October 3, 1928 – December 22, 2011
Born in Allegan, Henry Lewis Van Dyke Jr. served in the U.S. Army and earned a B.A. and M.A. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he developed lifelong gay friendships. He later authored several novels and taught as a writer-in-residence at Kent State.
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
June 21, 1908 – March 13, 1960
Detroit resident James P. Wiles, a heterosexually married personnel manager for IBM who was arrested in a crackdown on homosexual activity on campus at the University of Michigan in late 1959 and early 1960, took his own life days before he was to be sentenced.
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.
November 16, 1921 – August 10, 2015
C. Bruce Lee served with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, after which he earned an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and later held a high-level position with the federal government. He appeared in the documentary film Coming Out Under Fire.
September 14, 1942 – March 23, 2006
As a participant in gay liberation activism in the early 1970s, Rodger Keller helped organize Detroit’s first pride march, Christopher Street Detroit ’72.
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
February 28, 1921 – May 20, 2001
David Whitney Brewer was founding vice chairman in 1958 of the Detroit Area Council of the Mattachine Society, the first known homosexual organization in the State of Michigan.
Michigan LGBTQ Remember 