Harry hay biography

Harry Hay

Episode Notes

Harry Hay was precocious.

He knew from an early age that he was attracted to men, had his first gay sexual experience when he was nine, and developed an interest in union organizing in his early teens while working on an uncle’s farm in Nevada.

Harry hay biography wikipedia

Born to an upper middle-class family and raised in California, Hay was sent to the farm by his father to toughen up, but what he learned working side by side with migrant laborers was first and foremost ideological, as many of his fellow workers were “Wobblies,” members of the International Workers of the World (IWW).

By the early 1930s, Hay was out, had dropped out of Stanford University, and had moved to Los Angeles to work in the theater. His lover, actor Will Geer (who gained fame in the 1970s in the role of Grandpa Walton on the popular television series, The Waltons”), recruited him