Obituary
Law professor, LGBT rights advocate Joe Tom Easley dies at 81
Played key role in effort to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
Joe Tom Easley, a nationally recognized attorney and LGBTQ rights advocate who taught at three U.S. law schools and served on the boards and in leadership positions at several national and D.C. LGBTQ and human rights organizations, died Feb. 13 at a hospital near his Miami Beach residence of complications associated with lung disease. He was 81.
Peter Freiberg, Easley’s husband and partner of 39 years, said Easley’s skills as a negotiator, speaker, teacher, and political strategist enabled him to serve as a volunteer advocate for LGBTQ and civil rights causes beginning in the late 1970s, when he began as a tenured law professor at American University Law School in D.C.
In 1978, according to Freiberg, Easley was appointed as an assistant dean at the A.U. Law School in addition to his teaching duties at a time when he came out as gay. “At that time, there were very few out university administrators,” Freiberg said.
From 1981 to 1983 Easley worked as a professor at the then-Antioch Law School in D.C., where he also served as an adviser to LGBTQ student groups. Antioch’s D.C. Law School later evolved into the University D.C. Law School.
Freiberg said that around the time Easley left Antioch in 1983 he began his affiliation as a lecturer with BARBRI, the nation’s largest training course and coaching program for law school graduates preparing to take their state bar exam.
“Based on student reviews, he was an extremely popular lecturer, making even his assigned, somewhat difficult subjects – contracts and real property law – interesting and enjoyable,” Freiberg said. He said the BARBRI organization arranged for Easley to travel to cities throughout the country to give his bar preparation lectures, usually in the months prior to when the winter and summer state bar exams are given for prospective lawyers.
He continued his lecturing with BARBARI until his retirement in 2013, Freiberg said.
Easley became active with D.C.’s Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance from 1980 to 1982, according to Freiberg, and in 1982 Easley was elected as president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group. Freiberg said that around that time, then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry appointed Easley as a member of the D.C. Police Civilian Complaint Review Board, which LGBTQ activists played a lead role in persuading the D.C. Council to create.
“Joe Tom was certainly a passionate, articulate and politically savvy champion of human rights in so many ways, most crucially in the fight to establish a Civilian Complaint Review Board,” said D.C. LGBTQ activist Craig Howell.
In 1983, Easley moved to New York City to live with Freiberg after the two became a couple that year. A short time later, Easley, while continuing his activism, enrolled in Yale University’s graduate school where he received a master’s degree in public health in 1986. Freiberg said Easley then taught public health law at Yale’s medical school part time for the next two years. During his time as a student and as a teacher at Yale, Easley commuted from Manhattan to New Haven four days a week, Freiberg said.
Easley, an only child, was born in Robstown, Texas, near Corpus Christi and spent his early childhood years in Truby, Texas, a small farming town where he started school in a one-room schoolhouse. His family moved to Eagle Pass, a Texas border city on the Rio Grande River in 1950, Freiberg said, where Easley graduated from Eagle Pass High School.
He received his undergraduate degree with a major in English from Texas A&M University in 1963. Freiberg said when Easley was about to be drafted during the Vietnam War in 1966, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served on a Naval intelligence base on a small island near the Alaska-Russian border.
“After a year, he was told that a friend who had propositioned him for sex before he ever joined the Navy informed the government that he was gay,” Freiberg said in recounting Easley’s brief period of military service. “His commander apologetically told him that he had no choice but to kick him out—all gay people were barred from serving—but that because of his exemplary service he would ensure Joe Tom received an honorable discharge and veteran benefits.”
His Navy benefits through the longstanding G.I. Bill veterans’ education program helped to pay Easley’s tuition at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he received his law degree.
During and shortly after his law school years Easley became involved with the anti-Vietnam War movement and during summer breaks as a law student became involved with the first group of Ralph Nader’s, “Nader’s Raiders” drawing attention to government and corporate malfeasance, according to Freiberg.
After law school Easley served as a law clerk for a federal judge in Boston from 1971 to 1972 before serving as an assistant professor for the next two years at the University of Georgia Law School in Athens, Freiberg said.
Easley next left for Europe in 1975, where he worked for the Brussels-based European Bureau of Consumer Organizations. Among other things, he assisted with an investigation of price-fixing by pharmaceutical companies.
Freiberg recalled that over the course of his career Easley also taught part-time for short periods at the University of Virginia Law School and New York’s Cardozo Law School.
