Henry D. Messer
American LGBT rights activist and neurosurgeon (1927-2014)
Henry Davis Messer (September 22, 1927 – February 18, 2014) was an American LGBT rights activist and neurosurgeon. He was an early member of the Mattachine Society, involved with the first attempt to pass a human rights ordinance inclusive of sexual orientation in New York City, and co-founder of Triangle Foundation (today known as Equality Michigan).
Personal life
Messer was born in Madison, Florida on September 22, 1927, to Henry Messer, owner of a Chevrolet dealership, and Sarah Messer, a housewife. He moved to Durham, North Carolina to study premedicine at Duke University and went to Duke University School of Medicine.
Messer met his life partner, Carl House, while serving as a captain in the United States Army Air Forces. House was a corporal in the United States Army when they met in 1951 after a night out with a group of gay servicemen. In 1953, after resigning from the Army Air Force, Messer and House moved to New York City's Greenwich Village. They moved to Dearborn Heights, Michigan in 1976.
He was shot while volunteering at the Triangle Foundation's office in Detroit on June 28, 1995. The incident received national attention as a possible anti-gay hate crime.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry D. Messer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.