After the Stonewall Uprising, Martha Shelley thought,

Okay, this is our moment.

She was an activist, a member of the daughters of Boletus, and she immediately started to organize.

She got the Matashine Society on board, and those two groups arranged for a protest march that would take place

one month after Stonewall.

Now, this march, it is estimated that somewhere between 400 and 500 people showed up that day,

which were huge numbers for that time.

This was 1969, and just to show your face in public, to publicly declare, I am gay or I am

by, that was still radical.

Then just a year later, on the anniversary of Stonewall, another march was held, the

Christopher Street Liberation Day March, and this time, thousands of people attended.

This March became an annual event and eventually turned into what we now know today as pride.

Martha Shelley was a key player at that first March.

She was a part of some now legendary groups, like the Daughters of Bolidas, as I said,

as well as the Gay Liberation

Front where she was one of their co-founders. Martha is also the author of The New Memoir, We Set the

Night on Fire. I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ&A with Martha Shelley.

So starting in 1963, you were 23 years old and joined the daughters of Boletus, which is,

you know, one of the first lesbian groups and organizations in the U.S.? Right.

But before you joined, though, how did you first hear about that group?

There was a book. I think it was the homosexual in America or something like that.

And at the end, there was an appendix, and it gave the address of the daughters of Boletus in New York. And so I found

...