And Then I Danced

August 10, 2015
Segal, the founder and publisher of
the Philadelphia Gay News and former president of both National Gay Press Association and the National Gay Newspaper Guild, provides an enticing frontline account of the fight for equal rights for LGBTQ people in the U.S. Segal is modest and, at times, even self-deprecating about his leading role in this historic fight, from the “zaps” he engineered in the ’70s (he infamously crashed Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News
program in 1973) to the award-winning journalism he fostered at the helm of the Philadelphia Gay News. He describes a courageous and increasingly successful battle to oppose discrimination, raise
visibility, and educate straight and cisgender people by putting a human face on LGBTQ communities. His optimistic viewpoint doesn’t gloss over the painful moments of that trajectory, either the personal humiliations and losses or broader devastation such as the AIDS
epidemic, but the reader can clearly see how Segal’s fearless determination, cheerful tenacity, and refusal to attack
his opponents made him a power broker in Philadelphia and a leading advocate
on the national level. Segal fills his book with worthy stories, but the structure is uneven at times, and he sometimes awkwardly reintroduces people who appeared earlier as if readers are encountering them for the first time. What the book lacks in polish, it makes up in funny anecdotes and heart. Photos.

September 1, 2015
Segal grew up poor in the projects in Philadelphia, feeling the sting of ethnicity as the only Jew as well as of sexual orientation. He eventually moved to New York and got involved in the emerging gay rights scene, just in time for the Stonewall riot and the formation of the Gay Liberation Front. When he returned to his hometown, Segal set about organizing protests and challenging the status quo, eventually developing zaps nonviolent protests that included chaining himself to the Liberty Bell. He moved on to zaps on network television, from The Tonight Show to CBS news broadcasts with Walter Cronkite, garnering as many powerful allies as enemies. Segal later pioneered the gay press, publishing a newspaper that covered, besides the AIDs scare, major issues that the mainstream media would not touch, including lesbian nuns, medical experiments on gays, and rampant homelessness among gay youth. With great verve and spirit, Segal has rendered a lively and dramatic memoir of the early days of the gay rights struggle; the infighting over strategies and objectives; the long, hard road of progress; and a look at the challenges still ahead.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2015
The life and times of an intrepid gay rights activist. Segal's swiftly written debut memoir looks back at his coming-of-age years in New York City through his achievements both personal and political, which have made him the "dean of American gay journalism." Growing up isolated in the 1950s with "the only Jewish family in a South Philadelphia housing project," the author, son of a decorated war hero, set his sights on New York ("the center of everything") while passing his childhood years with eyes glued to the men's underwear section of the Sears catalog and bonding with his civil rights advocate grandmother, who "celebrated diversity before it was fashionable." Segal's first interest in newspapers manifested as a young door-to-door salesboy, and then he branched out in later years as a founding journalist of the Philadelphia Gay News. He went on to chair political movements and lobby for LGBT anti-discrimination legislation with learned diplomacy and the launch of a series of nonviolent, press-frenzying "zaps," which included crashing the sets of the Tonight Show and the CBS Evening News. Amid schisms within the gay community and the beginning of the nightmarish "deadly war" on AIDS, Segal fearlessly pressed onward, befriending pivotal politicos like Barney Frank and spearheading the development of LGBT senior housing projects. In other sections, the author vividly describes his firsthand experience as a teenager inside the Stonewall bar during the historic riots, his participation with the Gay Liberation Front, and amusing encounters with Elton John and Patti LaBelle. In a fitting coda to a vigorous life story, Segal, now 64, writes of finally wedding his longtime partner and of finagling a coveted photograph together with Michelle Obama. A jovial yet passionately delivered self-portrait inspiring awareness about LGBT history from one of the movement's true pioneers.

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