Jim Schneider is one of Southern California's most dedicated long-term activists. He has been working daily to nurture and protect the GLBT movement since he first met Don Slater and the others at ONE Inc. in 1959, after moving to the area from his boyhood home on a remote Nebraska farm. Like hundreds of others at this time, Schneider had intuited that there was something different about him, something that emboldened him to leave the world of his rural childhood and seek a different way of life.
Schneider tried dating women once he settled in his home in Huntington Park, and he grew worried when nothing clicked with any of them. He consulted with a young psychiatrist who told him about ONE Magazine and suggested that he purchase a copy. Schneider was eager to meet others like him, but he did not fancy the idea of associating in bars. So he called the offices of ONE to offer his services.
Schneider's first impressions of ONE's dark office, at 232 South Hill St. above a Goodwill store, were not great. The office was small and unkempt, the building old and noisy from the surrounding tenants-mostly garment manufacturers. Don Slater, a senior editor for the magazine, was the first to welcome Schneider to the organization, and he invited him to attend an ongoing discussion group.
Schneider also met Dorr Legg, the organization's business manager, then known as William Lambert. Soon, Schneider was active in the organization, and he helped it move to a larger facility on Venice Boulevard in 1962. About this time, he met the man who was to be his partner for 17 years, a schoolteacher named Henry, and soon they were helping out as members of the Friday Night Work Committee, doing odd jobs and helping to distribute ONE Magazine.
Schneider was elected to be a director of ONE in January of 1965, but the organization at the time was stagnant, caught in a deadlock between those who wanted to bolster the educational division, called ONE Institute for Homophile Studies, and those who remained loyal to the magazine. When the organization divided over the issue in April of 1965, Schneider wrote letters to both faction leaders, Slater and Legg, in which he proposed a compromise and offered to host a reconciliatory meeting at his home.
Legg, still operating from Venice, responded by having Schneider removed from his half of ONE's board. Slater was amused by Schneider's attempt and welcomed him to his half of ONE, now calling itself the Tangent Group and doing business on Cahuenga Boulevard across from Universal Studios. Schneider has continued to work for the Tangent Group ever since. He helped the organization incorporate as the Homosexual Information Center (HIC) in 1968, which in 1970 became one of the first federal nonprofit organizations openly dedicated to homosexual causes.
One of the events that Schneider feels was most important in his experience in the movement was the arrest of a schoolteacher named Odorizzi. Immediately after Odorizzi's arrest for homosexual misconduct, members of the Bloomfield school district went to his home and pressured him to resign. He signed their papers but soon regretted the action. He called his co-worker Henry. Henry told Schneider all about what happened, and they decided to bring the matter to the attention of the HIC.
Slater put them in touch with attorney Herb Selwyn, an American Civil Liberties Union associate who happened to know the judge and helped to have the case dismissed. After this, the matter went to Stuart A. Simke, a young lawyer from UCLA who was working for famous criminal lawyer Burton Marks, to try and get Odorizzi reinstated with the school district. Simke selected undue influence as the just cause to have the case heard, and they won in the fall of 1966, setting a precedent that protects homosexual teachers today.
When Slater died in 1997, Schneider did his best to help his surviving partner, Tony, to cope with the grief. And when Mattachine founder Dale Jennings became incapacitated in his old age, Schneider welcomed him into his home until it was learned that Jennings was suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia, and it was dangerous to leave him alone in the house. Schneider had Jennings placed in a neighborhood convalescent home and tended to him as though he were family, with love and patience until his death in 1999.
Schneider left his family back on the Nebraska farm more than 50 years ago, but he took what he had learned about hard work, dedication and family love, bringing that heartland spirit with him to Los Angeles. In working for the homosexual cause, he found many others like him, who had left the homes of their childhood to create a new sense of family and identity in the sprawling suburbs of L.A.More on Schneider and the complete text of the case Odorizzi v. Bloomfield School District can be found on the HIC Web site: http://www.tangentgroup.org.
