Jeanne Manford
| Jeanne Sobelson Manford | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 4, 1920 Flushing, Queens, New York |
| Died | January 8, 2013 (aged 92) Daly City, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | co-founder of PFLAG |
Jeanne Sobelson Manford (December 4, 1920 – January 8, 2013) was an American schoolteacher and activist. She co-founded the support group organization, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), for which she was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal.
Born Jean Sobelson in Flushing, Queens in 1920, the third of five daughters of Sadie, a housewife, and Charles Sobelson, a salesman, she studied for a short time in Alabama before stopping her studies to return home after her father's death. She married Jules Manford, had three children (Charles, Morty and Suzanne) and returned to college in her 30s, earning her bachelor's degree from Queens College and joining the faculty of PS 32 in Queens in 1964. She lived in New York until 1996 when she moved to Minnesota to care for her great-grandchild while her granddaughter attended medical school. She then went on to live with her daughter in California.
I have a homosexual son and I love him.
In April 1972, Manford and her husband Jules were at home in Flushing, Queens, when they learned from a hospital's telephone call that her son Morty, a gay activist, had been beaten while distributing flyers inside the fiftieth annual Inner Circle dinner, a political gathering in New York City. Reports stated that Morty was "kicked and stomped" while being led away by police. In response, she wrote a letter of protest to the New York Post that identified herself as the mother of a gay protester and complained of police inaction. She gave interviews to radio and television shows in several cities in the weeks that followed, always accompanied by her husband or son.
On June 25, she participated with her son in the New York Pride March, carrying a hand-lettered sign that read "Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children". At the time, homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and sodomy a crime, and California Senator Mark Leno has subsequently reflected that "[f]or her to step into the street to declare support for her mentally ill, outlaw son - that was no small act ... But it was what a mother's love does." Manford recalled in a 1996 interview the cheers she received in the parade, and that the "young people were hugging me, kissing me, screaming, asking if I would talk to their parents ... [as] few of them were out to their parents for fear of rejection." Prompted by this enthusiastic reception, Manford and her husband developed an idea for an organization of the parents of gays and lesbians that could be, she later said, "a bridge between the gay community and the heterosexual community". They were soon holding meetings for such parents, with her husband participating as well. She called him "a very articulate person ... a much better speaker than I. He was right along with me on everything." The first meeting of the group—then called Parents of Gays—was attended by about 20 people and was held at the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church, now the Church of the Village.
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