Henry Gerber was an early homosexual rights activist in the US. Inspired by the work of Germany's Magus Hirschfield and by the organization Bund fur Menschenrecht, Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights in 1924, the nation's first known gay organization and Friendship and Freedom, the first known gay publication. Unfortunately, SHR was short-lived as police arrested several of its members shortly after it incorporated, including Gerber himself. Gerber maintained contacts within the fledging homophile movement of the 1950's and continued to agitate for the rights of homosexuals. Gerber was even placed in a mental institution once and when the US went to war with Germany, he was given the choice to stay in and be labeled an illegal alien or go join the army. He ended up serving three years in Germany and that is when he came back with his learnings to set up the SHR. But Gerber's courage and advocacy helped lay the groundwork for many of the queer liberation movement we now know today. Gerber spent the last decades as a resident of the Soldiers' and Airmen Home, where he worked on his memoirs and a novel. He was 80 when he passed and was buried in the adjoining US Soldiers' and Airmen National Cemetery.
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