Carl was six years older than his cousin Peg but there was a mutual admiration and bond, complicated by the great geographical distance between them, and ultimately, by Carl’s untimely death due to AIDS. What follows is a letter from Carl on coming out, a remembrance published in the women’s newspaper Hera (Binghamton NY Women’s…
Author: Peg Johnston
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Elizabeth Freeman II
Elisabeth Freeman is the daughter of John and Blanche (Bishop) Freeman. She was the fourth of five children in that family and was raised primarily in Binghamton NY. She attended Cortland Normal School (now SUNY-Cortland) studying education. She became a teacher and ultimately a much beloved and compassionate guidance counselor in the Paramus NJ school…
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Robert C Johnston, Photographer
Robert Clark Johnston (Bob) is the eldest son of Herman Weiss Johnston and Mildred Clark Johnston. He had a lifelong passion for photography, especially developing his own black and white (silver tone) images. He was a member of the Cooperative Gallery and a Houston Photo Gallery when he lived there. His subjects were most often…
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John Henry Johnston
John Henry Johnston, b. 3-13-47 d. 9-5-2003, the son of Ruth and Robert Johnston. John attended the Forestry School at SUNY-Syracuse for landscape architecture and took a position at Tompkins-Cortland Community College (TC3) as the Operations Manager. He had a breadth of knowledge about all kinds of systems at the College. John received the Chancellor’s…
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Allan Troxler
Life partner of Carl Wittman. Allan Troxler is an artist and Country dance teacher in Durham NC. He was a Conscientious Objector to the mandatory military draft during the Vietnam War and did his service in the Boston area. He subsequently joined Carl in Wolf Creek in creating gay community and sustainable community among gays,…
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An Interracial Movement of the Poor?
This 1963 mimeographed article was written by Carl Wittman and Tom Hayden based on observations of their work in poor neighborhoods in Newark, NJ organizing around issues of housing, jobs, and discrimination. It is a detailed analysis of which issues are economic and potentially cross race and class lines, and which were about racism and…
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The Gay Manifesto
The Gay Manifesto, was, and remains, a pioneering document for the gay movement. Written shortly before the Stonewall Uprising in NYC in June of 1969, it laid out the revolutionary potential of the movement to challenge the power structure. In reading it now, there are some things that stand out. One is his acknowledgement that…
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Carl Wittman, Organizer
Carl Wittman, son of Jeanette Freeman Wittman and Walter Wittman. Carl Wittman lived the life of an organizer and he was pivotal in a number of movements. He grew up in Paramus NJ and went to Swarthmore College where he became involved in radical organizing, responding to racism and poverty in Cambridge, MD and later…
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We Have Met the Enemy and They are Us
Peg Johnston, daughter of Bob Johnston and Ruth Freeman Johnston. This is an essay by Peg Johnston analyzing abortion politics and especially emphasizing that individuals have the power to change the culture around abortion if only they would speak up. She was to continue this theme in her decades long work with the Abortion Conversation…
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Opting Out of the Abortion War:
This is one of Peg Johnston’s “thought pieces” on abortion politics from the perspective of an independent provider. It was published first in a provider newsletter, published by Johnston, and then after some updates in an anthology by Krista Jacob entitled “Our Choices, Our Lives, Unapologetic Writings on Abortion.” “From the Birmingham Bombing to September…