Lilli Vincenz, a pioneering LGBT activist, area resident and friend of the News-Press (her partner, Nancy Davis, worked at the FCNP for years), has been named to the “Hall of Fame” of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) in advance of its annual national conference in New Orleans at the end of this month, where the award will be presented.
Vincenz is a path-breaking journalist and pioneer of the gay rights movement beginning in the early 1960s. She joined the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1962 as one of their first lesbian members and served as editor of its monthly magazine.
She filmed the 1968 Annual “Reminder Demonstration” in Philadelphia and the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in 1970. Her films were donated to the Library of Congress in 2013, along with documents, photographs and memorabilia covering 50 years of America’s LGBTQ civil rights movement.
Vincenz wrote a bi-weekly column for the New York-based GAY magazine and was a frequent contributor to other community publications.
In 1969 in Washington, D.C., she co-founded The Gay Blade, an independent gay newspaper, later renamed The Washington Blade. In 1966, Vincenz became the first woman, with her face recognizable, to appear on the cover of The Ladder, a lesbian magazine.
