This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community in the United States.

19th century

1860: Walt Whitman, considered by many academics to be either gay or bisexual, publishes a cluster of homoerotic poems under the title Calamus. 1869: First cross-dressing ball is held at the Hamilton Lodge in Harlem. 1870: Bayard Taylor publishes the novel Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania, considered by some academics to be the first US gay novel.Whitcomb, Selden L. and Matthews, Brander, Chronological Outlines of American Literature, Norwood Press, 1893, p. 186Austen, Roger, Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977, p. 9 However, other critics have offered alternate interpretations on whether it actually depicts romantic love between men or an idealization of male spirituality. 1888: William Dorsey Swann, the first known person to self-identify as "queen of drag", and a group of men are detained in the earliest recorded arrests for female impersonation in the United States. 1889: British writer and critic Alan Dale publishes in the US the novel A Marriage Below Zero, considered the first US novel that explicitly depicts a homosexual relationship, although it also started the trend of including tragic endings (many times by suicide) for its LGBT characters.Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures, p482

20th century 1900s 1903: The Ariston Bathhouse raid takes place in New York City, which became the first recorded police raid against an LGBT venue in US history. As a result of the incursion, 26 men were arrested and 12 of them were prosecuted on sodomy charges. 1906: American author Edward Prime-Stevenson publishes the novel Imre: A Memorandum in Italy, considered the first American gay novel in which the same-sex couple get a happy ending.

1920s 1922 The American silent movie Manslaughter, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, gets released. The film showed the first erotic same-sex kiss in the history of cinema.

1924

The Society for Human Rights, established in Chicago in 1924, was the first recognized gay rights organization in the United States, having received a charter from the state of Illinois, and produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Society founder Henry Gerber was inspired to create it by the work of German doctor Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. A few months after being chartered, in 1925, the group ceased to exist in the wake of the arrest of several of the society's members. Despite its short existence and small size, the society has been recognized as a precursor to the modern gay liberation movement.

1926 June 11: Police raids the lesbian bar Eve's Hangout, located in New York City, and arrests its owner, Polish feminist Eva Kotchever. Kotchever was deported after the incident and Eve's Hangout never opened again.

1929 The Surprise of a Knight becomes the first American pornographic film to depict homosexual intercourse.Burger, John R. One-Handed Histories: The Eroto-Politics of Gay Male Video Pornography. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995.

1930s

One of the first crossdressing performers in the Southern United States, Sweet Evening Breeze, starts regularly performing on Saturdays in Lexington, Kentucky.

1934 The Motion Picture Association starts enforcing the Hays Code, which in practice banned the representation of explicit LGBT characters onscreen, with the exception of those who were depicted as villains or criminals.

1940s 1947

June: Lisa Ben (anagram of «lesbian») starts self-publishing in Los Angeles a small lesbian magazine called Vice Versa, considered the oldest recorded lesbian periodical in the United States.Lo, Malinda. , afterellen.com; retrieved March 10, 2008.

1948

Alfred Kinsey, a bisexual American sexologist, publishes his seminal work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which helped the homosexual male community gain more visibility. The book states, among other things, that 37% of the male subjects surveyed had at least one homosexual experience,Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, p. 656 and that 10% of American males surveyed were "more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55".Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, p. 651

1950s 1950

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest LGBT (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. As part of the Lavender scare, a moral panic about homosexuals working in US federal agencies, the Senate launched an investigation in June 1950 into the government's employment of homosexuals. The results were not released until December, but in the meantime federal job losses due to allegations of homosexuality increased greatly, rising from approximately 5 to 60 per month. To address this supposed threat, Joseph McCarthy hired Roy Cohnwho later died of AIDS and who, like McCarthy himself, is believed to have been a closeted gay manas chief counsel of his Congressional subcommittee. Together, McCarthy and Cohn were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men and women from government employment, and they strong-armed many opponents into silence using rumors of their homosexuality.Rodger McDaniel, Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt (WordsWorth, 2013),

1951

The Black Cat Bar, located in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, was the focus of one of the earliest victories of the homophile movement when in 1951 the California Supreme Court affirmed the right of gay people to assemble in a case brought by the heterosexual owner of the bar.