He said Easley’s devotion to LGBTQ equality and civil rights for other minorities, including African Americans, began in full force when he returned to the U.S. from Europe to begin teaching at American University in D.C.
In addition to his affiliation with local D.C. LGBTQ groups, over the next 30 years Easley became involved with and helped advance the work of a number of national LGBTQ organizations. Among them was Lambda Legal, the New York-based LGBTQ litigation group for which Easley served on the board of directors from 1981 to 1991 and as board co-chair from 1983 to 1987.
From 1988 to 1995 he served as president of the Human Rights Campaign Fund Foundation, which later changed its name to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. He also served on the board of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), a national group that assisted LGBTQ service members facing discharge from the military due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Freiberg said Easley’s own discharge from the Navy for being gay helped to solidify his commitment and dedication to the cause of LGBTQ service members.
With Easley’s active involvement, SLDN played an important role in the successful campaign to persuade Congress to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, which continued to be used to discharge LGBTQ people from the military if their sexual orientation or gender identity became known to military authorities.
Freiberg said Easley’s skills as a public speaker on behalf of LGBTQ equality surfaced in 1988 when he delivered the closing speech before more than 200 LGBTQ leaders from across the country attending a “War Conference” in Warrenton, Va., called by AIDS activist Larry Kramer to draw attention to the continuing AIDS epidemic, anti-LGBTQ court decisions, and anti-gay vitriol by religious right groups.
In what he and Easley also considered a gesture in support of LGBTQ equality, Freiberg said he and Easley in 2003 traveled to Toronto to legally marry. Their wedding became what the couple believed to be the first same-sex wedding to be written about in the New York Times’s wedding celebration feature.
“We felt strongly that legal marriage would not make one bit of difference in our relationship, and it didn’t,” said Freiberg. “But we wanted to make a political statement that our love and devotion was equal to anyone else’s, and that gay couples deserved equality before the law, including benefits and responsibilities,” Freiberg said.
“His whole life was animated by a desire to work for social justice and to do good,” said Freiberg. “He supported the underdog, whether LGBT people, African Americans, an injured Iraqi boy or the disabled, which he was in his last three years.”
Freiberg was referring to the national news media attention Easley received in 2005, including a story in the New York Times, after he arranged for an Iraqi boy injured in Iraq by a U.S. bomb to be brought to the U.S. for medical treatment.
“Joe Tom Easley was a dear friend and mentor who taught me much about leadership, LGBT politics, the law and about giving,” said Vic Basile, former executive director of the Human Rights Campaign and a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate. “He led by example, giving generously of his time and broad knowledge to help others in need, never asking or expecting anything in return,” Basile said.
Easley was predeceased by his parents, Tom Lee Easley and Lady Hampton Easley.
He is survived by his husband and partner of 39 years, longtime journalist Peter Freiberg; his sister-in-law and brother-in-law Eileen and Barney Freiberg-Dale; his niece, Sabrina Freiberg-Dale; his nephew, Hunter Dale and fiancée Eve Lichacz; a cousin, Jane Hays; and many friends around the world.
Plans for a memorial service, including a memorial event in D.C., will be announced. Contributions in his memory can be made to Lambda Legal, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the National Parks Foundation.
Local
D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate Jeri Hughes dies at 73
‘Force of nature’ credited with pro-trans policy at city jail
Jeri Hughes, a longtime D.C. transgender rights advocate who has worked closely with activists in support of the local LGBTQ community, died March 18 at her home after a seven-year battle with lung cancer. She was 73.
Hughes, who has worked for the past 11 years at the D.C. Department of Employment Services, most recently as a Workforce Development Specialist, became involved in local LGBTQ rights and transgender rights endeavors since she moved to D.C. around 2005.
Among other endeavors, Hughes, along with D.C. transgender rights advocate Earline Budd, has served for more than a decade on the D.C. Department of Corrections’ Transgender Housing and Transgender Advisory committees.
Budd this week said Hughes played an important role in ensuring that Department of Corrections officials continue to follow a 2009 policy of allowing transgender inmates to choose whether to be placed in the men’s or the women’s housing units at the D.C. jail.
“In her toughness and determination, Jeri was a force of nature,” said Rick Rosendall, former president of the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. “She pressed the D.C. Department of Corrections for more humane and respectful treatment of transgender inmates,” Rosendall said.
“She pressed the D.C. government to set an example by hiring more trans people,” according to Rosendall, who added that Hughes interacted with D.C. police officials, including former D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham, to push for respectful treatment of trans people by the police.
