Jim Kepner
Jim Kepner was a leading writer, activist, and intellectual in the homophile movement, best known for his contributions to the homophile press of the 1950s and 1960s. As a child, he was adopted by a conservative family in 1923 and raised in Galveston, Texas. After high school, he traveled to New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, working odd jobs. While in San Francisco, he experienced a police raid at the Black Cat bar that inspired him to join the homophile movement.
Kepner was a communist and struggled with the way the homophile movement and communist movement conflicted in the United States. He had been active in the Communist Party in the 1940s and wrote for The Daily Worker, but was expelled for his homosexuality. Communism, however, continued to influence him, impacting his conception of LGBTQ+ people as an oppressed class and providing him with his first experiences as an organizer. He joined Mattachine in 1952, but was disturbed when the group expelled communists and required all members to take a loyalty oath denouncing former communist affiliations.
After Mattachine purged its communist members in 1953, Kepner moved on to ONE Magazine, where he wrote dozens of articles under several pseudonyms. His writings included the popular “Tangents” feature about gay news around the country and several influential pieces about LGBTQ+ history based on his substantial collection of archival material. As a result, many consider him to be the first gay historian in the United States. He also taught popular classes on gay history and literature at the ONE Institute and edited ONE’s quarterly journal, Homophile Studies. He withdrew from all of his ONE-related activities in the 1960s, but continued to publish his own newsletters and write for other gay publications over the next few decades.
Kepner also had a long career in activism, helping to found PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education) in the 1960s and the Gay Liberation Front of Los Angeles after the 1969 Stonewall Riots. He also helped organize L.A. contingents for marches across the country, including the 1987 March on Washington and a countermarch protesting the commercialization of Stonewall’s 25th anniversary.
In 1972, he turned his personal collection of LGBTQ+ material into an official archive, which he operated out of his apartment in Torrance, California. He incorporated this collection into the National Gay Archives in 1979 and renamed it the International Gay and Lesbian Archives in 1984. Eventually, Kepner rented a space in West Hollywood that became the archive’s official home and enabled its substantial growth. After his death, the archive became part of the ONE Institute’s collection.
Kepner was born with physical disabilities, described by historians Lewis Gannett and William A. Percy III as “deformed legs and club feet.” They also speculate that Kepner’s disabilities had led to his birth parents’ choice to abandon him as a child. He had surgery in his early years and received ongoing physical therapy throughout his life. His collected writings in Rough News, Daring Views: 1950s' Pioneer Gay Press Journalism do not include any discussion of disability, either personally or politically. Kepner, however, was an extremely prolific writer, publishing hundreds of articles in dozens of periodicals under his own name and many pseudonyms, meaning that it is possible Kepner’s views on disability are available and have not yet been located. Documented sources also do not show that Kepner ever attempted to distance himself from disability. He was known for defending people in the LGBTQ+ community who were often dismissed by those concerned with respectability, such as more flamboyant gay men, and this openness may have influenced his views on disability.