Madeline Davis

Madeline Davis (July 7, 1940 – April 28, 2021) was an American LGBT activist and historian. In 1970 she was a founding member of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, the first gay rights organization in Western New York. Davis became the first openly lesbian delegate at a major party national convention, speaking at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

Early life Madeline Davis was born in Buffalo, New York, on July 7, 1940, to a factory worker at Ford Motor plant and a homemaker, Harriet, who had attended nursing school.

At 16 she got a job at the North Jefferson branch of the Buffalo Public Library. In the 1970s, Davis organized "Legislative Night", at which local candidates for public office, for the first time in Buffalo political history, answered questions and sought endorsements. to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Miami, Florida. At the DNC, Davis was the first lesbian to urge the party to include gay rights as part of the 1972 platform of the Democratic Party. Davis became a member of the Democratic Committee, and worked within the party for the acceptance of gays and lesbians.

In 1988, she addressed the American Library Association's 95th conference, on AIDS in the workplace. Based on oral histories of 45 women, The archives were moved to the E. H. Butler Library at Buffalo State College in 2009 and called the Dr. Madeline Davis LGBTQ Archive of Western New York. The archives house the largest collection of LGBTQ+ documents in the region. and head of preservation in the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library System,

In 2009, Davis was the subject of the documentary film Swimming with Lesbians, directed by David B. Marshall. The documentary outlined her work with the archives as well as her personal life and that of her close friends. The film won the Mary Elizabeth Knight Award (a juried award for best local film) at the 2009 ImageOUT film festival in Rochester, New York.

In 2012, Davis was inducted into The Advocate's Hall of Fame. Davis was the inductee representing 1972, the year she became the first openly gay delegate to a major party's national convention. and became the first gay liberation record.

Davis continued to perform women's music throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1983, Davis produced a tape of original lesbian music titled Daughter of All Women which included the songs "Stonewall Nation" and "Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold," which would later form both the title and the epigraph of the history book she co-wrote with Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy. She also organized and performed benefit concerts for the gay community in Buffalo. Over the course of her career, she composed over 45 songs, most with gay and lesbian themes. She was a founding member of HAG Theatre, the first all lesbian theater company in the U.S. Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association, 1995 Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association, 1993

Owen Augspurger Award from the Buffalo History Museum, 2013 Honorary doctorate from SUNY Buffalo State College, 2016

Publications