National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations Held
The National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations, held in Kansas City, Missouri, on this day, was arguably the first such national meeting of the various homosexual organizations in the U.S.
Three years later, the disturbances at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, on June 28, 1969, where gay and lesbian men fought back against police officers who had raided the bar, sparked the beginning of a truly national lesbian and gay rights movement.
Gay and lesbian organizations appeared briefly in the 1920s and then permanently in the 1950s. The Society for Human Rights was founded in Chicago on November 10, 1924, but apparently it did not last long. The Mattachine Society, the first all-male gay organization was founded in Los Angeles on November 11, 1950. The Daughters of Bilitis, the first all-women lesbian organization was founded on September 21, 1955.
Learn more: Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out For Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (1999)
Learn more about lesbian and gay rights: http://www.lambdalegal.org/
Watch videos from San Francisco Gay Pride marches, 1970–1980: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgEbgSvBIEg
Learn more about the Mattachine Society here
And more about the Daughters of Bilitis here
Learn more at a valuable documentary history: Jonathan Katz, ed., Gay American History: Lesbian and Gay Men in American History, A Documentary (1976)