Mark Segal

From pioneering history as a participant at the Stonewall Riots, to being a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front NY 1969-71 and founder of Gay Youth (the nation’s first organization to deal with bullying and suicide of LGBT youth), to being a marshal and member of the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day Committee which created the world’s first Gay Pride in 1970, Mark Segal has been involved in LGBT civil rights since he moved to New York in May 1969.

His campaign to end the invisibility of the LGBT Community in media had him create the campaign against the TV Networks to disrupt live TV shows, including The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and the Today Show with Barbara Walters. Those disruptions changed the media and forced them to start covering the LGBT community fairly. As 5-time Emmy award winner Bruce Vilanch states “Before Will and Grace and Ellen, there was Mark Segal.” Almost 50 years after he disrupted NBC live broadcasts, today Segal serves on the Joint Diversity Council of Comcast NBC/Universal to continue to educate the network on LGBT issues.

Founder of the Philadelphia Gay News and past president of both The National LGBT Press Association and The National Gay Newspaper Guild, Segal’s memoir “And Then I Danced: Traveling the road to LGBT Equality," was named best book by The National LGBT Journalists Association. His weekly syndicated column, “Mark My Words” has won numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalist and the National Newspaper Association.

He partnered with the Obama administration to create and build the nation’s first official “LGBT Friendly” senior affordable housing apartment building. The 19.8 million dollar project, known as The John C. Anderson Apartments, opened in 2013.

"In 2018, his personal papers and artifacts from the last 53 years were added to the collections of the Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. In June 2021 a selection of his artifacts from the first Gay Pride in 1970 were part of the Gay Pride exhibit at the White House."