C. Todd White, Ph.D.

Chair, Homosexual Information Center

Editor, HIC Publications

February 6, 2014. Updated June 29, 2016.

This website began in Los Angeles, 2003, as a place where I could hang in cyberspace the data and information that I discovered as I researched the history of the first homosexual-rights organization in the country, ONE, Incorporated. Over the years, and mostly on a volunteer basis, I have added content enough that the site is now often consulted by scholars and journalists—and approaches 100,000 hits on the Home page (not all of which were from my hitting the refresh button, I assure you).

It need be said, though, that this site would not be possible without the support of many individuals and organizations.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to HIC’s founding officers, Billy Glover, Joseph Hansen, and Jim Schneider, for pulling me in to this history and sharing a multitude of wondrous stories. Their Archives provides the material base of this online exhibition.

HIC’s many volunteers have also been of great assistance as I have worked to chronicle the history of this institution. Thanks to Peter “Sandi” Meza, “Kitt” DiFatta, Megan R. Geier, David Reinhard, Layla Arnold, Erik Nieto, Aaron Peryea, and John Richards for their work helping to construct the Blanche M. Baker Memorial Library database. Jeanne Barney, Toby Grace, Wayne Dynes, John Richards, Karen Ocamb, Susan Howe, John Lauritsen, Randy Wicker, Stephen O. Murray, Richard Schneider, Stephen Allison, Bill Percy, Tracy Baim, Stephanie Donald, Tony Reyes, Jack Clark, David Hughes, and Ron Tate have provided encouragement and support and have been long-term friends of this organization. Gratitude as well to A. J. Blythe and Andrew Madigan, who are wise to the mysterious ways of wiki and helped to design the second generation of this site from the ground-up, and for Andrew Madigan and Stephen Allison for persuading me that it was indeed worth a year of my time to recast the site once again, into WordPress.

The HIC Archives and materials are in the professional care of Special Collections, Oviatt Library, CSUN. Our eternal thanks go to Vern L. Bullough, longtime friend of the HIC to whom we donated a fair portion of our archives in 1997, to help grow the The Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender. Our partnership with CSUN never would have happened without the trust, friendship, and support of Susan Curzon, former Dean of the Library; Tony Gardner, former Curator of Special Collections; Cindy Ventuleth, Director of Development; David Sigler Reading Room Supervisor; and Ellen Jarosz, the current Director of Special Collections.

The research involved in creating this website would not have been possible without the ongoing generous support of ISHR, the Institute for the Study of Human Resources (which is now defunct). Thanks especially to Walter L. Williams, Reid Rasmussen, and Jerry Brown for their moral and financial support in times of need.

I wish to thank my friends and colleagues in the Los Angeles movement who have stood by my side during difficult times: Mark Thompson, Rev. Malcolm Boyd, Rev. Florine Fleischman, Rev. Troy Perry, and Michael Kearns have all inspired and encouraged me to stay true to this endeavor. Thanks as well to the directors and member of BALA, the Business Alliance of Los Angeles, for their good work in making sure the surviving elders of this movement were honored and remembered. Gratitude is due to Bill LaPointe, Thomas Soule, and Frank Morales, editor of the Long Beach Blade, for giving HIC a voice when it seemed no one was listening.

The University of Southern California has often been involved in the history of this movement, and it is with great pride that I thank Andre Simic, G. Alexander Moore, Jenny Cool, Nancy Lutkehaus, Walter Williams, Jeanne Jackson, Janet Hoskins, Craig Stanford, Amy Parish, Gary Seaman, Amy Richlin, Michael Messner, Rita Jones, and the members of the Lambda Alumni Association for their ongoing support and encouragement in continuing this study and for launching me in this direction. Without such strong institutional support and safe haven to explore controversial topics, studies such as this would not be possible. Their courage and unquestioning support of LGBT scholarship should be appreciated and applauded.

I also wish to thank CLAGS and the Arcus Foundation for providing the resources for the launch of the OutHistory.org project, of which we initially took part. Kudos to Jonathan Ned Katz for having a vision and seeing it though, and to Sarah E. Chinn, Executive Director of CLAGS, for the institutional support needed. Lynley Wheaton and James Arnett were instrumental in the creation of this endeavor and should likewise be congratulated for a job well done.

This website is dedicated to the memory of many fine activists and historians who are recently deceased. Among those who have been directly involved in the history of ONE and the HIC and survive in my memory are Jim Schneider, Joseph Hansen, Aristide Laurent, Vern L. Bullough, Harry Hay, Jack Nichols, Morris Kight, Ernie Potvin, and Yolanda Retter. It is from them that I learned the meaning of “rapport” and of the heavy obligations that can come from the ethnographic process.

Core activists inspiring this project whom I did not have the honor of meeting include Don Slater, Reed Erickson, Dale Jennings, Barbara Gittings, Jim Kepner, Charles Lucas, Chuck Rowland, Hal Call, Joan Corbin, Irma ”Corky” Wolf, and W. Dorr Legg. These pages are most dedicated to these, my “ghost” consultants. May they be missed and not forgotten.

©2014, 2106 by C. Todd White. All rights reserved.