The Echo of a Growing Movement by Donald Webster Cory & John P. LeRoy

Labor Day weekend, 1963, was probably one of the most stimulating and informative to hit the city of Philadelphia for many years. Not only did ten thousand psychologists from all parts of the country pack the city's hotels and facilities, but for the first time in the history of the homophile movement, four independent, autonomous homophile organizations combined their funds, personnel, and talent to set up a conference program which few prior affairs, even the many on the West Coast, could match.

one

The ten thousand or more psychologists were all gathered in Philadelphia that weekend for the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. The New York and Washington Mattachine societies, the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, and the Janus Society of Philadelphia and Delaware Valley had joined forces some months earlier to form a loose federation, the East Coast Homophile Organizations, which soon became known as ECHO. And here was this infant ECHO, already holding a con-

24