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Home , Gay Activists Alliance, Gay liberation, Martha Shelley, Mattachine Society, Rita Mae Brown, Stonewall Inn

The Pride March, begun in 1970 as the In the fertile and tumultuous year that Liberation Day Parade to followed, groups such as the Gay commemorate the Riots, became an Liberation Front (GLF), Gay Activists annual event, and LGBT Pride months are now celebrated around the world. The march, Alliance (GAA), and Radicalesbians Marsha P. Johnson handing out flyers in support of gay students at NYU, 1970. Photograph by of . “Where Were Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. which demonstrates gays, You During the Christopher Street Riots,” The year 1969 marked 1969. Mattachine Society of New York Records. sent small groups of activists on road , and people a major turning point trips to spread the word. Chapters sprang . “,” 1970. Gay Activists Alliance Records. Front members marching as articulate constituencies, on , 1969. Photograph by up across the country, and members fought for civil rights in the politics of sexuality Mattachine Society of New York. Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. “Homosexuals Are Different,” . in their home communities. GAA became a major activist has become a living symbol of Mattachine Society of New York Records. in America. Same-sex relationships were discreetly force, and its SoHo community center, the Firehouse, the evolution of LGBT political tolerated in 19th-century America in the form of romantic Jim Owles. Draft of letter to Governor Nelson A. became a nexus for gays and lesbians. Rockefeller, 1970. Gay Activists Alliance Records. friendships, but the 20th century brought increasing legal communities. The Year The vision put forward by the Radicalesbians took root The 1970s witnessed a gay and renaissance with its own and medical regulation of , which was The Mattachine Society, founded in 1951, and the , and flowered into a dynamic lesbian feminist movement considered a dangerous illness. This repression reached literature, music, politics, and erotic presence. Lesbian, gay, founded in 1955, were early attempts to provide protective social networks across the nation. of Gay its peak in the 1950s; during the Cold War period, gays, . Draft platform bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists won of Gay Liberation Front, July 11, 1970. and outlets for political activism. Then, in 1969, the small International Gay Information Center. lesbians, and transgender people were seen as a corrupt, major political victories, such as the removal of homosexuality lurking menace, easily used as pawns by communists. flames of resistance that activists around the Liberation from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders, and country had been tending and fanning for decades applied public pressure to combat negative stereotypes of homosexuality. Among the many activist groups that worked to archive finally erupted into a mass political movement However, many challenges persist today, such as bans on military service Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) history and marriage for gays, police entrapment, and the struggle of transgender was the International Gay Information Center (IGIC), sparked by the of June 28, in which which grew out of the History Committee of the Gay people for civil rights. Activists Alliance (GAA). The IGIC archives operated as and drag queens openly—and unexpectedly—took to the streets in Gay “Be-In,” Sheep Meadow, Central Park, 1970. a community-based repository until 1988, when the response to a police raid on a gay in . Inspired by recent Photograph by Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. organization’s directors gave the collection to The . The IGIC archives, along with other tumultuous changes in American culture—the African American civil rights archives and collections subsequently donated to the movement, the women’s movement, the protests against the , Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee. Library, comprehensively document the gay and lesbian “C.S.L.D. Invites You to ... Gay Parade,” 1970s. civil rights struggles in New York since the 1950s and and the emergence of the International Gay Information Center. have made NYPL one of the most important archives of youth — LGBT history in this country. All the materials reproduced here are drawn from these historic collections in the gays and lesbians emerged Menace action; Rita Mae Brown Based upon the exhibition 1969: The Year of Gay Liberation, originally on view at The New York Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. at right, 1970. Photograph by Diana Davies. with a slogan: “Gay Power!” Diana Davies Papers. Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY. Curated by Jason Baumann Coordinator of Collection Assessment & LGBT Collections The New York Public Library Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, at the Oscar Wilde Mahnaz Ispahani and Adam Bartos, Jonathan Altman, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III. Memorial Bookshop, 1969. Photograph by Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. Child holding poster “But Would You Want Your Daughter to Marry One?,” 1970. Photograph by Initial funding for The New York Public “Ida,” member of the Gay Liberation Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. Front and the , 1970. Library’s LGBT initiative was provided by Protestor at Weinstein Hall demonstration for Mattachine Society of New York. Photograph by Diana Davies. Diana Davies the rights of gay people on the New York . “Penalties for Sex Offenses in the United Papers. University campus, 1970. Photograph by Diana States—1964.” Mattachine Society of New York Davies. Diana Davies Papers. Records. Gay Liberation Front members picketing Time, Inc., 1969. , 1969. Photograph by Diana Davies. Photograph by Diana Davies. Diana Davies Papers. © The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 2009 Diana Davies Papers. Photographs by Diana Davies © Diana Davies