“LGBTQ rights activist, psychotherapist, and documentary filmmaker Lilli Vincenz, who played an important role in helping to organize groundbreaking gay rights protests outside the White House and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in the 1960s, died June 27 of natural causes at her residence in an assisted living center in Oakton, Va. She was 86.

Vincenz is believed to be the first known lesbian to participate in a gay rights protest in front of the White House in April 1965, when she joined pioneering gay rights leader Frank Kameny, seven other gay men, and a bisexual and straight woman in a first-of-its-kind White House protest calling for equal rights for homosexuals.”

Read more by Lou Chibbaro, explore Lilli’s life work through our website “Lesbian Pioneer” and the film “Gay and Proud: Lilli’s Legacy,” or visit her Library of Congress archive below.