POLITICIAN
No, it was not Harvey Milk. The first openly homosexual candidate to successfully run for political office in the United States was Kathy Kozachenko. Kathy is a trailblazing figure in LGBTQ+ history. In 1974, at the age of 21, she won a seat on the Ann Arbor City Council in Michigan as a candidate of the Human Rights Party, marking a groundbreaking moment in political representation for the LGBTQ+ community.
Kathy’s election predated the broader visibility of openly gay politicians, such as Harvey Milk, and highlighted the growing influence of progressive grassroots movements in the 1970s. Her campaign focused on progressive issues, including tenants' rights, marijuana reform, and social justice, resonating with Ann Arbor's politically active community. Despite her historic achievement, Kozachenko's contributions to LGBTQ+ and political history are often overlooked, making her a vital yet underappreciated pioneer in the fight for equality and representation. Today, her legacy inspires new generations of activists and political leaders striving for inclusivity and justice.
— August Bernadicou, Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project
“I didn’t realize I was different in terms of being a lesbian until I was in college, but there were hints along the way. I had a best friend named Vicky, and we loved to look at Sears catalogs. I would pick out pictures in the catalog of who my children would be. I never thought of having a husband. I never thought of having a boyfriend. My mother’s parents used to send me tons of Barbie doll clothes for Christmas. For whatever reason, I always preferred baby dolls, even though I should have been too old for them. When I did play Barbie, I could never see what Barbie saw in Ken.
I embraced the politics of the day, but they would have been my politics anyway. I believed in economic justice and racial justice and that a kid from a poor neighborhood shouldn’t have a worse education than a kid from an affluent neighborhood. That sense of fairness was something that I developed.
I basically had two dreams. I wanted to write—I started writing when I was a child, 10, 11 years old. I wrote stories and poems about someone going on a cross-country wagon train. It was everything we saw on TV: Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza. My other dream was to change the world and to be part of the movement that was going on at that time in the country. The student movement was huge. The anti-war movement was huge. The women’s movement was starting. Even though I wasn’t exposed to it back when I was in high school, the gay movement was beginning as well.
When I was in Plymouth, I actually did one thing. I was a big supporter of the United Farm Workers Union and the grape and lettuce boycotts. They were taking direct action to get better working conditions for the farm workers, health care, and so on. They were picketing the local grocery stores. My father wouldn’t let me picket the grocery store because he thought it was too dangerous. I contacted a representative of the farm workers, and we had a community meeting in Plymouth to talk about the plight of the farm workers, the organizing the union was doing, and how we should support the boycott.
I was also a very big supporter of Bobby Kennedy. I believed he would bring about change and be the person in the White House. I believed he would be on the right side of justice. I was in high school, and I was devastated when he died.
Gay people were invisible back then. We weren’t on TV. Women were in some professions clawing and scratching to get a chance for not only careers but education as well. It was a time when women went into fields they didn’t want. The atmosphere was of enormous hope and enormous change on the horizon. We were all the sort of people of the 1960s that were politically motivated. We were organizing. There was structural and cultural change going on. The Black Panthers were active and were doing incredible work with their free food program and free lunch program and other things. The student movement was vehemently against the Vietnam War.
We were young people who did not necessarily buy into the American Dream: make money, get ahead, and have success. We thought there was a different way to live and be, and we believed there should certainly be more equality. There should not be so many poor people.
Shortly after I got to Ann Arbor, I came out of the closet and became part of an organization called the Human Rights Party, which was an organization with leftist, socialist politics. The Human Rights Party consisted of men, women, gay, and straight, and we believed that social and economic justice was needed and that the way to make those changes was not only through running for elected office but supporting certain unions. We were very vocal about wanting the University of Michigan not to buy lettuce because, at this point, all lettuce was non-union, and the farm workers were still asking consumers to boycott lettuce.
The Human Rights Party was a way for us to discuss our ideas and how we thought city money should be spent. It became a statewide party in Michigan with different chapters for a short time. We were one of two locations where people were actually elected to office.
People were tired of “politics as usual.” People were tired of the same people running the city and the priorities that they had. People responded when we talked about the facts. I decided to run. It was definitely not my idea at all. I was approached by the Human Rights Party and asked to run. I told them other people would be better, but the people I mentioned were finishing their graduate degrees and moving out of Ann Arbor to start their careers. I was studying literature and creative writing. I didn’t particularly have a career to start. I focused on how I could best be effective in changing the world. I didn’t really want to do it, but I said yes, and that was important to me.
We proposed two important ballot measures. One was a low $5 fine for marijuana possession, and the other was rent control, which set the profit level that landlords could make from students. When I look at the literature I wrote, part of what I wrote is still relevant today. I talked about gender roles and how they were not useful and didn’t allow for growth and that we should be more open and accepting of who people are as people. We even talked about transgender rights.
If anyone had told me back then that after 50 plus years, I would have some place in history and that people would be talking to me, I would have said you were absurd.”