Experience history through the lens of Lilli Vincenz and discover her visual stories of pioneering pickets and the first Pride march for LGBTQ equality.
This article has been approved by Prism, a Shutterstock ERG (Employee Resource Group) committed to creating a supportive, diverse, and inclusive company culture for LGBTQ+ people globally.
“This is the exact kind of event and use that Lilli would want to have happened, the purpose of her donation to the Library of Congress.”
On a December evening in 2017, an inspiring exchange happened. In a single email, I came closer to touching my history as both a queer filmmaker and woman. At the time I was creating a multimedia installation for NYC’s LGBTQ+ symphonic band, The Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps, at Symphony Space. They were dedicating their upcoming concert to queer history.
Prior to the concert installation, I was not familiar with Lilli Vincenz’s story and did not realize how her contributions would touch my life and future documentary work. The pre-Stonewall gay pioneers had not experienced the limelight like the Stonewall event itself, so I knew very little of the pioneering era. However I was aware that there was a movement prior to the uprising, and that women were present and involved. My research led me to various archives and contacts who provided a plethora of stunning photographs, letters, news clippings, and stories. When I came across Lilli Vincenz’s footage, everything changed.
Discovering the Work of Lilli Vincenz, LGBTQ+ Activist and Filmmaker
Pouring over photographs and documents, and reading about the pre- and post-Stonewall pioneers was one thing, but it was another to see the movement of change happen in front of me through each frame of Lilli’s celluloid. Striking and humbling is the best way to describe it. Having the approval to incorporate Lilli’s profound work was a gift. Seeing the fierce courage of those publicly dissenting for equality for the first time in history resonated deeply with both the band’s audience and me that night. On the screen, we saw our rainbow family and the faces of our ancestors moving as one through Lilli’s lens.
A victim of the Macarthur era’s homophobic Lavender Scare, Lilli was outed and then kicked out of the Women’s Army Corps. After losing her job, Lilli joined the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C in 1962. She was one of first women to join this early gay rights organization, and was also the first lesbian to picket the White House in 1960 against the employment discrimination that targeted homosexuals. While working alongside gay rights leaders Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny, Lilli, Mattachine and Daughters of Bilitis members championed the fight for employment equality. Sixty years later, LGBTQ+ rights activists won that fight on June 15, 2020.
Filming LGBTQ+ History
Starting in 1962, Vincenz was one the first activists within the LGBTQ+ rights movement to write about and film LGBTQ-related direct action events and activities. Her groundbreaking work as a documentarian and journalist gave both visibility and a voice to the pioneering efforts of the United State’s gay rights movement.
She also served as the editor of the Mattachine’s monthly magazine, The Homosexual Citizen. Additionally, she was the first lesbian model to use her real name and to appear in photographs without sunglasses or in profile view for the cover of The Ladder, America’s first national lesbian publication. This was monumental, as it was during a time when many queer people were afraid to be identified. Activist and editor Barbara Gittings with photojournalist Kay Tobin Lahusen photographed and preserved Lilli’s historical actions.
The Value in LGBTQ+ Historical Film
There are many reasons why Lilli’s work is so valuable. Firstly, her films are the only ones of their kind. They capture everything from the first time gay people began to organize, show their faces, and demonstrate publicly, marching in the streets nationwide for full equal rights. What started as a small group of ten picketers in 1965 later became a national movement of thousands by 1970. Meanwhile, in 1968 Lilli filmed the Annual Reminder Day Picket in Philadelphia. The footage was eventually titled “The Second Largest Minority.”
These pickets were pre-Stonewall annual gay rights demonstrations held in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Early Homophile activists first staged these public demonstrations in 1965. Later these events would trigger what many consider the birth of the modern day LGBTQ+ rights movement, the Stonewall uprising.
The following year in June 1970, Lilli would join fellow queer activists in New York City. Instead of the Annual Reminder Day Picket, organizers wanted to hold a march in celebration and remembrance of Stonewall’s first anniversary.
The march ran from Greenwich Village up to Central Park. With her camera in hand, she began capturing the scenes in front of her. LGBTQ+ people assembled and began moving forward. Early on, organizers wondered how many people would actually show up to this event. By the end, between 2,000-5,000 LGBTQ+ people came out that day. As the marchers reached the park, they stood on the hill and looked back over 5th Avenue. They had never seen so many gay people in one place before in their lives.
Gay and Proud: A Film by Lilli Vincenz
When viewers watch events unfold in the film Gay and Proud, they aren’t only experiencing this history for the first time. They’re experiencing it with the people who lived it. “Out of the closets and into the streets” happened that day. Community members who were once hidden and isolated from one another finally saw that they weren’t alone. Visibility matters. And visibility has always been the keystone of our struggle for civil rights.
What Lilli filmed that day was the Christopher Street Liberation Day march and rally. Today we call this march Pride. Now cities around the world hold Pride celebrations.
In our current era of technology and mass media accessibility, we take this type of recording for granted. Everyone attending a Pride march or social justice event now leaves with a phone full of photos, audio bytes, and video footage.
However, any film footage from the beginnings of the LGBTQ+ rights movement is rare and incredibly precious to us. The early days of the movement were not well-documented on film. Community members faced great risk when they captured these stories and developed and processed them in labs.
Lilli’s Work at the Library of Congress
There is something touching about one woman collecting these lived moments of an early movement whose members were often avoiding documentation out of fear for the safety of their lives and reputations, and whose adversaries would refuse to develop or even destroy the films themselves. These surviving visual time capsules are archival treasures of the movement.
In 2013 Lilli donated her work to the Library of Congress along with other materials spanning fifty years of America’s LGBTQ+ civil rights fight. Through her lens, she showed us the true power of visibility. She showed us what can happen when a small group of courageous people set out and force the world to change toward the side of justice.
In the years following Stonewall, Lilli continued to speak truth to power. She wrote a column for the New York-based GAY magazine and became a contributor to multiple publications. In 1969 she also co-founded Washington D.C.’s independent gay newspaper, The Gay Blade. Later renamed The Washington Blade, this newspaper continues to be the oldest surviving LGBTQ+ publication in the United States.
The LGBTQ+ pioneers set out to crack the cocoon of invisibility. With each individual act, each story, each recording, each 16 mm reel, Lilli Vincenz preserved queer history one newspaper and film projector at a time.
Why Lilli Vincenz’s Work is So Impactful for LGBTQ+ Creatives
As a young gay woman and documentarian, Lilli’s work leaves me in awe. It’s one thing to read about people forced into the shadows of shame who slowly orchestrated their liberation. It’s another thing to actually see the significant shift in change happen in front of your eyes.
In 1968 we saw the community during their awakening, their organizing, and strategizing. They had had enough. Taking their lives into their own hands, they took to the streets and paved the way for future generations. Lilli’s first film documents that foundation. Her second film shows us the complete tonal shift of the movement just two years after the last traditional Homophile picket, and one year after Stonewall.
What we witness in these films is one generation creating space for another to thrive. While the baton is passed on, all generations are marching together. To witness this change is to witness history and also see hope in motion.
“When I stood there and walked and walked in the picket line, I was aware that we were making history and that we were laying the groundwork for what we hoped would be later activism that would give homosexuals equal rights. (…) We are now part of America’s landscape.”
—Lilli Vincenz, Gay Pioneers, 2004
Cover image by Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Shutterstock.
Discover more LGBTQ+ stories here:
Source link
