WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez will induct civil rights leader and worker rights equality pioneer Frank Kameny into the Department of Labor’s Hall of Honor Tuesday, June 23 at 3 p.m. at its national headquarters.
A World War II veteran and Harvard-educated doctor of astronomy with the U.S. Army Map Service, Kameny was discharged, and barred for life from federal government employment after U.S. Civil Service Commission investigators asked if he was a homosexual in 1958.
Kameny fought the injustice, taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied his petition in 1961. The setback led him to become a co-founder of the first gay rights organization in Washington, D.C., and begin his tireless fight to force the nation’s largest employer — the federal government — to end discrimination in its employment practices based on sexual orientation. Kameny died in 2011 at age 86.
Established in 1988, the department’s Hall of Honor honors the contributions made by extraordinary men and women throughout history for the betterment of work, workers and workplaces in America. Kameny will join other labor luminaries previously inducted, including Cesar Chavez, Samuel Gompers, Mother Jones, Frances Perkins, Charles Walgreen, Helen Keller and Walter Reuther.
