Don’t tell Dr. Joyce Hunter that it can’t be done … it only makes her more determined to do it. For more than 40 years, she has been an advocate and activist for at-risk-youth in the LGBTQ community. In 1979 Dr. Hunter helped organize the first-ever March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It came on the heels of the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California.
"Harvey got assassinated, and then the people in San Francisco said, we're going to march for Harvey. Everybody wanted to march," Dr. Hunter told 1010 WINS. "It instigated that march. We were ready to march, and not only that, hit heads if we had to."
Unlike today, there were no cellphones or social media to drive the message, yet the rally drew more than a hundred thousand people that day.
"It was one of the best days ever, she recalled, “I never saw so many gay people. It was a lot."
As her confidence grew, so too did her desire to help young people. When a 15-year boy was beaten and then kicked out of his emergency shelter because he was gay, Dr. Hunter needed to find a way to effect change. She joined Dr. Emery Hetrick and Dr. Damien Martin and together they founded the Hetrick-Martin Institute. At HMI, Dr. Hunter served at the first Director and Clinical Supervisor of Social Work Services. She also co-developed a counseling program, drop-in center, and outreach project for street and homeless youth.
The organization describes the partnership this way: Dr. Emery Hetrick and Dr. Damien Martin ensured there would be a community response to the critical needs of LGBTQ youth; Dr. Joyce Hunter ensured that the community response would be grounded in a practice that is youth-centered, holistic, inclusive, empowering, and loving.
In 1984, with the help of HMI, Dr. Hunter co-founded the Harvey Milk High School in New York City's East Village. The alternative high school for at-risk LGBTQ youth was inspired by conversations she had with young, gay people she met on the street. When she asked them why they were not in school, she was told it was, “safer in the streets than in the classrooms.”
"They told me they get bullied, they get beat up and the teachers look the other way," Dr. Hunter said. "The kids who were transgender or wanted to get dressed up in their clothes and all that. It was too dangerous for them. They would get beat up. They got called all kinds of names."
The school is now a fully accredited public high school and administered by the NYC Department of Education.