Ruth Shack (born August 24, 1931) is an American politician who served as
the sponsor of the 1977 Human Rights Ordinance in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
She was elected to the Metro-Dade County Commission in 1976, 1978 and 1982.
After leaving the commission, she became the president and CEO of the Dade
Community Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in
Florida.
Shack earned her Bachelor of Arts in humanities from Barry University in 1970 with a major in English and a minor in Journalism/Communications. In 1975, she received a Master of Arts in Social Science with specialization in Urban Sociology from the University of Colorado. She taught sociology and political science at Florida International University.
Shack was elected to her first term as Metro-Dade County Commissioner in 1976, re-elected to a four-year term in 1978, and to a third term in 1982. In her tenure as a commissioner, she made the county and its municipalities reconsider their historic resources, including the Art Deco District on South Beach. In 1981, she sponsored the county's first ordinance for historic preservation.
Ruth Shack was a straight ally before most knew what that even meant. In 1977, the then Metro-Dade Commissioner introduced and helped pass a measure to protect homosexuals from discrimination. “I grew up as a Jew, so I knew antisemitism, I knew prejudice,” she said. “For me, it was the next civil rights issue.” Shack recalled that “to be gay in those days in Miami was dangerous. There were constant evening television coverage of police with paddywagons moving into a bar and hauling a group of men in suits, hiding their faces.” But the historically progressive law Shack pushed was short-lived. Months later, beauty queen, singer and Florida orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant rallied religious conservatives. Her “Save Our Children” campaign branded gays as perverts and pedophiles. “Turned so ugly and so mean spirited, and they gave rise to what was later called the moral majority,” Shack said. The movement forced a vote to overturn the newly approved protections for gays and lesbians — and they won. But the defeat was mobilizing. “It allowed our friends who identified as gay to become a community,” Shack said. It took 20 years for the Miami-Dade County Commission to pass protections against discrimination for the LGBT community. “I don’t care who gets the credit, I’m just delighted that it finally worked,” Shack said. The gay rights pioneer reflects on the decades of progress since with this message for the younger generations: “We have to protect what we have. They have to know that this is their community and they have a responsibility to make it what they want it to look like.”
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