Jim Kepner

American journalist, author and archivist James Lynn Kepner Jr. (1923 – 15 November 1997) was an American journalist, author, historian, archivist and leader in the gay rights movement. His work was intertwined with One, Inc. and One Magazine, and eventually contributed to the formation of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. Early life Jim Kepner was found wrapped in newspaper under an oleander bush in Galveston, Texas, in September 1923, aged about eight months. He didn't find out he was adopted until he was nineteen. In 1942, he followed his adopted father to San Francisco, where, wandering around the libraries of the city, Kepner could not find anything objective that focused on the way he was. Later, he would record that he had been "aware of being different from age four." Career Kepner started his career as a clerk for a railroad company in San Francisco, California, in the 1940s. He joined the Communist Party USA and wrote for a Communist newspaper in New York City, the Daily Worker. However, he was expelled from the party because of his homosexuality. Instead, he joined the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, the main gay organization in the United States at the time.