Mattachine Society

The Mattachine Society was founded in Los Angeles in 1950 by a small group of Gay men who had communist and/or radical ties. In 1951, Mattachine began sponsoring discussion groups among Gay men to raise awareness of their plight; these discussion groups spread across the county and new chapters were permanently established in Denver, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and other cities. The goal of Mattachine was to fight discrimination and to support and build a positive homosexual community. The group began to publish newsletters and fight laws limiting the rights of homosexuals. In 1953, the group of men that formed Mattachine resigned amid the turmoil of the McCarthy trials and a more conservative group took control. The goal of the organization changed to assimilation into society instead of social change. The organization began to decline in the 1950s, but chapters continued to exist well into the 1960s.

The Mattachine Society was founded in 1950 in Los Angeles, Calif. to challenge anti-gay discrimination and to build a positive homosexual community and culture. The group spread throughout the United States including Chicago and New York City.

Administrative History

The Mattachine Society traces its roots to Los Angeles in the late 1940s, when Harry Hay--a married man and actor who also taught music at the University of Southern California--began formulating his idea for a homophile organization, which he initially named the "International Bachelors Fraternal Orders for Peace and Social Dignity." Beginning in 1951, groups of homosexual men and women began meeting secretly at various locations throughout Los Angeles to discuss issues relevant to the homosexual community. At Hay's suggestion, this organization took the name "Mattachine Foundation"--after traveling performers in medieval Europe who staged satires wearing masks--because contemporary American homosexuals were also forced to hide behind masks. Hay had been active in the Communist Party, and many of the Foundation's founders, including Rudi Gernreich, Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, shared Hay's leftist politics. The Foundation, or "fraternal order," was organized along the lines of the secretive, cell-like structure of the Communist Party, which also needed to protect the identities of its members. Hay also took from Marxism the idea that for homosexuals to end their oppression they must develop a group consciousness as an oppressed class.

Between 1951 and early 1953, membership in the Mattachine Foundation expanded rapidly in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area. However, in March 1953 a journalist, who had received a Foundation mailing, published an article suggesting that the Foundation, with its secretive leadership, might be a Communist front organization. The reaction of the Foundation's membership exposed a growing schism between Hay and his leftist allies, who wished to continue with the secretive "fraternal order" focused on developing self-understanding and social consciousness; and those, led by Ken Burns and Harold Call, who sought a more "public" organization focused on assimilating the homosexual community into mainstream society.

In two conventions in April and May 1953--in a climate of suspicions about financial improprieties, personal misrepresentations, communist infiltration and the aims of the organization--the membership elected a new slate of leaders, replacing Hay and his followers with Call and his party. The new leaders in turn officially dissolved the Mattachine Foundation with its secretive structure and recognized the establishment of the Mattachine Society with a national, "open" structure. Officially incorporated in California in March 1954, the reorganized Mattachine Society had its headquarters in San Francisco, with "area councils" and chapters throughout the United States. During its most active period in the late 1950s, the Society's activities included group discussions, social and psychological research in relation to sexuality, research in legal cases and legislation regarding sexual equality, annual conventions and the publication of the Mattachine Review and various newsletters.

In the face of financial troubles, languishing membership, and dissatisfaction among local chapters, the Board of Directors decided to dissolve the Society's national structure in 1961. The national chapters subsequently reorganized into independent organizations. The former San Francisco Area Council continued under Call's leadership, and by 1960 it had become less a membership group and more of an education and social service organization, which all but ceased operation in 1967. The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., became the most active and committed to political change of the former chapters. Its leader, Franklin Kameny, challenged the discriminatory policies of the U.S. Civil Service and was instrumental in the campaign to change the American Psychological Association definition of homosexuality as an illness. The Mattachine Society of New York played an activist role in the gay liberation movement of the 1970s. The Philadelphia chapter evolved into the Janus Society. By the end of the 1960s, most of the Mattachine organizations had ended their operations, while only a few--including Chicago, Florida, and New York--continued to operate until the 1980s.

Sources: Mattachine Society Project Collection, Coll2008-016, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, California.

Sears, James T. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation . New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006.