Jack Nichols (activist)

Jack Nichols (b. John Richard Nichols in Washington, D.C. on March 16, 1938 &mdash; May 2, 2005) was an American gay rights activist. He co-founded the Washington D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961 with Franklin E. Kameny.

Biography
Nichols was born in Washington, D.C. and came out as gay to his parents as a teenager.

Activism
Nichols founded the D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society in 1961, and the Florida branch in 1965. Beginning in 1963, he chaired the D.C. chapter's Committee on Religious Concerns, which later developed into the Washington Area Council on Religion and the Homosexual. This organization was pioneering in forging links between the gay rights movement and the National Council of Churches.

Nichols led the first gay rights march on the White House, in April 1965. He also successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to rescind its definition of homosexuality as a form of mental illness.

In 1969, after moving to New York, Nichols and his partner Lige Clarke founded GAY, the first gay weekly newspaper in the US.

From February 1997, Nichols was Senior Editor at www.GayToday.com, an online newsmagazine. He died on May 2, 2005, of complications from cancer.