December 18, 1948 – February 6, 2009
A former Catholic nun, attorney Helen Gallagher earned her law degree from the University of Michigan. She went on serve as president of the Michigan Organization for Human Rights in the mid-1980s and as a member of the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission.
Lesbian Connection, May/June 2009
August 19, 1922 – May 18, 2016
Renowned art historian Marvin Eisenberg hosted discreet parties at the center of Ann Arbor’s gay social scene during the 1950s, a time when university and city officials frowned on any open homosexuality.
December 15, 1904 – July 26, 1994
Ann Arbor native W. Dorr Legg moved to Los Angeles in 1949 with his boyfriend following their arrest in Detroit on a charge of gross indecency between men. In Los Angeles in 1953, he helped found ONE magazine, the first homosexual publication to reach wide circulation in the U.S.
February 27, 1944 – December 31, 1979
As an openly lesbian bus driver, Carol Ernst became a key leader in the Ann Arbor Transit Employees Union, an advocate for sex worker rights, and a candidate for mayor on the Human Rights Party ticket in 1975.
March 21, 1947 – July 5, 1995
Billie Edwards served as co-pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in Detroit in the mid-1980s before becoming co-director of the Lesbian-Gay Male Program Office at the University of Michigan in 1987, a position she held until 1993.
Billie Louise Edwards papers at the Bentley Historical Library
August 3, 1958 – August 14, 1996
Dr. Anthony Welsh, a Dearborn Heights native and graduate of Michigan State University, established an HIV education speaker’s bureau in Ann Arbor under the auspices of the HIV/AIDS Resource Center. He died from AIDS-related complications at age 38.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 