Activism

Steven Malick

 Steven Malick serves as the secretary of the Board of Directors for the Newark LGBTQ Community Center. He previously volunteered with the Newark LGBTQ Concerns Advisory Commission and helped to organize the first ever town hall debate on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community. Steve is a resident of the City of Newark and has worked or lived in and around Newark for nearly a decade. Steve’s professional background includes eight years in education as a former middle school math teacher and as a coach of new teachers. Steven currently works as research analyst for a public policy research firm...

Peggie Miller

 My name is Peggie Miller. Living the majority of my life as a butch woman, I noticed how we tend to live in the shadows, usually among our own exclusively. Gay Men have been at the forefront of the Gay Liberation movement, honored in all types of media  & have been more or less accepted into the  mainstream of society for decades. Except for a few power lesbians, we the African American & other lesbians of color, particularly butch identified women tend to take a back seat. Until now! We are mothers, deacons, professionals, designers, artists, reverends, doctors, attorneys & more...

Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden (1939-2016) was a major figure in the New Left of the 1960s. A young white man from Michigan, he was physically attacked by racist white Southerners when he accompanied the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on “freedom rides” in the South.  He was also an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the flagship organization of the student left and anti-war movement. As the author of the famous 1962 SDS Port Huron Statement, he spoke for white middle-class activists, with the opening line, “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort,...

Marleny Franco

 Marleny Franco has been a Horticulturist helping people grow food for over thirty-five years.  She holds a Master’s degree in Plant Physiology from Rutgers University and worked as an Agricultural County Agent and professor at Rutgers University for eleven years before moving on to establish and run an environmental horticultural non-profit organization called: Greater Newark Conservancy. 

Through her work with the Greater Newark Conservancy she was successful in encouraging thousands of individuals to garden across the state and other locations within the US.  After twelve years...

Darnell L. Moore

 Because Darnell has written of his earlier life experiences elsewhere, this interview focuses primarily on his time in Newark. For powerful autobiographical reflections on growing up in Camden, NJ, see his two-part essay "Reflections of a Black Queer Suicide Survivor": Part I | Part II

Darnell L. Moore is a Senior Correspondent at MicNews, Co-Managing/Editor at The Feminist Wire and writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University.  Along with NFL player Wade Davis II, he co-founded YOU Belong, a social good company...

Gary Paul Wright

 Gary Paul Wright is the Founder and Executive Director of the African American Office of Gay Concerns.  He is very active within the LGBTQ community in Newark, New Jersey, where he  served two 3-year terms as a Charter Member of the City of Newark’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Mayoral Advisory Commission (through July, 2014).  He was appointed to the Essex County Executive’s LGBTQ Advisory Board in 2011, and is currently serving a second three-year term as well.  Gary Paul also served as a Charter Board Member of the newly established Newark LGBTQ Community...

Bryan Epps

 Bryan Matthew Charles Epps is a policy wonk and community lover. He has worked for Mayor’s Cory A. Booker and Michael Bloomberg conducting outreach and training to the not-for-profit sector and performance management for city departments. Currently Epps directs a historical human rights based nonprofit and operates a beverage startup. As a Newark native Epps has dedicated himself to helping to build community as founding board chair of People's Prep high-school and First Advisory board chair of HMI:NJ and a former President of the James Street Neighborhood Association. He studied Urban Policy...

Miriam Frank

 Miriam Frank grew up in Newark during the 1950s. She retired from fulltime teaching at NYU in 2014 where she is currently Adjunct Professor of Humanities. She has also taught Labor History in union education programs in New York City and in Detroit, where she was a founder of Women’s Studies at Wayne County Community College.   Miriam Frank's July 2015 interview by Steven Dansky is on OUTSPOKEN: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers.  

Arnie Kantrowitz

 Arnold (Arnie) Kantrowitz, a 1961 B.A. alum of Rutgers University-Newark, was a pioneering activist for LGBT equality in the United States. He served as vice president of New York City's influential Gay Activists Alliance, founded in 1970 in the wake of the Stonewall uprising, and in 1985 co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in response to antigay coverage of the AIDS crisis by New York City tabloids. GLAAD, still today the leading advocate for fair and accurate representation of LGBT people in the media, counts among its early successes an effort to persuade New York...

James Credle

 James Warren Credle (1945-2023) is a retired American academic administrator, counselor, and Veterans and LGBT rights activist. Born in Mesic, North Carolina, he was one of 14 children born during the time of Jim Crow. His mother was a dayworker and his father worked part-time as a carpenter. Credle and his siblings worked through high school to supplement the family income. He worked in fields picking cotton, potatoes, corn, and cabbage. He later worked in a crab factory. His family were members of Mount Olive Baptist Church where he sang in the choir. James graduated from the all-black...

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