In the mid-1920s, Henry Gerber lived at 1710 N. Crilly Court in Chicago, which is on the National Historic Register, as seen here on June 6, 2024. Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization in the country. A century ago, Henry Gerber founded America’s first documented gay rights organization in a boardinghouse at 1710 N. Crilly Court in Chicago.
Gerber didn’t hold meetings of the Society for Human Rights in his rented room. He and his handful of followers gathered in the basement of the Crilly Court building. It had direct exits to the outside. Gays could come and go without running a gauntlet of neighbors’ eyes. Even so, many were reluctant to attend.
In fact, American psychiatry considered homosexuality a mental disorder for decades thereafter. Gerber’s optimism was acquired at one of the stopping places on the bumpy road to acceptance of his sexuality. Gerber was at some point committed to an insane asylum because of his homosexuality. Released after a year, but fearing another incarceration, he volunteered for military service. He was assigned to an Army unit occupying Germany after its defeat in World War I.
Reflecting on what he experienced in Germany, Gerber wrote: “I had always bitterly felt the injustice with which my own American society accused the homosexual of ‘immoral acts.’ What could be done about it, I thought.” One of the initial issues was whether the society should be a purely homosexual organization and “exclude the much larger circle of bisexuals?” Elledge, Gerber’s biographer, wrote in “An Angel in Sodom.”
Police were sent to the Meininger apartment at 532 N. Dearborn St. Pushing through the door, they arrested Meininger. The Chicago American’s story might have been hyped up, as Hearst-owned papers were known to cross the line between fact and fiction.