Magazine in their publication. Photo courtesy of Google Images.
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Cover of lesbian magazine featuring a mask, powerful symbols to gay men and lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s. Photo courtesy of Google Images.