Last Updated on December 10, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry
John T. Graves was a black gay clergyman and first president of the Society for Human Rights, the oldest documented LGBTQ-rights organization in the United States. It was founded 100 years ago in 1924 in Chicago.
Graves’ historic role proves that the LGBTQ-rights movement has included racial minorities and Christian clergy from the very start.
The Society applied for a charter as a non-profit organization with the state of Illinois on Dec. 10, 1924. The state approved the charter two weeks later on Dec. 24, 2024, granting non-profit status. His signature, “Rev. John T. Graves,” is clearly visible as the first signature on the charter application. He was 46 at the time.
Society for Human Rights charter, 1924
Although Graves was president, the founder of the Society for Human Rights is considered to be German immigrant Henry Gerber. He was listed as secretary of the group and published its magazine, “Friendship and Freedom.” Gerber aimed to create a group similar to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in Germany by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1897 as the world’s first LGBTQ-rights organization.
Little is known about Graves beyond his pioneering role in queer history as the Society’s president, and there are no known photos of him. Gerber described him as “a preacher who earned his room and board by preaching brotherly love to small groups of Negroes” at St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Gerber was proud of not being racist, and he justifiably gets most of the credit for organizing the Society. He was an atheist who blamed organized religion for persecution of homosexuals. His life story, including more about his connection to Graves, is told in the 2023 book “An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement” by Jim Elledge.
Chicago may have been a hotbed for black LGBTQ church life in the 1920s. Clarence Henry Cobbs (Feb. 29, 1908 – June 28, 1979) was an African-American clergyman who founded one of Chicago’s largest churches, the First Church of Deliverance, in 1929. The church welcomed black LGBTQ people and its founding pastor was known to be “that way” himself. His story is told in “Everybody Knew He Was ‘That Way:’ Chicago’s Clarence H. Cobbs, American Religion and Sexuality During the Post-World War II Period” by Wallace Best, a chapter in the 2022 book “The Sexual Politics of Black Churches.”
The Society for Human Rights was far ahead of its time, but it was small and it did not last long. Membership was limited to gay men, and there were about nine members. In summer 1925, police raided Gerber’s home and confiscated his papers. They arrested Graves, Gerber and at least two other members. Graves was jailed separately in a section reserved for black people. Gerber lost his post-office job and the Society disbanded.
The Society’s purpose was deliberately kept vague in its government application. There is no mention of homosexuality, which was illegal at the time, but the stated goal is still inspiring today:
To protect the interests of people who “are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness, and to combat the public prejudices against them by dissemination of facts according to modern science among intellectuals of mature age.”
Author’s note: Centering black Christian experience and creating first AI image
There are many articles about the Society for Human Rights, but they all focus on the white secular experience of Henry Gerber. I’m excited to share my article centering black Christian experience.
There are no known images of John T. Graves, so I made my first foray into using artificial intelligence as a tool to create images for Q Spirit. I asked ChatGPT to generate a silhouette of an African American preacher in 1924, then worked with human artist Tony O’Connell to add rainbow colors. I gave the image a title with a double meaning “Rev. John T. Graves Imagined” means Rev. Graves as imagined by me — and also that Rev. Graves imagined a future of legal rights for gay people.
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Top image credit:
“Rev. John T. Graves Imagined” — concept and design guided by Kittredge Cherry using artificial intelligence (ChatGPT via DALL-E) on Oct. 26, 2024, with colors added later by Tony O’Connell.
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This article was originally published on Q Spirit on Dec. 10, 2024.
This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBT and queer martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.
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