What were the highlights of the previous six annual conferences of the Mattachine Society? Here they are in a resumé of....

CONVENTIONS OF THE PAST

Not many of Mattachine Society's 1960 members were present when the chain of annual conventions-of which this is the seventh-began back in 1953. And just as most of the faces are different, so is the type of programming and the professional caliber of the event itself.

Here is a thumbback through the pages of Mattachine conventions from the beginning. They reflect the growth and mounting stature of the present organization.

In mid-April 1953 the first constitutional convention of the small membership residing in Northern and Southern California areas was held to create the present membership organization. At the time hopes were high that with a constitution the growing problems of the original (and to some, vague) Wattachine Foundation would be solved. Experience has not proved this concent to be totally correct.

However the group met, with many of the original founders present in the First Universalist Church at Los Angeles. Kennith Burns was elected chairman and for long hours over a Saturday and Sunday the wrangling continued. Nevertheless at this meeting it scarcely got beyond the preamble. A committee was named to continue the unfinished task and the sessions adjourned •to reconvene about a month later in the same place to complete the job.

The meetings of May 24-25, 1953 opened with proposed drafts for the constitution, in the same place, and the discussion continued. It became frankly heated at times. But a working constitution and by-laws were adopted. On the new bard (then called the Coordinating Council) were named several of the members of the original Foundation. A decision of the new Society was to hold semi-annual business meetings of the membership. The next one

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mattachine REVIEW

was called for November. Principal leaders of this second constitutional convention were Charles Rowland, Dr. Wallace Maxey and Kenneth Burns, the new chairman, who was elected permanently to the post.

On November 14, 1953, the membership convened for a 2-day meeting which was actually the first "Semi-Annual Convention" of the Society. Business matters occupied most of the schedule because the constitution and by-laws still were under criticism from many members and delegates. The business recessed on Saturday evening, however, and 51 persons assembled at a dinner to hear Richard Gwartney, M.D., of San Bernardino deliver an inspiring talk to the new organization. "Mattachine is a baby," he said, "which must learn first to crawl, then to walk. How it is accepted in society as a whole depends upon how well it learns and behaves like a responsible adult." This eminent Southern California psychiatrist was followed on the program by Dale Jennings, then editor of One Magazine, who exhorted the group that Mattachine should call for sweeping changes in laws and attitudes, and re lentlessly pursue a militant program. It never happened. At this convention Mattachine's custom of Awards of Merit was initiated. Recipients that year were One, Inc., Los Angeles; the George W. Henry Foundation, New York; and Foundation International Committee for Sexual Equality, Amsterdam, Holland. Dale C. Olsen, then secretary, was named Member of the Year. Honorary membership was granted to Dr. Wallace Maxey, pastor of the First Universalist Church, Los Angeles, in recognition of his services in the Society's reorganizational efforts. Decision to incorporate was made at this meeting. But the semi-annual conventions were already becoming a burden, what with the Society having spread to San Diego and Chicago from its two principal California areas. Next convention, the membership agreed, would be an annual one. It was, in fact, to become officially designated as the First Annual Convention.

San Francisco was chosen as the site. Newsletter announcements in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago were responsible for about 45 persons. attending the two-day business meeting May 14-15, 1954 at the center of the American Friends Service Committee, 1830 Sutter Street. Mrs. Bernice Engle, research assistant for Dr. Karl M. Bowman, director of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic of the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, was banquet speaker. She was heard by more than 40 persons in the Three Little Swiss restaurant. Kennith Burns was reelected chairman. Awards of Merit were presented to Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.; and to Der Kreis, senior homophile magazine of the world, Zurich, Switzerland. The Society was once more a legal corporate entity, with its charter having been granted on March 23; 1954 by the State of California.

In 1955, the Second Annual Convention returned to the Society's head11