Editing Mattachine Society (section)

== Name ==
The Mattachine Society was named by [[Harry Hay]] at the suggestion of James Gruber, inspired by a French medieval and renaissance [[masque]] group he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine. He mentioned the medieval-Renaissance French ''[[Sociétés Joyeuses]]'':

{{blockquote|One [[masque]] group was known as the "Société Mattachine." These societies, lifelong secret fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the [[Feast of Fools]], at the Vernal [[Equinox]]. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were peasant protests against oppression—with the maskers, in the people's name, receiving the brunt of a given lord's vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through struggle, to move toward total redress and change.|Jonathan Katz|''Gay American History''. Crowell Publishers, 1976.<ref name="katz">Katz, Jonathan. ''Gay American History''. Crowell Publishers; 1976.</ref>}}

This French group was named in turn after [[Mattaccino]] (or the Anglicized Mattachino), a character in Italian theater. Mattaccino was a kind of court [[jester]], who would speak the truth to the king when nobody else would. The "mattachin" (from [[Arabic language|Arabic]] {{lang|ar|متوجهين}} {{transliteration|ar|mutawajjihin}}, "mask-wearers") were originally [[Moors|Moorish]] (Hispano-Arab) sword-dancers who wore elaborate, colorful costumes and masks.<ref>{{harvnb|Johansson|Percy|1994|p=92}}</ref>

The Mattachine Society used so-called [[harlequin]] diamonds as their [[emblem]]. The design consisted of four diamonds arranged in a pattern to form a larger diamond.