I found this story incredibly interesting and it was a corner of early queer activism i was unfamiliar with. i'll share a couple quotes, one from the introduction and one from the conclusion.
Reed Erickson was a trans man with a big checkbook and a pet leopard named Henry. Turns out that beginning in the early 1960s, Reed was the money behind the organization that published ONE [the first national pro-gay magazine]: ONE, Inc. With Reed’s very generous support, ONE, Inc. went on to do all sorts of pioneering things, including offering classes in homophile studies—queer studies long before there was queer studies. Reed Erickson also launched the first trans rights organization in the U.S. [the Erickson Educational Foundation] and funded work that was foundational in developing early trans healthcare protocols.
and then, in the conclusion, from transfemme historian Morgan M. Page:
The influence of the Erickson Educational Foundation cannot be stressed enough. We today would not have trans health care, period, without the funding and the information provided by the Erickson Educational Foundation. It was the first organization in the world that actually provided support and information to trans people, both through its newsletters and publications as well as an in-person office where people could call or drop in to receive information. Essentially, the framework that trans rights organizations use today in terms of collecting resources by area and distributing them to trans people in need, is based off the work of the Erickson Educational Foundation. So without that, the modern trans movement as we know it would not exist.
