Michigan Radio: Longtime LGBTQ activist Jim Toy reflects on a life devoted to equality and justice
"I am committed to making as much trouble as I can to create and maintain justice."
June 25, 2020
This year’s Pride Month celebrations coincided with a major victory for the LGBTQ community. The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that workplace protections outlined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to gay and transgender people. The ruling comes after decades of work by activists in Michigan and elsewhere to expand legal rights and protections for the LGBTQ community. One of those activists is Jim Toy.
The First Openly Gay Person to Win an Election in the U.S. on the LGBTQ Community’s Progress
As a senior at the University of Michigan, Kathy Kozachenko won a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council in 1974
June 19, 2020
Most Americans are familiar with LGBTQ political icons such as Harvey Milk, Barney Frank, and Pete Buttigieg. Few, however, know that the first out person elected anywhere in America — and possibly the world — was then-21-year-old Kathy Kozachenko.
Meet the lesbian who made political history years before Harvey Milk
Three years before LGBTQ icon Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Kathy Kozachenko made history in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
April 02, 2020
Forty-six years ago, on April 2, 1974, out lesbian Kathy Kozachenko was elected to the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan — becoming the first openly gay person elected to political office in the United States. Then a 21-year-old University of Michigan student campaigning under the local (and now defunct) Human Rights Party, Kozachenko beat her lone Democratic opponent by 52 votes to little fanfare.