The Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project

Harris L. Kimball was quite possibly the first openly gay attorney in the United States.

Originally from Michigan City, Indiana and raised in Illinois, Kimball moved to New York in 1957 after working as a civil rights lawyer in Florida. In 1955, at the age of 29, he was arrested in Florida for “engaging in a homosexual act on a public beach” and subsequently disbarred.

As reflected in his personal papers and in interviews with journalists, Kimball stated he was targeted for disbarment because of his work as a civil rights lawyer in the then-segregated state of Florida.

After relocating to New York, Kimball worked at Star Expansion Industries, an anchor manufacturing company. His focus was on the insurance and corporate risk. In 1971, he passed the New York State Bar exam and appealed to be permitted to practice law in the state. On October 24, 1973, the New York Court of Appeals made a landmark decision, becoming the first high court of any state to determine that a lawyer’s homosexuality was not adequate grounds to deny them admission to the bar. Kimball was then admitted to the New York State bar. According to unpublished writings by Kimball, he opened his White Plains office on March 1, 1975 at 11 Court Street (a “cheap third floor walk up” in what he later learned was “a gay cruising area”). He would later acquire an office at 901 Main Street in Peekskill.

Kimball’s Westchester connection

Kimball worked in offices in Peekskill and White Plains—both in Westchester County, N.Y.—while living in Garrison, N.Y. In the 1980s, he was a member of the Westchester Gay Men’s Association (WGMA) and ran a weekly radio show called “Gay New York.”  

Paul Gruhler, a neighbor of Kimball’s for nearly a decade, recalled him fondly. 

“He had a big personality … he loved life,” Gruhler said. “He was really positive given all the things he had to go through.” 

Gruhler recalled that Kimball was an intuitive cook who loved hosting small dinner parties on Friday nights, when his longtime partner Dick Gaskill would come to stay for the weekend. (According to materials in Kimball’s personal papers, Gaskill died in 2003.)

In the early 1980s, Kimball represented at least eight of the men arrested during the White Plains railroad station restroom arrests. These arrests, which mirrored Kimball’s own case in Florida decades earlier, targeted men who were thought to be engaging in public sex with each other in station restrooms.

Materials in the Harris L. Kimball Papers, Kimball’s personal archive housed at Cornell University, reflect his support for men accused of similar charges at other Westchester train stations, as well. A 1977 letter to Kimball from Joe Kennedy of the Gay Activists Alliance suggests that Kimball provided legal strategy for or defended members of the Gay Activists Alliance in the lawsuit that followed their picketing of attorney Adam Walinsky’s private residence in Scarsdale, N.Y. The GAA was also involved in Kimball’s own legal battle to be admitted to the New York State Bar as a “friend of the court.”

In an interview with the Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project, Mitchell Visoky recalled that Kimball was also involved in legal matters relating to The LOFT’s incorporation process.

Kimball’s personal papers are now housed in the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University. 

Our ask to you

Harris Kimball was an extraordinarily active member of the local LGBTQ+ community during his time living in Westchester. Despite the Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project’s efforts to find his obituary, we have not yet been able to do so.

If you have any information about Harris Kimball’s death in 2013, or his life more generally, please contact the Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project at westchesterlgbtqhistoryproject@proton.me.