19 Facts About Kay Lahusen

Katherine Lahusen was an American photographer, writer and gay rights activist.

Katherine Kay Lahusen was born on January 5,1930, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kay Lahusen was brought up by her grandparents, George and Katherine Lahusen.

Kay Lahusen developed her interest in photography as a child.

Kay Lahusen studied English and planned to become a teacher; meanwhile, the relationship lasted six years.

Kay Lahusen graduated in 1952 and they moved in together, but her girlfriend ultimately left "in order to marry and have a normal life", leaving Kay Lahusen devastated by the loss.

Kay Lahusen spent the next six years in Boston working in the reference library of The Christian Science Monitor.

When Gittings took over The Ladder in 1963, Kay Lahusen became art director, and made it a priority to improve the quality of art on the covers.

Several covers showed various women willing to pose in profile, or in sunglasses, but by the mid-1960s Kay Lahusen was able to persuade some women to have their faces shown on the cover, including Lilli Vincenz, who had been discharged from the military when she was outed, and Ernestine Eckstein, an African American lesbian activist who picketed the White House in 1965.

Kay Lahusen wrote articles in The Ladder under the name Kay Tobin, a name she picked out of the phone book, and which she found was easier for people to pronounce.

Kay Lahusen photographed Gittings and other people who picketed federal buildings and Independence Hall in the mid- to late- 1960s.

Kay Lahusen contributed photographs and articles to a Manhattan newspaper called Gay Newsweekly, and worked in New York City's Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, the first bookstore devoted to better literature on gay themes, and to disseminating materials that promoted a gay political agenda.

Kay Lahusen worked with Gittings in the gay caucus of the American Library Association, and photographed thousands of activists, marches, and events in the 1960s and 1970s.

Kay Lahusen participated in activism via organizing as well as art.

In 1970, Kay Lahusen was part of the founding of the original Gay Activists Alliance, and in 1972 worked to push the American Psychological Association to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Kay Lahusen was working on collecting her photographs for a photography scrapbook on the history of the gay rights movement when Gittings' illness put the plans on hold.

Until shortly before her death, Kay Lahusen resided in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, in an assisted living facility.

Kay Lahusen died at Chester County Hospital, Pennsylvania, on May 26,2021, after a brief illness.

In 2016, a historical marker was placed at 21st and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, near the apartment Gittings and Kay Lahusen shared in the 1960s; the marker describes Gittings' work in LGBT rights in Philadelphia.