1952 April: The American Psychiatric Association includes homosexuality in their diagnostic manual as a "sociopathic personality disturbance". Christine Jorgensen was an American transgender woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery. She traveled to Europe and in Copenhagen, Denmark, obtained special permission to undergo a series of operations starting in 1951. Her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story in 1952. American author Patricia Highsmith publishes under the pseudonym «Claire Morgan» the novel The Price of Salt (later republished as Carol), which became a classic of lesbian literature.

1953 April 27: As a result of the Lavender scare, President Eisenhower issues Executive Order 10450, which banned gay men and lesbians from working for any agency of the federal government. It was not until 1973 that a federal judge ruled that a person's sexual orientation alone could not be the sole reason for termination from federal employment, and not until 1975 that the United States Civil Service Commission announced that they would consider applications by gays and lesbians on a case-by-case basis.

1955

The Daughters of Bilitis , also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955.

1956

The Daughters of Bilitis starts the publication of The Ladder, considered the first nationally distributed lesbian magazine.

1958

The first gay leather bar, the Gold Coast, opened in Chicago in 1958. One, Inc. v. Olesen is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision for LGBT rights in the United States. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality and the first to address free speech rights with respect to homosexuality. The ruling held that pro-homosexual writing is not per se obscene.

1959

The Cooper Donuts Riot happened in 1959 in Los Angeles, when the lesbians, gay men, transgender people, and drag queens who hung out at Cooper Do-nuts and who were frequently harassed by the LAPD fought back after police arrested three people, including John Rechy. Patrons began pelting the police with donuts and coffee cups. The LAPD called for back-up and arrested a number of rioters. Rechy and the other two original detainees were able to escape.Faderman, Lillian and Stuart Timmons (2006). Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. Basic Books. pp. 1–2.

1960s

1961

José Sarria ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961, becoming the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States.Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. pg. 347. New York, Vintage Books. . He did not win, however.Shilts, Randy (1982). The Mayor of Castro Street. pgs. 56-57. New York, St. Martin's Press. . 28 July: Illinois becomes the first state to legalize same-sex consensual sexual activity. The law came into effect on January 1, 1962. 11 September: The Rejected becomes the first documentary about homosexuality to be broadcast in American television, after it was broadcast by a local TV station in California.Alwood, Edward (1998). Straight News. P.41. Columbia University Press. .

1962 The first article published in America that recognized a city's gay community and political scene was about Philadelphia, and was titled "The Furtive Fraternity" (1962, by Gaeton Fonzi) and published in Greater Philadelphia.

1964 American film The Best Man, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner is released. It is the first US film to use the word "homosexual".

1965

In April 150 gender non-conforming people came to Dewey's Coffee Shop in Philadelphia to protest the fact that the shop was refusing to serve young people in "non-conformist clothing". After three protesters refused to leave after being denied service they, along with a black gay activist, were arrested. This led to a picket of the establishment organized by the black LGBTQ population. Later, in May of that same year another sit-in was organized and Dewey's agreed to end their discriminatory policies.

1966

The Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history.A smaller-scale riot broke out in 1959 in Los Angeles, when the drag queens, lesbians, gay men, and transgender people who hung out at Cooper Do-nuts and who were frequently harassed by the LAPD fought back after police arrested three people, including John Rechy. Patrons began pelting the police with donuts and coffee cups. The LAPD called for back-up and arrested a number of rioters. Rechy and the other two original detainees were able to escape. Faderman, Lillian and Stuart Timmons (2006). Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. Basic Books. pp. 1–2. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.Boyd, Nan Alamilla (2004). "San Francisco" in the Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America, Ed. Marc Stein. Vol. 3. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 71–78. 21 April: Four activists from the Mattachine Society staged a "Sip-In" at Julius, a bar in Greenwich Village, to protest the NY State Liquor Authority's discriminatory policies against homosexuals.

1967

1 January: The Black Cat Tavern, one of the most well-known gay bars of its time, faces an extreme police raid just after midnight as many of the gay patrons share a New Year's kiss. This raid led to the later protesting against constant police harassment of gay people by hundreds of protestors on February 11 outside the Black Cat Tavern.