From the Publisher

The explosion of gay visibility in the 1960s brought, for the first time, tens of thousands of lesbians and gay men out of the closets and into headline news around the world. Never before had so many gay people at one moments stepped into the spotlight of mainstream American politics, culture, and entertainment. More than any city, New York became overnight the center of the new "Gay Power."

In Gay Power, David Eisenbach chronicles the tumultuous first wave of the modern gay rights movement. From "militant homophiles" and the first-ever gay student group launched at Columbia University in 1966 to the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activist Alliance, and other vanguard organizations that emerged fro the Stonewall riots, the author draws on achival material and dozens of firsthand accounts from the individuals who built the movement. Unlike their predecessors, this new generation of lesbians and gay men spoke as a community, established political clout with elected officials, appeared openly on television and in the press as gay people, demanded equal rights with heterosexuals, and pioneered protest tactics like the "zap," which later ACT UP employed famously in the 1980s. Gay Power is a complex, politically charged portrait of the birth of the modern gay rights movement.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0786719346
  
• ISBN-13: 9780786719341
• Format: Paperback, 390pp
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Pub. Date: April 2007
• Sales Rank: 236,935