Queer Places:
656 E 12th St, New York, NY 10009
Temple University, 1801 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19122
Mark Segal was born January 12, 1951 to Martin and Shirley Weinstein Segal
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Segal was 13 when his grandmother took him
to his first civil rights demonstration. He attended public school in Philadelphia
and upon graduating from high school made his way to New York,
at a time when the gay rights movement was poised to experience a
watershed moment, the Stonewall Riots in June 1969. He and
Marty Robinson, the soon-to-be
co-founder of the Gay Activist Alliance, were hanging out in the Stonewall
bar the night of the raid that sparked the rebellion.
As an activist,
journalist, and publisher, Segal participated in and often organized a
range of civil rights and social groups, protests, legal actions, and
other activities in support of gay rights. He became well known for his
very public acts of civil disobedience as a member of the Gay Raiders,
termed "zaps," on the
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
and the
Mike Douglas Show
in the early 1970s. Those appearances coupled with scheduled appearances
on various national and local television and radio talk shows fulfilled
one of the goals for Segal's activism, "to show the nation who gay people
are: our sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers."
In 1976, Segal founded and currently publishes the influential newspaper,
Philadelphia Gay News.
With an increasing political profile, Segal used the influence and power
of the gay press and his standing within political circles to further
promote LGBTQ civil rights legislation. During the late 1970s and into the
present day, these efforts met with criticism and sometimes outright acts
of hate (newspapers boxes of the
Philadelphia Gay News
were often targets of anti-gay placards and vandalism). Segal and the many
others working toward the goal of equal rights for LGBTQ persons were not
deterred. Working within political circles and sometimes outside them,
many landmark laws and court decisions were achieved in national, state,
and local governments.
My published books:
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- https://sova.si.edu//record/NMAH.AC.1422