As Executive Director of the Pacific Center, Carole Migden has been described by former volunteers and staff as a tireless proponent for LGBT+ rights and relentless when it came to developing resources for the center. During her time there she eventually managed to procure funding for the Pacific Center from the United Way Bay Area in 1978 – no small feat considering their organization had never funded any type of gay center or agency. Despite the Pacific Center having applied to United Way for funding since its inception in 1973, the center had been consistently denied, often in the final stages, prompting an ongoing feud between the organizations.

This first set of documents show a letter sent to Gerald K. Leo of United Way in late 1977, in which Migden called out the organization for those discriminatory practices in a letter attached to their 78-79 application. It is worth noting that she cc’d members of the press, members of the state assembly, the US congress and the mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone.

Below is additional correspondence between Migden and Martin Paley of The San Francisco Foundation, who had funded the Pacific Center for years, as well as acting as a liason at times between the Pacific Center and the United Way. In this correspondence, it is clear that Paley and his organization were deeply disturbed by the tone of Migden’s letter to the United Way, defining it as a threat and hoping that in the future Migden can continue correspondence without “resorting to emotionalism.”

It is worth noting here that Martin would use the terminology “emotionalism” in his remarks to Migden as a female in a leadership capacity – a longstanding point of contention within industry sexism. Would Paley have used this terminology had Migden been a man? And would Pacific Center had ever received United Way funding had Migden not threatened them with publicizing the ongoing discrimination?

Also noteworthy is the handwritten note from someone named Doris to Martin on May 9th, 1978 — a note attached to the final correspondence of April 20, 1978, alluding to how they hoped to handle the whole situation discreetly. It was following this application in 1978 that the United Way Bay Area made the decision to fund Pacific Center.

Carole Migden of Pacific Center to Martin Paley of The San Francisco Foundation,  19 December 1977. San Francisco Foundation Grant Files Collection, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

Carole Migden of Pacific Center to Martin Paley of The San Francisco Foundation,  28 December 1977. San Francisco Foundation Grant Files Collection, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

Carole Migden of Pacific Center to Martin Paley of The San Francisco Foundation,  20 April 1978. San Francisco Foundation Grant Files Collection, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.