Fortune Society

Fortune Society is a New York City-based non profit organization that provides essential support to the formerly incarcerated. Some of the services offered include help with finding housing and jobs, adjusting to civilian life and educational opportunities. It was founded by David Rothenberg in 1967 as a result of his experience at Rikers while researching for the play Fortune and Men's Eyes.

John Herbert, the author of Fortune and Men's Eyes had been incarcerated previously as an altercation by some thugs had caused a mass roundup by police. The judge sentenced him to prison due to his epicene appearance. Being deeply moved by the play, his experience at Rikers and Herbert's plight, Rothenberg channeled his passion for activism into a non-profit advocacy organization called Fortune Society borrowing from the play's own name. By the time the play premiered in Canada, Fortune Society had been created. Initially, the organization began as discussion forums at the Actor's Playhouse featuring a diverse set of interlocutors including parole officers, elected officials and the formerly incarcerated among others. Pat McGarry and Clarence Cooper, author of the The Farm, agreed on an organization called the Fortune Society, from the play’s title, which had been taken from a Shakespearian sonnet, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state.”

Rothenberg’s office on W 46th became the de facto headquarters of the organization and the group began fundraising at Tuesday night discussions. In an effort to raise awareness four men from the society went on The David Susskind Show. Clarence Cooper, Frank Sandiford, Eddie Morris, and Rob Freeley were panelists on the show leveraging their social status and celebrity.Susskind informed audience that the men were all part of a new organization and to connect to them at the Fortune Society at their office address.

The next day 250 former convicts were lined up outside Rothenberg's small theater office anticipating an organization that could help them with employment and housing. Mel Rivers also came that day to see what the organization was all about resulting in Rivers, Jackson, McGarry, and Cooper starting as the core of Fortune Society.

Rothenberg began arranging for ex-cons coming to the Fortune Society to attend Broadway plays and conscripted his close friend and colleague Alvin Ailey to join the organization and provide tickets for the formerly incarcerated the society was trying to help. Kenny Jackson joked that when you get out of prison in New York, “you get $40, a baloney sandwich, and two tickets to Alvin Ailey.”

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