Specific Pioneering Contributions
Jim Toy, MSW, is the perfect example of a social work pioneer, having been a leader both in the state of Michigan and nationally for his entire life. In 1970, Toy became the first person known to have publicly come out as gay in the state of Michigan, while speaking at an anti-war rally in Detroit. A co-founder of both the Detroit and Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Fronts, he co-authored the first gay pride week proclamation by a government body in the U.S., issued by the Ann Arbor City Council in 1972.
In 1971 Toy co-founded the first TBLG center at an institution of higher education in the U.S. at the University of Michigan (now the Spectrum Center) and co-led the center until 1994. Today, there are 200-plus LGBT student centers in the United States.
He helped draft the city of Ann Arbor’s landmark ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and he continued to advocate for gay rights until the city’s protections also included gender identity in 1999.
Throughout the 1970s, Toy continued his advocacy push: co-founding the Ann Arbor Gay Hotline; founding the Diocesan Commission on Homosexuality, which issued a landmark 1973 report, one of the earliest U.S. church documents in support of queer people; serving as secretary of the Diocesan Church & Society Committee; co-authoring the Diocesan Human Sexuality Curriculum; serving as the secretary of the Diocesan Committee on Transgender/ Bisexual/ Lesbian/ Gay/ Concerns.
The next decade earned Toy more accolades, starting with his MSW degree from the University of Michigan: founding the Wellness Networks/Huron Valley and HIV Task Forces (now known as Unified: HIV Health and Beyond), which is the University’s oldest AIDS service organization; and serving as
the first co-coordinator of HIV/AIDS education for the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.
In the 1900s and 2000s, Toy advocated successfully for the amendment of the University of Michigan's non-discrimination bylaw so as to include gender identity and gender expression as protected categories; received an Alumni Citation from Denison University; was honored with an organization named in his honor (the Ann Arbor’s LGBTQ community organization became the James Toy Community Center); was celebrated with a “James Toy Day” proclamation from the Ann Arbor Mayor and City Council, on his birthday, April 29; received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the NASW-Michigan Chapter; and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan.
As a tribute in part to Toy’s decades of advocacy work in the state, the Michigan legislature passed expansions to the state’s Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression, decades after Toy began advocating for the legislation.
Finally, Toy was a founding member of the Washtenaw County LGBT Retirement Center Task Force, PFLAG/Ann Arbor, GLSEN/Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Area, Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project (WRAP), Transgender Advocacy Project (TAP), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Inclusive Justice Program, Washtenaw Faith Action Network, Ypsilanti Human Rights PAC, Ypsilanti Rainbow Neighbors, and the Out Loud Chorus.
Career Highlights
In 1970, Toy became the first person known to have publicly come out as gay in the state of
Michigan, while speaking at an anti-war rally in Detroit. A co-founder of both the Detroit and Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Fronts, he co-authored the first gay pride week proclamation by a government body in the U.S., issued by the Ann Arbor City Council in 1972. He co-founded the first TBLG center at an institution of higher education in the U.S., at the University of Michigan in 1971 (originally called the Human Sexuality Office, now known as the Spectrum Center), and co-led it until 1994. He was an early national leader in advocating for TBLG acceptance in the Episcopal Church--of which he was a lifelong member--and more broadly across faiths. He was a licensed social worker (receiving his MSW from the University of Michigan in 1981) who counseled, trained, and befriended thousands of people, many of whom credit him with positive transformation and even saving their lives.
A tireless and tenacious activist, Toy helped to foster the decades-long, ultimately successful effort to add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the University of Michigan’s non-discrimination protections. After helping to draft Ann Arbor’s landmark ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1972, he continued to push for the next 27 years to add safeguards for the rights of transgender citizens, until the ordinance was finally revised to also include gender identity as a protected category in 1999.
He helped to found and long served within many organizations and groups committed to social justice and community support, including: the Michigan Organization for Human Rights (MOHR), now known as Equality Michigan; the Gay Youth Group (first LGBT support group for underage youth in Michigan); the first Michigan chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); the Huron Valley HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC); the Oasis TBLG Outreach Ministries of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan; the Transgender Advocacy Project (TAP); the Inclusive Justice-Together in Faith coalition in Michigan; and the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project (WRAP), which in 2010 was renamed the James Toy Community Center in his honor.
Biographical Data
Born in New York City in 1930 to a Chinese American father and Scotch-Irish American mother, James Toy grew up in rural Granville, Ohio experiencing anti-Asian discrimination, particularly during World War II. After receiving his BA in Music and French from Denison University in 1951, he taught English in France, was a conscientious objector who served in a hospital blood bank in New York City in lieu of military service, and then in 1957 became organist and director of music for St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, where he became active in the civil rights movement. In 1960 he enrolled in the graduate program in musicology at the University of Michigan, where he achieved doctoral candidacy, but did not complete a dissertation. A lifelong violinist and singer with deep understanding and articulate appreciation for the arts, he was a regular attendee and generous supporter of performances presented by the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada for over 60 years. Toy earned his BA at Denison University in 1951 and graduated with an MSW from the University of Michigan in 1981.
Toy passed away peacefully on the evening of January 1, 2022 at Hillside Terrace Senior Living in Ann Arbor at age 91. To honor Toy’s life and legacy in perpetuity, Professor Emeritus Thomas Powell and Charles Tommasulo, MSW ‘79 and retired field instructor, have created The Toy, MSW ‘81 Scholarship Fund within the University of Michigan School of Social Work: https://ssw.umich.edu/stories/64570-the-Toy-toy-msw-81-scholarship-fund-for-future-generations
Significant Recognition and Awards
For these and his many other contributions, Toy received multiple recognitions later in his life, including the National Association of Social Workers-Michigan Chapter Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, being installed as a Canon Honorary of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan in 2019, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan in 2021. In 2013, by proclamation of the Mayor and City Council, the City of Ann Arbor established April 29, his birthday, as James Toy Day. His legacy is preserved in the vast collection of his papers he left to the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library.
Significant Publications
Learn more about Toy’s legacy at https://vimeo.com/32305338.
May 2021. Transforming Societal Paradigms: Jim Toy at TEDxUofM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQRijv-J00s
Spectrum Center - https://spectrumcenter.umich.edu/
Jim Toy Community Center- https://www.Toytoycenter.org/
June 19, 2018. “Jim Toy Made LGBT History—and He’s Not Done Fighting.” The Daily Beast. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/Toy-toy-made-lgbt-history-and-hes-not-done-fighting.