Paul Rapoport


Paul Israel Rapoport was an attorney and a co-founder of both the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center and Gay Men's Health Crisis. The private foundation that bore his name was one of the oldest and largest LGBT-focused foundations in the country.
Rapoport attended P.S. 107 in New York City, the Horace Mann School and Cornell University. He graduated cum laude from Columbia University Law School in 1965, and later received an LL.M. in tax from New York University School of Law.
Rapoport died of AIDS at New York University Medical Center at the age of 47. His estate of roughly $8 million was used to establish The Paul Rapoport Foundation Inc., which at Rapoport's direction gave to LGBT and HIV/AIDS causes in the New York metropolitan area.
In a press release dated July 6, 2009 the Paul Rapoport Foundation announced its intention to spend out. The Foundation ceased operations in 2015. Its archives are located in the Human Sexuality Collection of the Cornell University Library.