Barbara Gittings - Inductee

“Equality means more than passing laws. The struggle is really won in the hearts and minds of the community, where it really counts.”

- Barbara Gittings

In 1948, a high school teacher told Barbara Gittings that she was probably kept out of the National Honor Society because of “homosexual inclinations.” At Northwestern University, she was confronted with rumors that she was a lesbian. Gittings could accept the label but questioned the prevailing view that homosexuality was “sick,” “sinful,” and “perverted.” Finding no positive reinforcement in Chicago’s libraries, it was years before she discovered a bit of fiction and nonfiction to sustain her. In 1956 she joined the Daughters of Bilitis, the first female homophile group in the U.S. dedicated to improving the lives of lesbians. When Gittings organized their first East Coast chapter, in 1958, a gay activist was born. In 1963 she was tapped to edit their legendary magazine The Ladder. She marched in the first gay picket lines in 1965 outside the White House, the Pentagon, and Independence Hall, carrying a sign reading “Sexual Preference is Irrelevant to Federal Employment” which, today, is in the Smithsonian Institution along with copies of The Ladder. From 1970 to 1973 Gittings helped successfully lobby the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 1973 she helped start what is now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). Gittings was co-Grand Marshall of the 1997 New York City Gay Pride Parade where she was declared a “Mother of Lesbian and Gay Liberation." In 2001, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) bestowed to her the first “Barbara Gittings Award” for Activism. The American Library Association presented her with its highest award – lifetime honorary membership – in 2003. She earned the APA’s first “John E. Fryer Award” in 2006. After a lifetime committed to the GLBT Civil Rights Movement, Gittings retired to an assisted living facility in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania with her partner of 46 years Kay Tobin Lahusen. She passed away on February 18, 2007 after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 74.