(Transcript of programme presented by Professor Pride,
Production Powered by Rainbow)
One of the most influential people in gay rights history was a man by the name of Randy Wicker.
He became a gay rights activist in 1958 at the age of 20 years old.
At the University of Texas, he famously fought against censorship and student fee hikes.
But when he moved to New York City, he urged the local gay rights activist groups to become more public and aggressive, which was something they were opposed to, at first.
In 1962, a New York radio programme featured a psychiatrist saying homosexuals were sick but curable.
So, Randy Wicker demanded the radio station give equal time to actual gays.
The radio station would allow him equal time and invited him, along with seven others, onto their programme.
This broadcast would become the first ever positive, on air, discussion of homosexuality on the East Coast of the United States, and Randy is credited with getting the New York Times, Newsweek and many other major publications to cover the broadcast and report on the movement.
“A lot of people think I was terribly idealistic, and I was. But if I didn’t do it, no one else would.
I mean, on (W)BAI, they had these psychiatrists who were making all these stupid statements about homosexuals and none of them knew a damn thing what they were about. I mean, just nonsense.
So, I went to (W)BAI and I said, “Why do you have these jerks discussing homosexuals? I can get a group of gay people together that will tell you more about homosexuals… they know more about homosexuality, that live the life, than these so-called experts.”
I never heard such garbage in my life because, you know, they're saying they could change people, or cure people.
I mean, every time I turn on the radio, it was one of these creep jerks that are out there looking for guilt-ridden homosexuals to pay them $50 an hour for therapy to cure them. And I was outraged by this.
So, I began plugging into the network saying, “if you're going to have a show on homosexuality, please know we are available. So, they would start including us on panels, especially on the radio. And then I was on every major show.”
That same year he created the Homosexual League of New York and he was the first to use match books and buttons which read “Equality for Homosexuals.”
And six years before the Stonewall riots, Randy Wicker was being labelled as the Martin Luther King of the gay rights movement.
At just 23 years old, Randy became the first openly gay person to appear on East Coast Television:
“First, welcome to St Pitsburgh, and welcome to Hotline also, Randy. Is that your real name, Randy Wicker?”
“It is my real name.”
“You wrote for the Herald Tribune. Did you have any problems as a homosexual working at the Tribune?”
“I was a freelance writer. I was published in the Herald Tribune and in the...”
“What articles were you writing? Were you writing on Homosexuality?”
“Actually, it happened that I did a feature on a narcotics addict, on heroin use in NYC. I've been programming for the Pacifica Radio Network, in New York, a subscribers supported radio." No LGBT Rights.
My first programme with them was on a panel of homosexuals, speaking as homosexuals in 1962, and this caused quite a big sensation, because at that time it was big news, homosexuals on the air for the first time. That's LGBT History.
We got a review by Jack Gould, a full page in Newsweek magazine and a feature story in the New York Times.
Of course, today, homosexuals being on the air, that happens in every city of the country, it is accepted as just another topic for discussion.”
He currently resides in Baltimore, MD and at the time of this recording, he is 82 years old.
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