Barbara Gittings was born in Vienna, Austria, on July 31, 1932. She founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, the national lesbian organization, in 1958; served as the editor of the organization’s magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966; and participated in the Annual Reminder July Fourth gay rights demonstrations at Independence Hall in the 1960s. In the 1970s, she worked with Frank Kameny in lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness and she chaired the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation. For most of her adult life she lived with her partner Kay Lahusen in Philadelphia. Gittings died on February 18, 2007. You can read the transcript of her 1974 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz here: Barbara Gittings: Founding the New York Daughters of Bilitis in 1958, by Jonathan Ned Katz. Her participation in the Annual Reminders is discussed here: Annual Reminders in Philadelphia, July 4, 1965-July 4, 1969, by Marc Stein. A transcript of Marc Stein’s 1993 interview with her can be found here: Philadelphia LGBT History Project, 1940-1980, by Marc Stein