Randy Wicker

Randolfe Hayden "Randy" Wicker (born February 3, 1938) is an American author, activist, blogger, and archivist.

Notable for his involvement in the early homophile and gay liberation movements, Wicker has documented the early years and many of the key figures of the LGBT activist communities, primarily in New York City.

Wicker was born Charles Gervin Hayden Jr. on February 3, 1938, in Plainfield, New Jersey.

He was raised in Florida by his grandparents.

Wicker's first exposure to the gay movement came while he was a student at the University of Texas at Austin in the mid-1950s, when he discovered a copy of the ONE, Inc. magazine One.

Wicker affiliated himself with the New York City chapter of the gay Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY) in 1958, while still a student, spending the summer in the city to work with the organization.

The Mattachine took a comparatively conservative stance in its work for gay rights, while Wicker, who was younger than the leadership and many of the other members, joined with other younger activists like MSNY vice president Craig Rodwell in an effort to make the group more radical.

"He was, let's say, a disturbing acquisition for the movement", recalled then-MSNY president Arthur Maule.

After convincing MSNY that it should begin publicizing its events, Wicker printed up flyers for an upcoming lecture, leading to a standing-room-only crowd.

It also led police to persuade MSNY's landlord to evict the group from its recently occupied headquarters.

As he became more active in the movement, Wicker apprised his family of his activities.

Hayden Sr., while skeptical that his activities would amount to anything, asked him not to use "Charles Hayden" for his activism.

He adopted the pseudonym "Randolfe Hayden Wicker", retaining his family name as his new middle name to maintain the family connection.

Returning to Austin in the fall of 1958, Wicker tried to start a gay organization called Wicker Research Studies.

WRS adopted the philosophy of the San Francisco-based lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis and operated across Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

WRS was short-lived, however, as Mississippi denied the organization's application for incorporation.

He also became active in the civil rights movement.

Wicker ran for student body president but during the campaign the dean received notification that Wicker and his roommate Edward Lacey were gay.

This helped convince him that homosexuals needed to engage in militant action.

Upon graduating from UT-Austin, Wicker relocated permanently to New York City and renewed his ties with MSNY.

Stifled from radical actions under the purview of MSNY, Wicker created the "Homosexual League of New York" in 1962, a front organization that existed, largely on paper, to allow Wicker distance from MSNY to operate.

When WBAI radio broadcast a panel of psychiatrists who espoused the sickness theory of homosexuality, Wicker persuaded the station manager to put him and several other openly gay people on the air to "rap" about their lives, because "homosexuals were the real authority on homosexuality."

A week before the broadcast, Jack O'Brian, a columnist for the New York Journal American, attacked it as an attempt to present "the ease of living the gay life."

Wicker made the rounds to Variety, Newsweek, and The New York Times informing them of the broadcast and the attack on it by O'Brian.

The 90-minute program, believed to be the first such in the United States, aired in July, 1962.

Several mainstream media outlets, alerted by Wicker, covered the broadcast, which received favorable treatment in The New York Times, The Realist, Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune, and Variety.

The broadcast resulted in a Federal Communications Commission rule that homosexuality was a "legitimate topic for on-air discussion."

As a result of the publicity, from 1962 through 1964, Wicker was one of the most visible gay people in New York.

He spoke to countless church groups and college classes and, in 1964, became the first openly gay person to appear on East Coast television with a January 31 appearance on The Les Crane Show.

Wicker is credited with organizing the first known gay rights demonstration in the United States.

Wicker, along with Rodwell, sexual freedom activist Jefferson Poland and a handful of others, picketed the Whitehall Street Induction Center in New York City in 1964 after the confidentiality of gay men's draft records was violated.

In 1965, he ran for the office of secretary for MSNY as an independent.

He lost, but a slate of radicals whose views aligned with his swept the elections, effectively taking control of the organization.

He supported himself by operating, with his lover Peter Ogren, Underground Uplift Unlimited, a slogan-button and head shop.

He legally changed his name in 1967.

The couple ran the shop from 1967 to 1971, and used the proceeds to open an antique and lighting store.

Wicker ran his store for 29 years.

Wicker was a witness to the Stonewall riots in June, 1969, which are recognized as the start of the modern gay liberation movement.

He later recalled seeing rioters set bonfires and throw garbage barrels through the windows of Greenwich Village businesses.

Since 1996, he has been active around the issue of human cloning.