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Don Lucas: Pioneering Gay Activist

Don Lucas served for many years as executive director of the early gay civil rights organization, the Mattachine Society. Lucas's career as an activist demonstrates the interconnections between the gay movement and other progressive social movements in mid-twentieth-century America.

Through Mattachine, Lucas helped found the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) in San Francisco in 1964. The CRH built bridges between liberal ministers and national gay leaders. These ministers made an important public show of support for the gay community after a CRH fundraising dance was harassed by police in 1965.

Lucas's involvement with the CRH, which was headquartered at Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco's impoverished Tenderloin district, led him to recognize the daily injustices faced by the disenfranchised citizens of that neighborhood. When the opportunity arose in 1967 for him to direct the new Central City Anti-Poverty Program -- formed in large part through gay activism and organizing in the Tenderloin -- Lucas leapt at the chance. As director, Lucas pioneered the provision of social services to groups that most service agencies simply wouldn't touch: queer street youth, transsexuals, prostitutes, and drug addicts.

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A skilled amateur magician as well as a dedicated public servant, Don Lucas was adept at creating the illusion of conformity while engaged in truly radical social work. Now in his 70s and long-since retired, Lucas continues to volunteer his time to a number of causes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to his more serious political work, Lucas branched out into theater, taking turns as an actor, a director, a sound and light technician, a maker of educational films, a professional illusionist, and a part-time drag performer.

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