American activist John Richard (Jack) Nichols was BOTD in 1938. Born in Washington DC, he was raised in Maryland, coming out as gay to his parents when he was a teenager. In 1961, he co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington. During the 1960s, he led the first gay rights march on the White House, forging links between the gay rights movement and the National Council of Churches. He became one of the first Americans to talk publicly about his homosexuality in a 1967 news documentary, The Homosexuals, allowing himself to be interviewed on camera, but using a pseudonym at the request of his father (who was an FBI agent). Nichols was fired from his job the day after the broadcast. With his partner Lige Clarke, he began writing the column The Homosexual Citizen for Screw magazine, becoming one of the first publicly-identified gay couples in America. They moved to New York in 1969 and founded GAY, the first weekly gay newspaper to be sold publicly at newsstands. In the 1970s, they co-authored two books about same-sex relationships, and successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness. After Clarke’s death in 1975, Nichols moved to San Francisco where he worked as a news editor for LGBT publication The San Francisco Sentinel. He died of cancer in 2005 aged 67, survived by his partner Steve Yates.