Lesbian Activist Gittings Receives
PrideFest Award for Library Leadership
Barbara Gittings, whose 30 years of activism for gay and lesbian civil rights have led some to call her the Rosa Parks of the movement, was awarded a Civil Liberties Achievement Award April 27 in a ceremony at the Free Library of Philadelphia, as part of the National History Project of PrideFest America. During the presentation ALA Executive Director William Gordon spoke on behalf of the Association about Gittings’s accomplishments.
Gittings was honored as one of the organizers of ALA’s Gay Task Force (now the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Task Force) and for her work in making the card catalogs of American libraries open to gay and lesbian literature. She was also on some of the first picket lines for gay rights in the 1960s, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and at the Pentagon and the White House in Washington.
Organizers of PrideFest were expecting 40,000 people April 26–May 2 for what is billed as the country’s largest conference of gay and lesbian rights activists.
Posted May 3, 1999.
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