Over the course of Pride Month, Darrell Gordon was a steady presence at LGBTQ+ events across the city.
He kicked off the celebrations at a Pride flag raising in Logan Square, celebrating LGBTQ+ visibility beyond Chicago’s most recognizable queer enclaves on the North Side. Days later, he DJ’d the opening of “Right to Assemble,” an intergenerational art exhibit bringing LGBTQ+ elders and younger adults together through art and conversation. And later in the month, he stood in Washington Square Park as community members commemorated the 56th anniversary of Chicago’s first Pride march.
Supporting these kinds of events is standard for Gordon, a longtime activist from Chicago’s West Side.
For nearly five decades, Gordon has shown up wherever Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community is organizing, preserving its history or fighting for change. As a founding member of Dykes and Gay Men Against Racism and Repression—known as DAGMAR—he helped lay the groundwork for what would become ACT UP/Chicago during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He later helped organize the first openly LGBTQ+ contingent in the Bud Billiken Parade and pushed for greater LGBTQ+ visibility in communities on Chicago’s South and West sides.
Today, Gordon’s passion for community building and advocacy continues. A self-described “radical queer gay male activist of African descent,” Gordon attends senior discussion groups, communal lunches and protests, while sharing his passion for music history and encouraging younger generations to keep organizing.
“I am radical,” Gordon said. “I believe in mostly organizing street activism.”
It’s a philosophy that has guided Gordon through nearly every chapter of his life and continues to shape where he’ll show up next.
Fighting for liberation
Gordon’s commitment to organizing took shape as he came of age in Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community during the late 1970s. Hoping to find a community free from many of society’s divisions, he instead encountered racism and classism that mirrored the world beyond it.
“I was thinking that the community would be less racist and classist,” Gordon recalled. “I came into a rude awakening.”
Growing up in Lawndale before later living in Garfield Park and Austin, Gordon was influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power activists and figures like Malcolm X. Those influences drew him toward grassroots organizing and, eventually, anarchist politics. Rather than placing his faith in political institutions, Gordon said lasting social change comes from people organizing together.
That philosophy shaped nearly every chapter of Gordon’s activism.
He became a founding member of DAGMAR, a group that confronted racism within Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community. As the AIDS epidemic deepened, the organization evolved into Chicago for AIDS Rights and eventually ACT UP/Chicago, with Gordon remaining involved throughout each transformation.
During the height of the AIDS crisis, Gordon joined demonstrations demanding better care for people living with HIV. Among them was a protest that helped pressure Cook County Hospital to expand the number of beds available to AIDS patients. He also protested mandatory HIV testing proposals backed by then-Gov. Jim Thompson and pushed for more effective HIV prevention messaging on CTA buses.
Gordon said there was little choice but to act. He also lost friends during the epidemic, an experience he said reinforced both the urgency of the movement and life’s fragility.
“I think people’s lives were on the line,” he said. “People’s lives were on the line.”
For Gordon, AIDS activism was never separate from the broader struggles he had been organizing around for years.
“I just think all these issues are interconnected in some way,” he said. “If you can’t address one part of a society, you can’t deal with the rest.”
Expanding what LGBTQ+ community looks like
Gordon’s belief that liberation is interconnected also shaped how he viewed Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community. While much of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ life has long been centered on the North Side, Gordon spent decades advocating for greater visibility of LGBTQ+ people in Black communities across the South and West sides.
“Sometimes I go to these things to present a radical point of view,” Gordon said. “And sometimes… a geographical point of view, because I’m not a North Sider.”
That perspective shaped Gordon’s efforts to make LGBTQ+ Chicagoans visible in places where they had often been overlooked. In 1993, he helped organize the first openly LGBTQ+ contingent in Chicago’s Bud Billiken Parade, one of the nation’s largest celebrations of Black culture. After organizers initially rejected the group’s application, community pressure led to the decision being reversed, allowing the contingent to march openly in the parade.
“I thought it was a great achievement at the time for us as openly gay and lesbian people,” Gordon said. “Being out there in the crowd and waving at the community at the time was powerful.”
Two years later, Gordon helped organize an LGBTQ+ contingent in Chicago’s African Liberation Day Parade on the West Side. Participation was smaller than he had hoped, but the goal remained the same: to demonstrate that LGBTQ+ people are part of every neighborhood and every community.
“I think it showed that we’re everywhere,” Gordon said. “We’re not just all concentrated on the North Side.”
Preserving history
After decades spent organizing for change, Gordon has also devoted himself to preserving the stories that shaped Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community.
That work extends beyond activism. A lifelong music enthusiast, Gordon has spent years collecting vintage radio airchecks and researching the history of rhythm and blues, particularly the contributions of Black and LGBTQ+ artists.
“I think it’s relevant… hearing what the news reports [were] and what the music was,” Gordon said. “Some of that is about life at that time.”
That same commitment shapes Gordon’s involvement in Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community today. The Pride Month events Gordon gravitated toward—from the commemoration of Chicago’s first Pride march to the Right to Assemble exhibit—reflected his commitment to connecting younger generations with the movement’s history.
Gordon worries the movement’s history could be lost if those stories aren’t intentionally passed from one generation to the next. He remains particularly concerned about efforts to restrict what students learn in schools and believes conversations between LGBTQ+ elders and younger people are more important than ever.
“I think it needs to be serious dialogue,” Gordon said. “The community needs to do that together.”
For Gordon, preserving history isn’t about nostalgia—it’s about preparing the next generation to carry the movement forward.
“Get active,” Gordon said. “Get active, and find allies, and find community.”
