Charley Shively

Charley Shively (1937 - 2017) was an American gay writer, anarchist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. A scholar of Walt Whitman, he edited ''Drum Beats: Walt Whitman's Civil War Boy Lovers'' (1989) and ''Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman's Working Class Camerados'' (1987).

Shively was an activist against the Vietnam War. Following his graduation at Harvard University in 1969, he began working in gay activism. He co-founded several gay groups including Fag Rag and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. He famously burned a copy of the bible and his Harvard diploma in protest at a Boston Pride march in 1977.

Shively started displaying symptoms of Alzheimer's in the early 2000s. Having had his activism mostly forgotten in the following years, he died in 2017 at a nursing home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Provided by Wikipedia