Before Manhatten was the gay friendly metropolis that it is todayArthur Evens was arrested for sitting in at New York City Council offices demanding equal rights for its gay residents. Before the era of slick, targeted campaigns, he passed out flyers on Bay Area street corners asking people to vote NO on Prop 6, which would have allowed school districts to fire gay teachers. When Dan White Got Away With Murder, Mr. Evans threw rocks at San Francisco City Hall during the White Knight riots. When he saw the new and strange disease called AIDS claim his longtime partner and many of his friends, he spoke out against the Reagan Administration's indifference. He was also arrested in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention.
After spending so many years fighting injustice, Arthur Evans lost his struggle against congestive heart failure (an ailment he confided in me) this passed weekend.
Arthur Evans, born in York, Pennsylvania on October 12, 1942, died in San Francisco over the weekend, Michael Petrelis in San Francisco and Jim Fouratt in New York (via email) report. No cause of death was given.
In August 1969, two months after the Stonewall Riots, Evans and his lover Arthur Bell, who would later become an important columnist for the Village Voice, joined the Gay Liberation Front, a group described to him as “A bunch of stoned-out faggots!”
He was the last surviving member of the GLF and grew a bit conservative by San Francisco standards over the year, railing against what he saw as a deterioration in the overall quality of life. But he was a walking history lesson in the American GLBT movement and he was there at every significant turn. Everyone who believes in equal rights owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.