Losing a founding mother: during a time when gays weer happy just to go unnoticed by society, Barbara Gittings, who died February 18, forced open the closet door.

A few years after forming the first New York City chapter of the pioneering lesbian organization the Daughters of Bilitis, Barbara Gittings did what most gay activists of the time were afraid to do: She portrayed gays as real people. As editor of the organization's groundbreaking magazine, The Ladder, in the early 1960s, Gittings put photos of actual lesbians on the cover, a move that chafed other early gay activists. "The best thing lesbian and gay people could hope for was to be left alone, and the surest way to do that was to keep quiet," says Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "Gittings risked everything just by speaking out."

Gittings, who gained notoriety for marching in the now-legendary July 4 demonstrations in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, died of breast cancer at age 75 on February 18.

"I think of her as one of the founding mothers," says longtime LGBT civil rights leader Frank Kameny, who was friends with Gittings for over 45 years. "She was an articulate, eloquent, dedicated gay activist."

Gittings, the daughter of an American diplomat, grew up in Delaware and began her pioneering ways as a freshman at Northwestern University in 1949, where she researched her own burgeoning sexuality in the school's libraries. Finding few if any useful references on homosexuality and lesbianism, Gittings began a lifelong quest to seek out and disseminate accurate and affirming LGBT-themed writings.

That led to a relationship with the American Library Association, where Gittings helped form the first professional LGBT organization, the Gay Task Force, within the ALA. Gittings, who was not a librarian herself went so far as to set up a "Hug a Homosexual" booth at the ALA's national convention in 1971. "Her influence was so important," says Susan E. Parker, the deputy university librarian and CFO of the University of California, Los Angeles, Library. "She made it possible for us to be out. She's one of the handful of people in the back of my mind every day."

The ALA apparently felt the same way. Besides naming an award after her, in 2003 the organization made Gittings an honorary member for life.

Gittings is survived by her partner of 46 years, Kay Tobin Lahusen, who snapped the famous 1968 photo of Gittings protesting in Philadelphia holding a sign that read HOMOSEXUALS SHOULD BE JUDGED AS INDIVIDUALS. The photo captured what many have described as one of the first public displays by a woman making that kind of statement in the United States.

Those demonstrations, Lahusen says, were called "Reminder Day" pickets "to remind Americans that there is a substantial number of citizens who do not have all the rights and privileges promised by our founding fathers"--a reminder that still resonates today.

When asked what Gittings's place in the LGBT civil rights movement is, Lahusen says, "That's for history to judge," but in her opinion Gittings's legacy "is the love." "She leaves behind the love for the gay cause," Lahusen says. "She leaves behind the love for the workers of the gay cause, she leaves behind the love of justice, she leaves behind the love of her community, she leaves behind the love of music and books, and she leaves behind the love for me."