Hughes’s LinkedIn page shows that prior to working at the D.C. Department of Employment Services she served as housing coordinator for a local social services organization called T.H.E. Inc., where, among other things, she “monitored and mentored a diverse population of LGBT youth.”
Her LinkedIn page shows she also worked from June 2009 to May 2010 as an administrative assistant at the D.C. Anacostia Watershed Society.
Hughes’s brother, Lou Hughes, who said the Hughes family is originally from Ohio, told the Washington Blade Jeri Hughes served in the U.S. Navy after high school as a torpedo operator in a submarine in the South Pacific. He said a short time later Jeri Hughes moved to New York City, where she operated a company that provided commercial laundry service to restaurants and hospitals.
Lou Hughes said his sister Jeri moved to D.C. around 2005 and initially lived with him and his wife in a basement apartment in their house before moving to her own apartment in Northwest D.C. where she remained until her passing.
He said it was around 2005 that his sister informed her family that she planned to transition as a transgender woman at the age of 54. “And our family fully supported her decision, helped her finance the various surgeries,” Lou Hughes said. “And once she went through the transition it was like she was fully reborn.”
“And that’s why all these negative comments about transgender people right now – it’s very hurtful to our family because she was really the classic transgender person who was really simply born in the wrong body and gave our entire family a real sensitivity and understanding of what that meant,” Lou Hughes said.
Denise Leclair, one of Jeri Hughes’s closest friends and former roommate, said among Jeri Hughes’s many interests was boating. Leclair said Hughes persuaded her to join Hughes in purchasing a 45-foot sailboat in 2019, shortly after Hughes was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“We spent the next two months getting it fixed up and we started sailing,” Leclair recalls. “And we did quite a bit of sailing, so she really put her heart and soul into restoring this boat.”
Leclair said the boat was docked in a harbor in Deale, Md., just south of Annapolis. She said up until a few months ago, after her cancer prevented her from working full-time, Hughes spent most of her time living on the boat until her illness forced her to return to her D.C. apartment.
“My Dearest Sister Jeri, born April 30, 1951, left our restless Earth in the early morning of March 18, 2025, succumbing to the lung cancer which she battled against so bravely for seven years,” Lou Hughes says in a statement. “As we all know, Jeri was a person of high intellect, incredible energy and fearless in the face of adversity,” her brother wrote.
“Whether through acts of quiet charity, tireless advocacy, or simply offering a listening ear, Jeri made it a mission to uplift, support, and care for every person she encountered,” his statement says. “Her life was a testament to empathy in action, leaving a lasting legacy of love, hope, and selflessness that will continue to inspire all who knew her.”
In addition to her many friends and colleagues in D.C., Jeri Hughes is survived by her brother, Lou Hughes; sister-In-law Candice Hughes; daughter, Casey Martin; son-in-law Wally Martin; grandson Liam Martin; granddaughter, Mirella Martin; niece, Brittany Hughes; and nephew Klaus Meierdiercks.
A memorial service and celebration of life for Jeri Hughes is scheduled to be held May 10 at D.C.’s Metropolitan Community Church at 1 p.m., according to Earline Budd.
Obituary
Longtime D.C. librarian, LGBTQ rights advocate Turner Freeman dies at 64
‘Voracious reader’ pushed for inclusive programming at DCPL
Sheldon ‘Turner’ Freeman, a gay librarian who worked for 39 years at the D.C. Public Library system and is credited with initiating a Black History Month film series and LGBTQ inclusive programming at the library system, died Dec. 23, at his home in Steelton, Pa. He was 64.
The D.C.-based LGBTQ advocacy and event planning group Team Rayceen Productions, which has held events at D.C.’s main Martin Luther King Library branch with support from Freeman, said the cause of death was a heart attack.
A write-up prepared by Freeman’s family members and published by Major H. Windfield Funeral Home in Steelton, says Freeman’s passing came just over a year after he retired from his position as librarian in November 2023 and moved back to his hometown of Steelton.
“Turner was known as a brilliant, proud Black man, who loved life and lived it to the fullest,” the write-up says. “He was a voracious reader and a music aficionado,” the write-up continues, adding that his other passions included dancing, Black history, collecting Black art, books, music and movies, “and watching his Eagles, Lakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes.”
It says he was a 1978 graduate of Steelton-Highspire High School and earned his bachelor’s degree in communications from Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. He earned his master’s degree in Library Science from the University of the District of Columbia, according to the write-up.
