Library - History |
 L G B T H I S T O R Y T I M E L I N E |
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1492
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Columbus "discovers" America.
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LGBT History in the United States: A Timeline
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1492
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Columbus "discovers" America.
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| 1566 | First known execution (in North America) of a person for same-sex
sexual activities, by the Spanish in Florida.
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| 1607 | First permanent English colony established at Jamestown,
Virginia.
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| 1610 | Virginia adopts "sodomy laws" of England, making sex between two
men a "capital crime" punishable by death. Although no longer a capital
crime, sodomy remains today an imprisonable offense in the laws of
twenty-four states.
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| 1642 | Elizabeth Johnson becomes first woman to be punished for
violating sodomy laws, in Essex County of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony.
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| 1776 | Thirteen colonies declare independence from Britain.
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| 1777 | In a move seen as "liberal" at the time, Thomas Jefferson
proposes a revision of Virginia law to reduce the penalty for sodomy
from death to castration. This is never enacted.
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| 1778 | Gotthold Enslin becomes first American discharged from the Army
for sodomy.
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| 1787 | Constitution approved; United States government takes current
form.
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| 1790 | Samuel Slater establishes first American textile factory in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The Industrial Revolution follows, with
rapidly-growing cities gradually replacing the farm as the living and
working environment of most Americans.
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| 1860 | Walt Whitman publishes the first "Calamus" poems in Leaves of
Grass, celebrating his "love of comrades," a veiled reference to his
homosexuality. Whitman is typical of the new gay subculture emerging in
American cities. Freed from the prying eyes of family and small-town
neighbors, gay people in cities were freer to act on their sexual
orientations than before, and found it easier to meet others like
themselves. Noted psychiatrist Havelock Ellis was to comment, after a
1915 visit to the United States, that "The world of sexual inverts,
indeed, is a large one in any American city."
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| 1865 | Civil War ends. Slavery abolished and voting and citizenship
rights granted to blacks by Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments.
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| 1869 | Hungarian psychologist Benkert invents the word "homosexual" to
describe people attracted to the same sex. This signals an important
attitude shift brought on by the new medical profession rather than
being a criminal act or a sin (as the act of sodomy was considered to
be), loving someone of the same sex was now seen as a psychological
"condition" or illness which should be cured, not punished. There is
some debate about this date, however. The noted historian Jonathan Katz
notes that Benkert used the word "homosexual" in a letter to Ulrichs in
1868.
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| 1889 | Lesbian Jane Addams founds Hull House in Chicago, America's first
"settlement house" offering services for the poor. Addams is vital in
founding the new profession of "social work." As educational and
economic opportunities began to expand for women in the late nineteenth
century, more and more entered this new profession as well as others
like teaching and nursing, which allowed them to earn their own incomes
and live independently, without husbands. Some then were able to act on
their same-sex desires, and the term "Boston marriage" came to refer to
two women who lived together for a long period of time, derived from
the large numbers of professional women who did so in Boston. This
independence was the prerequisite for the emergence of lesbian
communities.
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| 1920 | Women win right to vote with passage of Nineteenth Amendment.
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| 1924 | The Society for Human Rights, America's first known gay rights
organization, is founded in Chicago. Police and media harassment forces
its disbandment in less than a year. Nevertheless, the "Roaring
Twenties" sees a new openness toward homosexuality, with gay artists
such as Langston Hughes and Bessie Smith achieving prominence through
the "Harlem Renaissance." The new "nightlife" of the era included many
"bohemian" clubs, where gay people were welcomed.
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| 1929 | Stock Market Crash brings on Great Depression of the Thirties,
where restricted economic opportunities curtail individual freedom for
many, a setback for gays.
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| 1941 | United States enters World War Two.
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| 1942 | U.S. military, under influence of psychiatric establishment,
revises codes on homosexual behavior as part of general revision
brought on by World War Two. Previously, soldiers could only be
expelled if witnessed committing "sodomy"; now, being "homosexual" was
enough for dismissal. The army begins asking entering soldiers about
their sexual orientations, and expelling any recruits or present
soldiers who admit to homosexuality, whether or not they have ever
acted on these desires. These are known at the time as "blue
discharges" because of the color of the paper on which they were
printed. Approximately one hundred thousand Americans are discharged on
this basis over the next fifty years.
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| 1945 | World War Two ends. Veterans Benevolent Association founded in
New York by gay service people to fight "blue discharge" system.
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| 1949 | Soviets explode first atomic bomb, and Communists take over
China, prompting hysteria in America over "Communist threat." Sen.
McCarthy begins charging that "subversives" have undermined our
government and begins "witch hunts" to get rid of them, earning this
time the nickname "McCarthy Era."
