William Dale Jennings

William Dale Jennings (October 21, 1917 – May 11, 2000) was an American LGBT rights activist, playwright and author.

Jennings was born in Amarillo, Texas, the son of William Arthur Jennings and Charlotte Sophia Knebel Jennings. He and his sister Charlotte Elaine (two years older) grew up in Denver, Colorado where they were both schooled in music, Elaine playing the violin and Dale (as he was known, to distinguish himself from his father) the piano. The two made many appearances on local radio and at tent revival meetings. Dale showed an early love of dance, growing into a noted prodigy before the age of twelve. Later he joined the Lester Horton dance troupe as they traveled around the United States. In his late teens he moved to Los Angeles, with aspirations of becoming a writer and theater director, for which he had trained in Colorado. He eventually launched a theater company called the Theatre Caravan, located in a now demolished building near Olympic Blvd. and Alvarado, where he also lived. During this time he wrote and produced about 60 plays.

During World War II he was stationed at Guadalcanal. During his military service, he was awarded a WWII Victory Medal, an American Campaign medal, an Asiatic- Pacific campaign medal, and a Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one bronze star. After being honorably discharged in 1946, he returned to California where he studied cinema for two years at the University of Southern California. Before the war Jennings pursued relationships with women in the custom of the time, to avoid any suspicions about his true nature. He married once, an aspiring actress at Theatre Caravan; this lasted through the war, followed by divorce.

In November 1950, Jennings accompanied his then-boyfriend Bob Hull, to a meeting with Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland to discuss a prospectus that had called on the “androgynies of the world” to unite. This meeting began the first official meeting of the International Bachelors Fraternal Order for Peace and Social Dignity, which would later be renamed as the Mattachine Society. The society sought to gain acceptance through greater communication between homosexuals and heterosexuals. The group began to grow and by the summer of that year they had adopted official missions and purposes which proclaimed homosexuals to be one of the largest minorities in America.

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