A statement from the D.C. Public Library system to Team Rayceen Productions says Turner’s title at the time of his retirement was Adult Services Librarian.
“As an avid film buff, Turner was one of the first staff members of DCPL’s audiovisual department in the 1980s, now a city-wide collection of DVDs and other media as well as a plethora of online streaming resources,” the statement says.
“His weekly movie screenings have been running for more than two decades and are a beloved staple of MLK Library programming that has carried on past his retirement,” according to the statement. “His Black History Month film series is a particularly beloved annual event.”
The statement adds that Freeman’s voice was frequently heard on the MLK Library’s public address system and he “literally became ‘the voice’ of MLK Library’s 50th anniversary celebration, recording audio narration for library programming and citywide promotions.”
The Team Rayceen Productions statement says Freeman was a co-founder of a group called Book Reading Uplifts His Spirit, known as BRUHS, which focused on issues of interest to Black gay and bisexual men. Some of the group’s events, which were held at the MLK Library, included talks by authors, film screenings, and reading of plays.
The statement notes that in 2021, Freeman moderated an online Facebook discussion with James Earl Hardy, the author of the B-Boy Blues book series, a collection of six novels that tell the stories of Black gay men. It also points out that Freeman was on the committee that organized D.C.’s first Black Pride celebration.
A statement sent by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to the Freeman family expresses her condolences over his passing and points to his numerous accomplishments as a librarian and community advocate.
“He was a caring friend and colleague whose impactful legacy, vibrancy, and kindness leaves behind an indelible mark on the hearts of many,” the mayor says in her message. “Turner was a role model, mentor, sports fan, and unwavering confidant, but above all there was no role more precious to him than that of a family man,” Bowser wrote.
“Turner’s love for his family was unparalleled, and his presence brought immense joy to his loved ones and to all those who knew him.”
A celebration of life for Freeman was held Jan. 4, at the Chapel of the Major H. Winfield Funeral Home in Steelton, Pa.
The funeral home write-up says Freeman was predeceased by his parents, Bucky and Cookie Freeman, and is survived by his son, Freeman Dane Swan; his sisters Stephanie Freeman, Stacey Freeman-McKamey, and Sage Freeman; and many loving aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and friends.
Obituary
Honoring the life and legacy of Coya White Hat-Artichoker
Life-long advocate for Indigenous, two-spirit rights died on Dec. 4
Born and raised on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Coya was a proud enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate or Rosebud Sioux Tribe. From the age of 15, she dedicated her life to advocating for Indigenous and Two Spirit rights, becoming a fierce organizer and a visionary leader in movements for justice. As a founding member of the First Nations Two Spirit Collective, Coya worked tirelessly to uplift Two Spirit youth, support Indigenous reproductive justice, and connect these communities to philanthropic spaces to drive transformative change.
Coya’s advocacy for Indigenous reproductive justice was rooted in a deep understanding of its inseparability from the fight for Indigenous sovereignty. She saw this work as part of a 500-year history of resistance to colonization, weaving together the rights to access abortion, raise children in safe and sustainable environments, steward healthy lands and waters, practice Indigenous cultures, speak ancestral languages, and govern sovereign communities. Recently she served as a board member for SisterSong and the American LGBTQ+ Museum. Coya was a fierce leader who brought dedication and brilliance, impacting gender and reproductive justice efforts around the world.
In 2020, Coya’s visionary leadership brought the world’s first fund dedicated to Indigenous reproductive justice, Building the Fire Fund, into existence. Guided by an Indigenous Advisory Council of women and Two Spirit leaders from across Turtle Island, the fund represents a powerful testament to Coya’s dedication and collaborative spirit. Coya co-authored “Tired of Dancing to Their Song: An Assessment of the Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Justice Funding Landscape” with Zachary Packineau. This seminal report provides a critical roadmap for philanthropy to support and grow the emerging field of Indigenous reproductive justice.
In 2023, Coya brought Building the Fire Fund to Solidaire Network, where we are honored to walk alongside the Advisory Council in advancing this vital work. Coya’s passion, wisdom, and dedication will continue to guide and inspire all of us who were privileged to know her and work beside her.
To honor Coya’s legacy and her vision for the Indigenous reproductive justice movement, we invite you to contribute to the Building the Fire Fund. Your support ensures that her transformative work will continue, lighting the way for generations to come.
Coya White Hat-Artichoker’s life was a powerful testament to resilience, love, and unwavering commitment to justice. While her presence will be deeply missed, her legacy will endure as a beacon of hope and strength for all who carry her vision forward.
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