Los Angeles: Two Years Before Stonewall-The History of LGBT Equality

by Jack Newby

Palm Springs CA - The Desert Pride Community Center announces a display and discussion of historic articles published 40 years ago in the Los Angeles Free Press on February 12, 2009 at 7pm at the Desert Pride Community Center located at 611 S. Palm Canyon Drive, 2nd Floor in Palm Springs. The presentation and discussion will be led by Steven Finger, Publisher of the LA Free Press. These rare articles will bring back a forgotten past of discriminations, declarations, and developments. In fact, the very first story of the very first public protest of the Los Angeles Gay Community was in the LA Free Press on its front page, and with what may be the first published photos of the event. It was a 'happening' that actually pre-dates by more than two full years the 1969 Stonewall incident in New York that is considered by most historians to be the beginning of the present-day Gay Movement. It is a history that must be known and disseminated to a society often ignorant of the pain and prejudice endured, and still needing to be set aright.

Arguably, the nation's first 'underground' newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press was a window on the counter-culture of the 60's. While most remember the LA Free Press for its reports on anti-war protests, drugs and drug busts, tales of Timothy Leary, the Black Panthers and the Chicago 7, reviews of psychedelic music and all things hip and Hippie, it was, notably, often the only LA newspaper to publish articles and ads for the Gay Community.

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090210/GETPUBLISHED/902100336