For #LGBThistorymonth I will be posting an #lgbtq #womaninhistory every day. Today is Barbara Gittings, a prominent American activist for LGBT equality who helped draw attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the United States government.

Gittings organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, and edited their national magazine ‘The Ladder’ from 1963–66. She was part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness and dedicated herself to making it possible to tear away the “shroud of invisibility” related to homosexuality, which had previously been associated with crime and mental illness.

Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries and she became involved in the American Library Association (ALA) in the 1970s. The gay caucus of the ALA was the first of its kind in a professional organization, and worked to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries.