Trailblazer Award
Jack Sullivan is long-time community activist, and has practiced law for more than forty years. In 1994, he was the first person ever to be recognized by a Louisiana governor for service to the LGBTQ community. He was the longest-serving officer of the Louisiana Gay and Lesbian Political Action Committee (LAGPAC) and was a founding member of the Forum for Equality and AIDS Law, all organizations providing services and advocating for the LGBTQ community.
His community service has been recognized by the NOAIDS Task Force (now Crescent Care) with its Terri Estrada Memorial Award as well as by the Human Rights Campaign and the Metropolitan Community Church of New Orleans.
He was the principal fundraiser for the New Orleans AIDS Memorial in Washington Square Park, endowed scholarship funds for PFLAG New Orleans, the Christopher Karnes Memorial Fund at the University of Southern Mississippi, and the Karnes-Sullivan Gallery of Art at the University of Southern Mississippi.
He is a donor to the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and many other institutions and charities. He is the long serving pro bono attorney to the New Orleans Arts District Association, Halloween New Orleans, and served on the board of the Contemporary Arts Center. He also serves as an advisor to the John Burton Harter Foundation which advances public awareness of the artistic legacy of the late New Orleans artist, J.B. Harter.
In recent years, he has devoted his spare time to fundraising for the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s LGBTQ Fund and arranging for the placement of historical markers to commemorate little known but important personages in the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement such as New Orleans minister, Rev. Carl Schlegel, who in 1906 became the first known American advocate for gay rights, and Louisiana philanthropist, Peter Putman, who conceived the idea and provided the funding for the Stonewall Monument in New York City.