“HOMOSEXUAL AMERICANS, UNRECOGNIZED MINORITY,” Kay Tobin Lahusen (born January 5, 1930) participates in the Fifth Annual Reminder, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1969. Photo by Nancy Tucker, c/o @nyplpicturecollection. Kay Tobin Lahusen, who turns eighty-seven today, was among the founding parents of the modern gay rights movement, as she and her life partner Barbara Gittings helped lead the fight for lesbian and gay equality for over forty years. Lahusen’s contributions include her remarkable work as a photojournalist, which provide some of the only images from early gay rights demonstrations. Lahusen and Gittings met in 1961 at a gathering of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the lesbian rights organization, in Rhode Island; they fell in love and Lahusen moved from Boston to Philadelphia to be with Gittings. In 1963, Gittings became the editor of DOB’s national newsletter, The Ladder, and the couple took the publication in radical new directions. Most notably, Lahusen insisted on replacing the drawings featured on “The Ladder’s” covers with real lesbians. For over a year, she was unable to find a woman willing to pose for a full-face portrait (i.e., unadorned, looking directly at the camera); the fear was understandable, but so too was Lahusen’s frustration. “If you go around as if you don’t dare show your face,” she said, “it sends forth a terrible message.” In January 1966, however, Lahusen’s portrait of Lilli Vincenz smiling directly into the camera made history when it appeared on “The Ladder’s” cover. Between 1965 and 1969, Gittings and Lahusen were present for virtually all of the earliest gay rights demonstrations to take place in the U.S.; without Lahusen, photographs of the events may never have existed. In 1970, Lahusen (who at some point adopted the surname “Tobin,” which she picked out of the phonebook as easier to pronounce) helped form the Gay Activists Alliance and she co-wrote “The Gay Crusaders” in 1972. Lahusen and Gittings remained powerful figures in the fight for gay rights until Gittings’ death in February 2007; they had been together for forty-six years. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #KayTobin (at Independence Hall)