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| 1950 | Undersecretary of State John Puerifory speaks of a "pervert
peril" in testimony before Congress, leading to "witch hunts" for gays
who work in the federal government. Mass expulsions of gay employees
begin.
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| 1950 | Harry Hay and others found Mattachine Society in Los Angeles,
America's first on-going gay rights organization.
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| 1953 | Newly-elected President Dwight Eisenhower bans employment of gays
by the government in Executive Order 10450. Employees of federal,
state, and local governments must take "loyalty oaths" to gain
employment, swearing (among other things) that they are not homosexual.
These regulations are not repealed until 1975.
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| 1955 | Phyllis Martin and Del Lyon found America's first lesbian rights
organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, in San Francisco.
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| 1955 | Gay African-American activist Bayard Rustin visits Montgomery,
Alabama, in midst of famous "bus boycott" led by the Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr. He instructs King and other activists in the techniques of
non-violent civil disobedience, which become chief tactic of the black
civil rights movement. He later organizes the 1963 March on Washington
where King delivers the famous "I Have A Dream" speech.
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| 1958 | One magazine, a publication affiliated with Mattachine, wins a
case against the U.S. Postal Service, which had banned distribution of
any publications on homosexuality through the mails as "obscenity,"
before the Supreme Court. Greater publicity of gay causes becomes
possible.
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| 1964 | Congress passes Civil Rights Act, preventing states from
infringing on the rights granted to blacks by post-Civil War
Constitutional Amendments. Passage was considered the result of the
massive civil disobedience and protest campaigns led by King and
organized by Rustin.
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| 1965 | Gay and lesbian people picket outside federal offices in
Washington to protest the government's employment discrimination
against gays. First public protest by gay people in the nation's
capital.
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| 1966 | National Organization for Women (NOW) founded to fight for
women's rights.
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| 1969 | Angered by police harassment, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a New
York gay bar, fight back during a raid, initiating several days of
violence known as the "Stonewall Riots." Gay leadership adopt a new
militant attitude, borrowing from other movements of the time to use
slogans like "Gay is Good" and founding a "Gay Liberation Front." Many
cities begin "Gay Pride Marches" in late June to commemorate this
uprising against oppression.
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| 1973 | The American Psychiatric Association votes to remove
homosexuality from its list of "illnesses," ending a century of efforts
to "cure" gays by psychiatrists.
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| 1974 | Elaine Noble becomes first openly lesbian or gay person elected
to state office when she wins a seat in Massachusetts State House of
Representatives.
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| 1979 | First "March on Washington for Gay Rights" draws 100,000
marchers.
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| 1980 | Embracing support from the "Moral Majority," Republican Ronald
Reagan wins Presidency having pledged to "resist the efforts ... to
obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."
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| 1981 | A new disease appears mainly among gay men, earning it the
nickname "gay cancer" or "Gay-Related Immune Deficiency." Later known
as "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"(AIDS), this disease sweeps
through the gay community and other groups in American society,
primarily people of color. Over one hundred thousand gay men die in the
next decade. The "Moral Majority" decrees that the disease is "God's
punishment for homosexuality," and the Reagan administration is
extremely slow in its response to this health crisis President Reagan
does not even mention the word AIDS in public until well into his
second term in office, several years into the epidemic and public
health officials cite the slowness of the Reagan Administration's
response as the central reason for AIDS becoming an epidemic in
America.
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| 1982 | Wisconsin becomes first state to ban employment discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation. Today, California, Connecticut,
Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont
are among the states that have such laws.
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| 1983 | Representative Gerry Studds of Massachusetts becomes America's
first openly gay Congressperson.
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| 1986 | In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upholds the sodomy laws of the
state of Georgia in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision. As a result,
government continues to have the right to arrest consenting adults
having sex in the privacy of their own homes in 24 states.
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| 1987 | Activists form the "AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power" (ACT-UP) in
New York. Using direct action civil disobedience techniques, this group
spreads nation-wide and, through its protests, forces the government to
take substantial action to fight AIDS for the first time.
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| 1987 | Second March on Washington draws several hundred thousand
marchers.
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| 1989 | Denmark becomes first nation to legalize gay marriage. Norway
becomes the second in 1993.
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| 1993 | Third March on Washington draws one million to Washington.
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| 1993 | Massachusetts becomes first state to ban discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation against public school students, heralding
emergence of widespread gay youth activism.
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| 1995 | President Clinton finally ends ban on security clearances for gay
people, the last vestige of McCarthy-era restrictions imposed in the
Fifties when gays were deemed an automatic threat to national security
because of their sexuality.
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