Phyllis Lyon was a journalist, gay rights activist, and, with her wife Del Martin, the first same-sex couple to recieve a marriage license in California. Born in 1924 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Lyon earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from University of California, Berkeley in 1946 and worked as a reporter in Chico for the “Chico Enterprise-Record” for several years. She moved to San Francisco in 1955 and became a founding member and first newsletter editor for the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization in the US. In 1976, Lyon was appointed to the Gay Advisory Board of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and in 2008 married her life-long partner Del Martin, becoming the first same-sex couple to be legally wed in the state of California. In this interview, Lyon discusses working with the Glide Foundation and the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, homophobic discrimination, the first DOB convention, serving on the Gay Advisory Board, and Dianne Fienstein as Mayor. This interview is part of a group of interviews documenting the San Francisco minority politics and the Human Rights Commision.
Details
Title
Phyllis Lyon: Minority Politics in San Francisco, 1964-1996
Note
Lyon, Phyllis. "Phyllis Lyon: Minority Politics in San Francisco, 1964-1996." Interview by Martin Meeker in 2005. Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2007. Interview date(s) 2005
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