used with permission from unpublished comments sent to Rainbow History by Dr Franklin E Kameny:

... Our first demonstration was explicitly NOT publicized, so as not to give the powers that be a chance to find or invent some excuse for preventing our demonstrating.  By pre-arrangement among ourselves, we simply gathered at the southwest corner of Lafayette Square, at about 2 PM (as I recall the time).  To our pleasant surprise, the MPD officer on duty in front of the White House (I knew his name at one time, but have long ago forgotten it) halted Pennsylvania Avenue traffic and ushered us across the Avenue to a designated picketing area for us. Jack Nichols led; I brought up the rear, preceded by Gail.  We picketed in an ellipse, not a circle, along with quite a number of other, independent demonstrations, each in its own orbit. (There were up to a dozen of them on some days, in that era, across the front of the White House and down East and West Executive Drives, which were open in those days).

Jack is correct that the only publicity we did get for the first demonstration was from the Afro-American (or whatever its exact name; he has it correct).

It went so well that we immediately decided to do a repeat, with advance publicity.  That was the May 29 one (I have always recalled it as May 28, but I could be wrong).  That was reported by Reuters and elsewhere -- not as much as we wanted, but a good beginning.

Early on, we settled on a triple mode of publicity for each demonstration:

(1) A mailed-out news release-announcement in advance;
(2) An explanatory leaflet to be handed out at the demonstration; and
(3) A post-demonstration release citing the fact of the demonstration and its rationale, the number of people present, and listing all the signs carried plus whatever information seemed relevant.

The MPD asked us to be included in our mailings for these -- particularly the advance release -- and we were pleased to comply.  I have copies of all of these materials  -- mimeographed on MSW's own mimeograph machine -- here somewhere.

At that time, no permits were required for any of those demonstrations. We simply decided, and then performed.

Our final DC demonstration was the following May, 1966, on Armed Services Day.  We picketed at the White House, then marched across the Mall and over the 14th Street Bridge to the Pentagon, where we also picketed.  We required permits and advance notification for neither of those two terminal points, but we did have to acquire permits for marching across the Mall and over the Bridge, and, of course, we did so.

Our final DC picket of 1965 was at the White House in October.  We had 65 people -- huge for us by our standards of that day --  which included a contingent from the then newly-formed Mattachine Midwest in Chicago.

... once the decision was made, and that demonstration took place, I organized and conducted it and all the others, both in DC and in Philadelphia, and drafted the picketing regulations, including the dress code.

 

(c) Rainbow History 2005
 

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