JERRY DEGRIECK
- August Bernadicou
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
POLITICIAN
Jerry DeGrieck was a foundational player in LGBTQ+ political history, and in 1973, he became one of the first two elected officials in the United States to come out. After winning a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council in 1972 at the age of 22, under the guidance of the Human Rights Party, Jerry led one of the most progressive local governments of its time. Along with Nancy Wechsler, who came out at the same time, the city council passed possibly the nation’s earliest anti-discrimination protections for sexual minorities. They also declared the country’s first “Lesbian-Gay Pride Week Proclamation.” In Jerry's long career as an LGBTQ+ advocate, there is a relationship among grassroots activism, radical politics, and the continued importance of building coalitions around common ground to fight for equal rights.
— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project
“In high school, I became very political. I supported movements like the civil rights movement and the grape and lettuce boycott. I got very active in politics at an early age. I was a strong supporter of John Kennedy in 1960, when I was 10 years old, and I joined the Teen Democrats in high school. I formed a current events club. This was my outlet while I was growing up. I wanted to express myself politically and ignore the fact that I was gay, because that was just too much in those days in the Midwest community I grew up in; being homosexual was unthinkable. It was something that you couldn't talk about, you couldn't be. I learned that homosexuality was negative. I remember when I was 14 in 1964, the infamous Life magazine cover story came out about homosexuality in America, and that painted a horrible picture. I was terrified that that was my fate forever.
In my high school graduating class in 1968, there were 1,000 kids, all white and all Christian. I had the honor of actually seeing Martin Luther King Jr. when he gave a speech at my high school in April of 1968, just a short while before he was assassinated. My parents forbid me to go. I went anyway because I was 18 and believed in civil rights. So I had the opportunity to hear him and see him directly. I also campaigned that year for Bobby Kennedy and saw him at Cobo Hall in Detroit. In addition to anti-war protests, there were tenants' unions trying to organize students.
It was during my sophomore year of college that I became super politically active. In November of 1969, I attended an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. I protested to get a student-run bookstore—rather than having to pay exorbitant prices at the stores around the university that sold books for profit. In the fall of 1969, I was elected to the student government council. The first organization to request recognition before the council was the Gay Liberation Front, a student organization. We recognize them as an official student organization. Skipping ahead, they wanted to hold a conference, and the university would not allow them to use university facilities for it, which we, on the student government council, protested. We actually opened up the student government council offices so that they could hold their conference in our building, since the university refused to allow them to use the university buildings officially. We had a pot of money we could use to support different student groups, but using the university facilities officially required more than just the student government council's approval, and the university didn't want to allow them to hold a conference.
On Labor Day in 1973, halfway through my student council term, I finally started my first gay relationship. I had some false starts along the way, but eventually, for me, for whatever reason, I needed to have a gay experience to know and fully accept that I was gay. So it wasn't until I had the gay experience that I could come out again. This was a different era. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and homosexuality was considered to be the way—it reminds me of how trans people are being treated today, viewed today, and marginalized today. We could be discriminated against, and we could lose jobs. We could be arrested for homosexual acts.
Towards the end of 1970, we formed a radical third party, the Radical Independent Party, and ran two write-in candidates in the spring of 1971 for the Ann Arbor City Council. We were not on the ballot. We couldn't be on the ballot because we didn't qualify at that point. We ran a candidate for mayor and a candidate for the Second Ward, which had more students than any other ward. I represented the Radical Independent Party in April of 1971 for the Second Ward. We did terribly. I got like 51 votes or something like that. We learned a lot about the election, and we also got involved at the statewide level with the recently formed Human Rights Party. The Human Rights Party was a party of former Democrats who had left the Democratic Party because they didn't think it was a viable vehicle for change. In 1971, we began discussions with the Human Rights Party about a merger with the Ann Arbor-based Radical Independent Party. There was a debate within the Radical Independent Party over whether to do this, as some felt it was too close to the Democratic Party and that we shouldn't join them. We, including myself, believed those were the people we wanted to engage with to increase awareness of what needs to happen for true change in this country. So we eventually decided to merge with the Human Rights Party, and then Nancy Wechsler and I became the main candidates under the banner of the Human Rights Party, and were on the ballot in the spring of 1972.
The Human Rights Party had parity between women and men on the steering committee, and we ensured women were well represented on our candidate slate to increase our chances of winning the Second Ward. During the 1972 campaign, we sought the endorsement of the Gay Liberation Front, and they actually said, ‘What do you really want our endorsement for? Because if we endorse you, that may hurt you because of the homophobia in the community.’ We said, ‘No, we definitely want your endorsement because we believe in gay rights.’ All of this happened before I was out publicly. In the end, we did get GLF’s endorsement.
During this time, some people were just concerned about the war in Vietnam because they didn't want to go. They were against the draft. Other people were hardcore socialists wanting a revolution. In the political gay rights movement I first came in contact with in Ann Arbor, there was a range as well. Some folks believe that it was really sexism and homophobia that were the cause of all evil and had nothing to do with economic oppression or racism, and so on. There was a wide range of political views. Also, over time, the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front became more radical and militant. It was interesting watching their change.
Nancy and I won our elections. My term on the city council was from April 1972 to April 1974. When Nancy and I ran for city council, she was a lesbian, and I was gay. When we were proposing a bill to stop discrimination against sexual minorities, Nancy and I were ready to come out. We knew we couldn't talk about gay rights or the rights of sexual minorities without self-identifying.
In October of 1973, we passed the anti-discrimination ordinance. There was a raid on a lesbian bar. We confronted the police chief and said, ‘Well, why aren't you enforcing the ordinance?’ They said they'd never heard of it, so at the next city council meeting, the chief of police came before the city council. Nancy and I questioned them about why on earth—we passed this ordinance protecting sexual minorities in public accommodations, and yet no one in the police department knew about it, and sexual minorities were still clearly being discriminated against. We used that city council meeting as an opportunity to come out because we were both ready. We were practically the youngest people ever elected. We were from a third political party. We had radical politics. We had a weekly radio show and TV show. The city council meetings were televised.
Given my journey from the time I was nine, knowing I was different, by the time I was 23 and coming out, I was so ready to come out that it was an exhilarating experience for me. It was just like this burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It was a very positive, uplifting experience for me. Most gay people were still in the closet. By our second year on the council, the Republicans had a majority. After we had come out, many of the Republicans didn't want to talk to us, because we were homosexual. They didn't want to have anything to do with us. Even some of the members of the Human Rights Party were not happy that both of us had come out, because they didn't want the Human Rights Party to be seen as only interested in gay rights, in sexual minority rights, because of the broader platform that the Human Rights Party had. So some in the party were not really happy about it. Some of the public thought that we were coming out only because we wanted to get the gay vote, which was ridiculous. After all, we kind of already had the political gay vote.
I sent my parents a letter to let them know. I didn’t want them to be surprised. I wasn't going to do it in person, given how I knew my parents, particularly my father, viewed homosexuality. I wanted them to immediately accept it and be happy about the fact that I was gay, even though it had taken me many years to deal with it. It was completely unrealistic to think that. I think they were scared for me because they thought my life would be ruined if I were openly gay. Fortunately, as the years went by, that changed. I had a very good relationship with both my parents and my siblings, even though one of my siblings had a hard time accepting me. So anyway, we came out on the city council, and that was it.”
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About The LGBTQ History Project
The LGBTQ History Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit preserving the lives and legacies of LGBTQ+ activists from the first wave of gay liberation through oral histories, archives, and the QueerCore Podcast.
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