Collection

Gunnison, Foster Papers

Span Dates: not available at this time
Bulk Dates:
Volume: not available at this time

Description

The Foster Gunnison Papers include materials Foster Gunnison, Jr. collected about gay and lesbian organizations throughout the United States, including records of the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organizations (ECHO) and North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), early coalitions of organizations seeking the creation of a national homophile organization. The Foster Gunnison Papers contain personal correspondence, subject files, conference proceedings, student organization records, serial publications and periodicals, posters and fliers, buttons, newspaper clippings, and photographs. Of particular interest are Gunnison's correspondence with seminal figures as Richard Inman and Bob Martin. See the related collections of Rev. Canon Clinton Jones and the George W. Henry Foundation.

Hist/Bio Note

Foster Gunnison was born in 1925 to a prosperous family. In the book, Stonewall, Martin Duberman wrote that Foster Gunnison, in the mid-1960s, urged the homophile movement to cultivate allies in mainstream institutions like the church. Gunnison published "An Introduction to the Homophile Movement" and thereafter became a self-proclaimed archivist of the gay and lesbian movement in America. He formed the Institute for Social Ethics as an umbrella organization under which he collected lesbian and gay periodicals and newspapers from many parts of the United States. As such, he corresponded with Rev. Canon Clinton Jones who headed ecumenical efforts to address the spiritual needs of the gay and lesbian community in Hartford, Connecticut, from the 1963 onward.

Finding Aid

A description of the collection is available by searching the library catalog.
https://lib.uconn.edu/libraries/asc/research/

Location

This collection is located at the Archives and Special Collections Department at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut.
https://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/

Tags

Gunnison, Foster | Jones, Clinton | Institute for Social Ethics | Connecticut