“I’m Glad as Heck that You Exist:” Lesbian Activism in 1950s-60s America

Founded in San Francisco in 1955, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was the nation’s first lesbian rights organization. It soon expanded to other cities, including a New York chapter in 1958. Through the 1960s, DOB was a vital lifeline for lesbians in a deeply socially conservative era, when government, religion, media, and psychiatry played significant roles in shaping the American public’s near unanimous condemnation of LGBTQ people. Beginning as a social group for lesbians, the Daughters of Bilitis gradually took on a more activist role to push back against systemic homophobia. It also provided an affirming space for lesbians as an alternative to Mafia-controlled and heavily-policed bars.

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In this program, historian Marcia Gallo will shed light on DOB’s nationwide influence in the pre-Stonewall era. Shayne Watson, a leading historic preservationist of San Francisco’s LGBTQ cultural heritage, and Amanda Davis, project manager of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, will share historic places in San Francisco and New York City connected to DOB’s 70-year legacy.

Highlights include sites linked to two DOB co-founders, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon; New York chapter co-founder Barbara Gittings; and A Raisin in the Sun playwright Lorraine Hansberry, one of the earliest contributors to The Ladder, DOB’s national magazine. There will be time for Q&A from the audience.

About the Speakers

MARCIA GALLO is the author of two award-winning books, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (Cleis Press, 2007) and “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy (Cornell University Press, 2015). She has researched and written about mid- to late 20th century feminist history, focusing on the ways in which women of color, working and poor women, and sexually nonconforming women organized for civil and human rights. Having retired from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as Professor Emerita in 2020, Marcia continues to teach, lecture, and write about race, gender, and sexuality as well as public history and oral history.

SHAYNE WATSON is a San Francisco Bay Area-based historian, historic preservation planner, and founder of Watson Heritage Consulting. A nationally recognized advocate for LGBTQ heritage, she is co-author of two award-winning works, Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in San Francisco (2016) and the San Francisco chapter of the National Park Service’s LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of LGBTQ History (2016). Shayne is a longtime volunteer for San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society and serves on the Advisory Board for the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. In 2020, Shayne founded Friends of Lyon-Martin House to spearhead efforts to landmark and revitalize the home of trailblazing lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.

Photo: A Daughters of Bilitis breakfast, San Francisco, California, 1959. From left to right: Del Martin, Josie, Jan, Marge, Bev Hickok, Phyllis Lyon. From the Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Papers at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, @glbt_history.

About the NYC LGBT Historic Site Project

The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project is a nonprofit cultural initiative and educational resource that is making an invisible history visible by documenting extant historic and cultural sites associated with the LGBT community throughout New York City. For more, visit www.nyclgbtsites.org, or follow on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

This free program is hosted by the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Optional donations go toward supporting the Project’s efforts to document NYC’s LGBTQ cultural heritage.