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A Living History of the LGBT Movement Since The 1800s

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The Stonewall Riots in 10 Minutes - Manny Man Does History

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At a convention in 1972, the gay rights activists Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny and Dr. John E. Fryer, a gay psychiatrist in disguise. Credit... Kay Tobin Lahusen

Barbara Gittings, a prominent gay rights activist who a decade before the Stonewall rebellion of 1969 was agitating for the rights of lesbians and gay men, died on Feb. 18 at her home in Kennett Square, Pa. She was 74.

The cause was breast cancer, said her partner, Kay Tobin Lahusen.

At a time when few gay men and women dared come out in private, much less in public, Ms. Gittings was a vocal - and highly visible - figure in the fledgling gay rights movement. In the late 1950s, she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national organization for lesbians. In the 1960s, she took part in early gay rights demonstrations at the White House and elsewhere. In the early 1970s, she helped lobby the American Psychiatric Association to change its stance on homosexuality; in 1973, the association rescinded its definition of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

"She was one of the rare people in the homophile movement - before Stonewall - who took a militant stance," David Carter, the author of "Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution" (St. Martin's, 2004), said in a telephone interview. "And she not only took a militant stance, but she was in the forefront."

Ms. Gittings also worked to make information about gay men and lesbians more widely available in libraries. Though not a librarian by training, she was for many years the head of the American Library Association's Gay Task Force. (It is known today as the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Round Table.) In that capacity, she oversaw and edited the association's comprehensive bibliography of literature by and about gay men and lesbians.

As Ms. Gittings often said in interviews, she became keenly aware of the need for such a bibliography as a young woman, when she scoured local libraries, seeking, but seldom finding, something that would help her understand her own life.

Barbara Gittings was born on July 31, 1932, in Vienna, where her father was a member of the United States diplomatic corps. Returning to the United States when Barbara was young, the family eventually settled in Wilmington, Del. When she was a teenager, her father caught her reading "The Well of Loneliness," the 1928 novel of lesbian love by the English writer Radclyffe Hall. He told her to burn the book. He did so by letter, for he could not bring himself to speak to her.

Ms. Gittings entered Northwestern University, intending to study drama. But she was increasingly distracted by the need to learn as much as she could about homosexuality. She haunted the libraries of Chicago, unearthing little that was relevant and less that was encouraging.

"I had to find bits and pieces under headings like 'sexual perversion' and 'sexual aberration' in books on abnormal psychology," Ms. Gittings told the publication American Libraries in 1999. "I kept thinking, 'It's me they're writing about, but it doesn't feel like me at all.' "

She left Northwestern after her freshman year, and throughout her decades of activism supported herself with clerical jobs. In 1958, commuting from her home in Philadelphia, Ms. Gittings started the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, which was founded in San Francisco in 1955; she later edited the organization's national newsletter, The Ladder. In 1965, she took part in one of the first gay rights pickets of the White House, an effort to end discrimination against gay men and lesbians in federal employment.

Ms. Gittings received many awards, among them honorary membership in the American Library Association. The Free Library of Philadelphia named its gay and lesbian collection for her. This week, the New York Public Library acquired the papers of Ms. Gittings and Ms. Lahusen, which chronicle more than half a century in the gay rights movement.

Besides Ms. Lahusen, her companion of 46 years, Ms. Gittings is survived by a sister, Eleanor Gittings Taylor of San Diego. With Ms. Lahusen, Ms. Gittings lived for many years in Philadelphia and Wilmington before moving to Kennett Square in January.

"Before Barbara died, we went jointly into an assisted-living facility here," Ms. Lahusen said by telephone. "Our last bit of activism was to come out in the newsletter of our assisted-living facility."

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Barbara Gittings, 74, Prominent Gay Rights Activist Since '50s, Dies (Published 2007)

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Barbara Gittings, a prominent gay rights activist who a decade before the Stonewall rebellion of 1969 was agitating for the rights of lesbians and gay men, died on Feb. 18 at her home in Kennett Square, Pa. She was 74. The cause was breast cancer, said her partner, Kay Tobin Lahusen.