A Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday voted to preserve the home of 20th Century L.A. gay-rights pioneer Morris Kight after hearing more than two dozen advocates seeking to protect LGBTQ+ history they say the residence represents.
The 1911 California bungalow home, located in the Westlake neighborhood, stirred protests from preservation-minded advocates from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The site is listed on the California Register of Historical Resources, and protesters called for the home to be declared locally as a Historic Cultural Monument.
The council’s Planning, Land Use and Management Committee ultimately agreed, in a 3-1 vote, with Angelenos advocating to preserve the home. Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, chair of the committee, was the lone “no” vote, while Councilwoman Heather Hutt, a committee member, was absent from the meeting.
The full council will take up the final vote whether to approve the site’s Historic Cultural Monument designation during Wednesday’s meeting.
Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez introduced an amendment to declare Kight’s home with a lesser “site of” designation, which would allow the property owner to demolish the structure and redevelop the site. But the councilwomen’s amendment did not receive enough support and it failed.
Hernandez said her office had multiple conversations with stakeholders, including the property owner of Kight’s home. She wants to move forward in the “collective interests of all,” though she acknowledged there’s a “spectrum of how people feel.”
The “site of” designation would mark the parcel of land as a Historic Cultural Monument, whereas preservation advocates want the home itself to be protected.
Hernandez said the First District, which she represents and where Kight’s home is located, would better benefit from a community health center or affordable housing at the site that provides “access to the community” while uplifting Kight’s legacy.
Miki Jackson, a close friend of Kight’s and an AIDS Healthcare Foundation consultant who led a protest Monday morning, disagreed with the councilwoman.
“We have so few monuments, less than 1%, in this whole city that have to do with the LGBTQ population,” Jackson told City News Service.
The Los Angeles Conservancy on its website states “Morris Kight (1919-2003) is considered one of the founding fathers of the American LGBTQ civil rights movement.” His home was a “hub of LGBTQ social activity in the 20th century helped form the backdrop to his work as an activist and gay rights pioneer.”
Kight co-founded several “prominent” LGBTQ rights organizations, including the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, which became the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, and spearheaded the formation of the Gay Community Services Center, better known Tuesday asthe Los Angeles LGBT Center.
In 1970, he co-founded the Christopher Street West gay pride parade in L.A., the first gay pride parade and festival in the world.
