Barbara Gittings

Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings picketing Independence Hall July 4, 1966. Photo taken by Kay Lahusen.
Born	(1932-07-31)July 31, 1932 Vienna, Austria
Died	February 18, 2007(2007-02-18) (aged 74) Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Organization	Daughters of Bilitis, American Library Association
Movement	Gay rights movement
Awards	GLAAD Barbara Gittings Award; Lifetime Honorary Membership, American Library Association

Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was a prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963–66, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.

She was awarded a lifetime membership in the American Library Association, and the ALA named an annual award for the best gay or lesbian novel the The Barbara Gittings Award. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also named an activist award for her. At her memorial service, Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said, "What do we owe Barbara? Everything."

Barbara Gittings was born to Elizabeth (née Brooks) Gittings and John Sterett Gittings in Vienna, Austria, where her father was serving as a U.S. diplomat. Barbara and her siblings attended Catholic schools in Montreal. She was so immersed in Catholicism at one point in her childhood that she considered becoming a nun. Her family returned to the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled in Wilmington, Delaware. Although aware of her attraction to other girls, Gittings said she first heard the word "homosexual" when she was rejected for membership in the National Honor Society in high school. Despite being an excellent student, a teacher who had reservations about her character took her aside and told her that the rejection was based on what the teacher believed were "homosexual inclinations".