Barbara Gittings (July 31 1932 – February 18 2007) was a prominent American gay rights activist. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis from 1958 to 1963, edited its magazine The Ladder until 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the first picket lines that brought attention to the unequal treatment of gay Americans by the US State Department. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, forming the first gay caucus in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a m