Craig Rodwell, Founder of Pride… and Other Unsung Heroes

Most of you have heard of many heroes in By the Light of Burning Dreams — like Bobby Seale, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But Margaret Talbot and I took a special pleasure in spotlighting those whom history has largely forgotten — like Craig Rodwell, who founded New York’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first openly gay bookstore in the world. He then went on to organize what would become the first Pride March, in commemoration of the Stonewall uprising — helping to make internationally famous the “riot” that would become known as the opening salvo of the LGBTQ movement. Rodwell was also a lover of Harvey Milk when he was closeted businessman in NYC. With his freer and bolder attitude about his sexuality, Rodwell had a major impact on Milk’s eventual evolution into America’s most prominent gay political leader, before he was assassinated in 1978.

As Margaret and I write in the book’s introduction, we don’t believe in the “great man” theory of history, because epic change is wrestled forward by countless unsung individuals, like Rodwell — and like Ellen Broidy and Martha Shelley, two lesbian activists also profiled in our chapter on the making of Pride. But we do believe in the importance of leaders, both the famous and the forgotten.

Craig Rodwell at his Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in NYC in 1970.