July 4th Marks the Anniversary of LGBTQ+ Independence Marches

July 4, 2024
HANK ORSO

July 4th Marks the Anniversary of LGBTQ+ Independence Marches

Tonight at 9:00, on many PBS stations, celebrate PRIDE and the legacy of Frank Kameny--a nerdy government scientist who changed the world--by watching The Lavender Scare. #lavenderscare #twiterstorians pic.twitter.com/4TWzcFWypA
— David K. Johnson (@GayHistoryProf) June 23, 2021

(Above, the legacy of Krank Kameny)

On July 4th, 1965 (oh wow, just 3 months before my birthday! Yeah, I'm old.) the very first organized, multi-city participant march for LGBTQ+ equal rights was held in Philadelphia, in front of Liberty Hall. Yep, before Stonewall! With all of the historical trappings of this country's freedom as a backdrop, 40 or so men and women marched in the first Annual Reminder Demonstration for Gay and Lesbian Rights. Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings were the principal organizers, along with ECHO: East Coast Homophile Organizations. It was the first time in history that such a calculated and organized gathering to protest the federal treatment of gays and lesbians in the military, in workplaces, and in society, in general, had ever taken place.

How those early marches, which ended with the march in 1969, became the precursor to the first Pride march in NYC is pretty simple. Stonewall erupted on June 28th, 1969, just a week or so before the planned Reminder Demonstration. By November, those organizers had started looking forward, looking at a bigger prize, a bigger event, directly related to the Stonewall uprising. They'd already been working collectively on the East Coast, so branching out into Chicago, LA, and San Francisco as they did for the first Gay and Lesbian Freedom March in 1970 was really a no-brainer.

Rare photos of the 1969 Annual Reminder picket, narrated by Barbara Gittings, Lilli Vincenz and Frank Kameny. pic.twitter.com/vBYufoSXcw
— Tyler the ✨✨ ️‍️‍⚧️ (@TylerAlbertario) November 15, 2022

Footage from the 1969 Annual Reminder Demonstration.

Today .gay celebrates the birth and life of Barbara Gittings. Her activism included the Daughters of Bilitis, picketing the White House with Frank Kameny, and successfully lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to depathologize homosexuality. ⚖️✊ #DotGayLovesYou pic.twitter.com/QRDTXJ7BUf
— .gay (@dotgay) July 31, 2021

Co-organizer Barbara Gittings.

Besides all of the work leading up to and after their demonstrations: the creation of the Daughters of Bilitis and The Mattachine Society in the 1950s; Kameny telling Herbert Hoover to "Fuck off" when he was instructed by the FBI to stop sending him gay literature; Kameny's dishonorable discharge from military service after working as an aerospace engineer and astronomer and basically working towards what would become NASA and later becoming one of the first openly gay people to run for Congress and press for marriage equality; besides all of that, one of Kameny and Gittings's greatest accomplishments along with Dr. John Fryer was the successful pressure on the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1974.

Gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny was born #OnThisDay 1925 in Queens. His contributions to the movement include co-founding the Mattachine Society, the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), organizing the Annual Reminders, and more.
More: https://t.co/uzzp2yKrDq pic.twitter.com/cmSsXX7SKB
— NYC LGBT Sites (@nyclgbtsites) May 21, 2024

So happy Independence Day queers! Celebrate with a bit of your history in tow, and give a big thanks to those pioneers who truly put themselves on the front lines, by actually creating the lines!