An LGBT Person's Guide to the Contemporary History of the U.S.: 1925-1980

If small, determined groups of people are the ones who change history, it is no wonder that in the past 100 years, the history of LGBT rights has seen such major advances and milestones. While issues of LGBT rights and gender identity have existed in this country since before European settlement, the struggle to achieve equality for LGBT citizens reached new heights beginning in the 20^th century, largely due to the work of organized groups of LGBT individuals and straight allies – a fact that Jane Addams, a renowned community organizer and the first woman (and lesbian) to win the Nobel Peace Prize in the 20^th century, would be proud to know.

In 1925, a half dozen individuals came together to form the Society for Human Rights in Chicago, the first gay rights organization to be founded in the United States. The organization disbanded shortly after its inception due to police harassment and media stigma, but the organization helped build the foundation for the emergence of LGBT organizations later in the 20^th century, including the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Billitis, One magazine and other regional LGBT groups. Before 1969, these organizations were at the fore of the battle for civil rights for LGBT people, organizing the first-ever gay rights rallies at the United Nations, in front of the White House, on the streets of Los Angeles and on Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.

In June 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village section of New York City became the seminal turning point in the U.S. LGBT rights movement. It was the second police raid on the bar in less than a week by police, reflecting the NYPD’s prejudice in targeting LGBT bars. When several Stonewall patrons were forced into paddy wagons, crowds numbering in the hundreds started to resist and eventually pushed the police back inside the bar, where they sought refuge from the crowd. Confrontations at the bar continued for several days, with the riots marking one of the first acts of public resistance toward unjust police targeting of LGBT people, birthing a new frontier of gay liberation.

One month after the Stonewall Riots the Gay Liberation Front was formed, launching a new era of LGBT political organizations. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Lambda Legal, and Parents Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) were formed in 1973, the National Center for Lesbian Rights in 1977, the International Gay and Lesbian Association and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) in 1978, and the Human Rights Campaign in 1980 (to name a very select few). The institution of these groups into the political fabric helped advance LGBT rights in unprecedented ways, particularly on the local and statewide level.

In 1972, East Lansing, Michigan (Go Spartans!) became the first city in the U.S. to pass a city-wide non-discrimination policy in hiring applicable to LGBT citizens, and one year later, LGBT groups and allies were successful in getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from a category of behavior disorders. In 1975, Elaine Noble became the first openly lesbian candidate elected to a state legislature, in Massachusetts. Pro-LGBT rights ordinances were subsequently passed in dozens of states and cities across the United States, addressing employment non-discrimination, sodomy laws, domestic partnerships and more.

Two major events in the late 1970s helped usher further awareness of the struggle for LGBT rights, and showed the strength of the LGBT community to organize. In 1977, conservative activist and Florida Citrus Commission spokeswoman Anita Bryant joined with a team of religious groups to lobby for of repeal an anti-LGBT discrimination ordinance in Miami-Dade County. Bryant was successful, but her outspoken views against homosexuality – for which she was famously pied because of – prompted a nationwide boycott of orange juice, organized by LGBT groups and bars, igniting a slew of Hollywood supporters to their cause. Months later, the Florida Citrus Commission dropped Bryant as a spokesperson after mounting pressure from civil rights groups. Though it would take Miami twenty years to pass another anti-LGBT discrimination measure, the battle over the 1977 ordinance energized LGBT communities in South Florida, and had national implications for how LGBT groups organized politically for the future.

The night that the Miami ordinance was voted down, more than 3,000 people gathered in the Castro District of San Francisco, led by political activist/community organizer/camera shop owner Harvey Milk. Milk had said at the time that Bryant’s fervent support for anti-gay measures would help propel a gay rights movement, and sure enough, during the board of supervisors elections later that year, more than half a dozen gay candidates ran for office. Milk was among these candidates, and on Election night, he took in 30% of the vote, enough to award him a spot on the board. Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to any public office in the United States.

Throughout Milk’s tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he championed a city-wide anti-discrimination ordinance for LGBT people, and in the summer of 1978, took on a statewide ballot measure – sponsored by California Assemblyman John Briggs, sympathetic to Anita Bryant – that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California’s public schools. The Proposition ignited LGBT rights organizers that summer, with Pride rallies swelling to upwards of 400,000 people. At a rally for the tenth anniversary of Stonewall, Milk told the crowd:

“On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country... We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets... We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives. I know that it is hard and that it will hurt them, but think of how they will hurt you in the voting booths.”

In a massive turn of events from Miami, the anti-gay Proposition 6 lost by more than one million votes, and was opposed by bipartisan leaders, including Governor Jerry Brown and former Governor (and soon to be President) Ronald Reagan. Milk’s efforts helped turnout a massive voter turnout in San Francisco, with the Proposition failing by a three to one margin in the city.

Weeks later, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White broke into City Hall with a police-issued revolver, and assassinated Harvey Milk and then Mayor George Moscone. More than 40,000 people took to the streets in a candlelight vigil the night of the deaths. Milk, for his own part, had been receiving death threats as his reputation and political stature climbed. Immediately after his election the previous year, Milk recorded an audio tape indicating who should fill his position in the event that he was killed. In the tape, Milk said: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

Dan White’s trial became a media sensation, forever ingrained in popular culture as the case that brought forth the infamous “Twinkie Defense.” Tinged with politics and a culture war forming between working class communities in San Francisco and the growing LGBT population, White’s trial resulted in a voluntary manslaughter conviction with a prison sentence of only seven and two-thirds years.

The short sentence enraged most of San Francisco’s political and LGBT communities, with thousands of LGBT people marching to City Hall to protest the verdict, igniting what would come to be known as the White Night Riots. More than one million dollars in damage was done to San Francisco over the course of the riots. As Time Magazine noted when they named Harvey Milk one of the 100 Most Important People of the Century, “Milk’s death awakened as many gay people as his election had.”

At the end of the 1970s, an increasingly well-organized LGBT rights movement was on the precipice of enmeshing itself in the political fabric of the nation, thanks to activists like Milk, gay rights supporters in Miami-Dade county, the historic protestors at the Stonewall Inn, and the dozens of pioneers for gay rights dating back to the 1920s who fought for recognition and exposure. Their work set the stage for coming battles surrounding adoption, hate crimes, domestic partner benefits, open service in the military, and gay marriage, while also providing an infrastructure to confront the looming HIV/AIDS crisis, which would decimate the gay community starting in the early 1980s.

As Phyllis Lyon, one of the founders of the Daughters of Billitis, noted: “We've come a long way from our goal in the 1950s, part of which was to get laws against sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex wiped off the books. The other part was to be considered part of society. We wanted our full rights and responsibilities.” By the end of the 1970s, there was no question that LGBT citizens were a vocal and visible part of American society.