48 Facts About Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings was an American activist for LGBT equality.

Barbara Gittings organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government.

Barbara Gittings was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972.

Barbara Gittings's self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.

Barbara Gittings was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership, and the ALA named an annual award for the best gay or lesbian novel the Barbara Gittings Award.

Barbara Gittings was born to Elizabeth Gittings and John Sterett Gittings, Jr.

Barbara Gittings was so immersed in Catholicism at one point in her childhood that she considered becoming a nun.

Barbara Gittings's family returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled in Wilmington, Delaware.

Barbara Gittings found all the information focused on homosexual men.

Barbara Gittings's research took up so much of her time at Northwestern that she ended up failing out of the school.

Barbara Gittings found some in the novels available at the time: Nightwood, The Well of Loneliness, and Extraordinary Women.

Barbara Gittings was so appalled at what he found that he instructed her to burn the book, but did so in a letter as he was unable to speak to her about it face to face.

Still eager to learn more about homosexuality, Barbara Gittings took a night course in abnormal psychology where she met a woman, with whom she had a brief affair, her first.

In 1956, Barbara Gittings traveled to California on the advice of Donald Webster Cory, to visit the office of the new ONE, Inc.

At her first meeting of the Daughters of Bilitis in someone's living room, Barbara Gittings brought up the obscurity of the name, which she thought was impractical, difficult to pronounce and spell, and referenced a fictional bisexual character, not even homosexual.

In 1958, Martin and Lyon asked Barbara Gittings to start a chapter in New York City, which she did when less than a dozen women responded to her notice in the Mattachine Society newsletter asking for "all women in the New York area who are interested in forming a chapter of the DOB" on September 20,1958.

Barbara Gittings served as the chapter's first president for three years, from 1958 until 1961, the year she met Kay Tobin.

Barbara Gittings admitted that early meetings and writings in the Daughters of Bilitis urged their members not to upset mainstream heterosexual society; that integration and acceptance would be won if heterosexuals could see that gays and lesbians were not dramatically different from themselves.

Barbara Gittings worked in clerical positions during this time, spending ten years as a mimeograph operator for an architectural firm.

The New York chapter of the DOB distributed a newsletter to about 150 people, and Barbara Gittings worked on it while being required to stay overtime at her job.

Barbara Gittings was sure that she would be fired, but her boss, a woman, stated cryptically that she was familiar with the topic, having served in the armed forces.

Barbara Gittings was not fired but cautioned to be more careful instead.

Barbara Gittings was impressed with how her influence as editor impacted the magazine and the opinions of its readers.

Barbara Gittings began to implement changes in The Ladder that included adding "A Lesbian Review" underneath the title on the cover and replacing the line drawings on the cover with photographs of actual lesbians, often taken by her partner, Kay Lahusen.

Barbara Gittings distributed The Ladder in six bookstores in New York and Philadelphia, and one Greenwich Village store displayed the magazine prominently, selling 100 copies a month.

Barbara Gittings participated in many of the earliest LGBT actions in the United States.

Barbara Gittings made hundreds of appearances as a speaker in the late 1960s.

Barbara Gittings carried on her mission to convince heterosexuals and homosexuals alike that homosexuality is not an illness, stating in a letter in 1967:.

Barbara Gittings found a home in the gay group that formed in 1970 in the American Library Association, the first gay caucus in a professional association, and became its coordinator in 1971.

Barbara Gittings pushed the American Library Association for more visibility for gays and lesbians in the profession.

Barbara Gittings was John E Fryer, and he discussed how he was forced to be closeted while practicing psychiatry.

Barbara Gittings read aloud letters from psychiatrists she had solicited who declined to appear for fear of professional ostracism.

Barbara Gittings spent 16 years working with libraries and campaigning to get positive gay and lesbian-themed materials into libraries and to eliminate censorship and job discrimination.

Barbara Gittings wrote Gays in Library Land: The Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the American Library Association: The First Sixteen Years.

Barbara Gittings helped start what was then called the National Gay Task Force, later to be named the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1973.

Barbara Gittings served on the board of the NGLTF throughout the 1980s.

Barbara Gittings inspired nurses to form the Gay Nurses Alliance in 1973.

Barbara Gittings held exhibits at APA conventions in 1972,1976, and 1978, her last one being "Gay Love: Good Medicine" that portrayed gays as happy and healthy.

Barbara Gittings appeared in the documentary films Gay Pioneers, Before Stonewall, After Stonewall, Out of the Past, and Pride Divide.

In 1999, Barbara Gittings was honored for her contributions to the LGBT cause at the seventh annual PrideFest America, in Philadelphia.

In 2001, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation honored Gittings by bestowing on her the first Barbara Gittings Award, highlighting dedication to activism.

In 2004, Barbara Gittings received the Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award from the Publishing Triangle.

In June 2019 Barbara Gittings was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City's Stonewall Inn.

Barbara Gittings was an avid music lover, most interested in Baroque and Renaissance music.

Barbara Gittings sang in choral groups for most of her life, spending over 50 years in the Philadelphia Chamber Chorus.

On February 18,2007, Barbara Gittings died in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania after a long battle with breast cancer.

Barbara Gittings was survived by her life partner, Kay Tobin Lahusen, and her sister, Eleanor Gittings Taylor.

Barbara Gittings was interred in the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC.