Jack Adair was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 22, 1938. He hosted the Mattachine organizing meeting and film screening that resulted in the Radnor Raid at his family home in Radnor, Pennsylvania, in 1960, and was involved in the subsequent founding of Philadelphia’s Mattachine Society, renamed the Janus Society from 1964 onward. He was involved in many of their campaigns and actions, including advocacy against the listing of homosexuality in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the Independence Hall demonstrations of 1965 to 1969. He worked as a hospital administrator and educator and was one of the founders of the Philadelphia chapter of the Gay Academic Union in the early 1970s, a group that worked to protect out gay and lesbian professors and teachers.

Adair and his partner adopted and fostered many children and were shot by one of them in their home in California on August 6, 1995. His partner died immediately; Adair died on August 17. For more about Adair, check out his interview with the Philadelphia LGBT History Project, 1940-1980, by Marc Stein. The Independence Hall pickets in which Adair participated are highlighted in the exhibit Annual Reminders in Philadelphia, July 4, 1965-July 4, 1969, by Marc Stein.