Published in: September-October 2007 issue.
Jack Nichols, Gay Pioneer: “Have You Heard My Message?”
by J. Louis Campbell III, JD, PhD
Harrington Park Press
358 pages, $69.95 (paper: $29.95)
THE 1970’s was the golden age of gay bar guides, those little publications with pictures, personal ads, and, week after week, articles by local activists and commentators. Those articles, now mostly lost, helped form GLBT communities in towns all over America. Jack Nichols wrote hundreds of such pieces. The bibliography of his newspaper and magazine articles runs to 35 pages in J. Louis Campbell’s study of his life and work. But this is not the main reason we should know about this man. Jack Nichols was present at the creation.