Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays

44th Anniversary Edition A family history key to gay rights

Manford’s public defense of her son led to PFLAG

by Mark Lord

Chronicle Contributor

From a letter to a march to a meeting to a movement ... this is how one mother’s love for her son led to the formation of PFLAG, the first and largest organization in this country that unites parents, families and friends with members of the LGBTQ+ community.

One day in 1972, Flushing native Jeanne Manford was at home with her husband, Jules, when she received a telephone call from a hospital informing her that her son, Morty, had been beaten at a gathering in Manhattan while distributing leaflets to raise awareness of gay rights.

Manford, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Queens College and became an elementary school teacher at PS 32, where she remained for 26 years, responded with a letter of protest to the New York Post in which she complained of a lack of action by the police. In part, the letter stated, “I have a homosexual son and I love him.”

That simple public admission, no small act at the time, sparked a tremendous response from readers and went a long way in drawing attention to the movement that her son had been supporting.

Two months later, mother and son participated in the New York Pride March, forerunner of the annual Gay Pride Parade. Jeanne Manford carried a hand-lettered sign that read, “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of Our Children.” So significant did that sign become that it is preserved in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library.

She was asked by many in attendance at the march to speak to other parents, leading to the formation of a parental organization that became known, fittingly, as Parents of Gays, which held its first formal meeting on March 11, 1973 in Greenwich Village, with approximately 20 individuals in attendance. That led to the founding of PFLAG (an acronym for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) later that year, its mission “to create a caring, just, and affirming world for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them.”

According to PFLAG.org, “The power of PFLAG was born from the unified front of the family. It is the unified front of LGBTQ+ people, parents, families and non-family allies that continues to fuel PFLAG 50 years later.”

The organization will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023.

The national organization, PFLAG National, provides support to a network of local chapters across the country, now numbering around 400, including one in Queens, which meets every third Sunday every month at 2 p.m. at The Reform Temple of Forest Hills (71-11 112 St.) For further information on the Queens chapter, visit pflag-queens.org or call (718) 858-9678.

It is estimated that PFLAG currently has over 200,000 members in all 50 states.

For Jeanne Manford’s efforts in co-founding the organization, then-President Barack Obama awarded her, posthumously, in 2013, the Presidential Citizens Medal.

“She ... took to the streets with a simple message: No matter who her son was, no matter who he loved, she loved him,” Obama said.

It was but one of many honors bestowed upon the Manford family.

In June 1991, Jeanne Manford, who died in 2013 at the age of 92, served as grand marshal of the New York City Gay Pride March. Two years later, she served in the same capacity for the first Gay Pride Parade in Queens. On April 26, 2014, members of the family were forever memorialized as part of the borough’s history when 171st Street between 33rd and 35th avenues in Flushing was conamed “Jeanne, Jules, Morty Manford PFLAG Way,” next to the school where Jeanne taught.

And on May 20, 2017, the Jackson Heights Post Office, located at 78-02 37 Ave., was renamed the Jeanne and Jules Manford Post Office Building.

“All they did was to love their child and stand up for what they knew to be rightful,” said the Manfords’ daughter, Suzanne Swan, at the ceremony, as reported in the Queens Chronicle.

“They fought for [Morty’s] right to be who he was ... in a time when people didn’t understand,” she said. “They took it upon themselves to educate people. My parents loved New York and they would be so proud to have their names carved on this important part of the city.”

Swan, in turn, is proud of her parents and brother. Speaking by telephone recently from her home in California, she suggested that her mother “didn’t anticipate” the importance of her actions. “But when she realized she could have an effect, she worked even harder,” she said.

The full impact of her mother’s influence on the gay movement really hit home for Swan one year when she was in Europe during Pride Month. “They don’t have PFLAG there,” she said, but “they were able to march because my parents marched.” The realization, she said, left her in tears.

As for Morty, who would become assistant New York State attorney general and who died in 1992 of AIDS at the age of 41, Swan said, “He would be proud” of the strides made in the LGBTQ+ community. “He would have pushed it a lot further. His teachers told my mother he should be a senator.”

She remembered her brother as being “popular, strong-minded. He posted notices wherever gay people met. He would have had laws passed for federal rights. We lost a lot when we lost Morty.”

Perhaps surprisingly, according to Swan, her brother didn’t voluntarily come out to his parents. “Somebody told on him,” she said. “He couldn’t believe his parents would love him. Morty had no way of knowing. It’s still not easily accepted.”

She recalled that her father did, in fact, have a hard time accepting his son as gay, blaming himself for having done something wrong in raising him.

“But he sat with Morty’s friends; he enjoyed them. He accepted Morty wholeheartedly,” she said. Jules, a dentist, died in 1982 at the age of 63. Someone who knew the Manfords quite well is former City Councilman Daniel Dromm, who served from 2010 to 2021. Like Jeanne Manford, he had been a public school teacher, promoting teaching acceptance of LGBTQ individuals through the Rainbow Curriculum. Dromm also founded the Queens LGBTQ Pride Parade in 1993. “Morty was the inspiration for Jeanne, and Morty himself took huge risks by coming out and fighting,” Dromm said at the post office renaming ceremony. To this day, Dromm keeps a letter he received from Morty in 1974 asking Dromm to continue to fight against homophobia. In a recent telephone interview, Dromm described Morty as being “very nice, humble, smart and a real grassroots activist, with only the interest of the community at heart.” Were Morty alive today, Dromm imagined, “He would acknowledge the success we have made,” but would likely stress that “there is a Jeanne Manford and her son, Morty, walk in the New York Pride March in 1972. Among those long way to go, especially with the youth and behind them is Dr. Benjamin Spock, the renowned pediatrician and author, in white shirt and tie. getting them to be happy with themselves.” The sign Manford bears is preserved at the New York Public Library. PHOTO COURTESY NYC COUNCIL / FILE Half of the homeless young people on the streets of New York City are gay and rejected by their families, Dromm said. “Jeanne would work on that,” he added. It was Jeanne, in fact, who asked Dromm to help start a PFLAG chapter in Queens. “It was appropriate that it started in Jeanne’s home because it was about families,” he said. “What Jeanne did was to make us visible. That visibility is so important.” For further information on PFLAG NYC or to get involved, call (646) 240-4288. Confidential Helpline number is (212) 463-0629. Q PRIDE AND PARADES