I'm Eric Marcus and this is Making Gay History.

By the time I sat down to interview the dynamic duo Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in 1989,

I thought I knew a lot about them because of their decades long and high profile roles as

LGBTQ civil rights activists.

Phil and Dell founded Daughters of Belitis in 1955, the first organization for lesbians. Their names and faces kept popping up in my research.

Phyllis with her black ponytail, big glasses and megawatt smile,

Dale with her round face, heavy-litted eyes, and silver close-cropped hair.

From recorded interviews, I knew their voices too.

Phil's was full of smoke.

Dell's was a smoother full of smoke.

Del's was a smoother grade of gravel.

The volume always kept on a whispery low.

Phyllis and Del found each other while working at the same magazine in Seattle in 1950. Three years later

on Valentine's Day, 1953, they moved into an apartment on Castro Street in San Francisco.

The Castro was a very different neighborhood back then, working class Catholic, very straight.

While Phyllis and Del had each other, they longed to find community.

And that longing led them to plant the seeds of a national social movement.

There's one thing you need to know before you hear Phyllis and Del speak for themselves.

I asked them a dumb question about their relationship based on a stereotype I'm not sure I even believed in.

I still cringe when I hear myself asking them about their quote classic Butch-Fem relationship.

Fortunately for me, Phyllis and Del were tolerant of what I didn't know,

and were very patient in helping me understand what I needed to learn.

...