Born in South Bend, Indiana, Ernestine Eckstein (1941-1992) first became involved in activism as a student at Indiana University, where she worked with the NAACP during the black civil rights movement. Eckstein joined the more progressive Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) after moving to New York City in May 1963. Even though she had been attracted to several female teachers and friends in her youth, she did not fully understand the concept of homosexuality until being introduced to the city’s gay community: “I’d never known anyone who was homosexual …. Never heard the word mentioned …. This was a kind of blank that had never been filled in by anything — reading, experience, anything — until after I came to New York.” Said Ernestine Eckstein in 1966 She soon came across ads in the Village Voice for Mattachine Society of New York lectures, where she learned about the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Seeking to become politically active in the LGBT rights movement, she joined both “homophile” organizations. City directories list Eckstein as living at 437 East 12th Street in the East Village from 1964 to 1970, though historian Marcia Gallo notes that she left for the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968. Eckstein is listed under her real name, Ernestine D. Eppenger, in the directories (some gay rights activists used pseudonyms to protect their identities). Eckstein’s time in New York was her most influential as an LGBT rights activist. In the mid-1960s, she was vice president of DOB’s New York chapter and participated in two 1965 pickets to bring attention to discrimination against homosexuals: the first July 4th “Annual Reminder Day” in Philadelphia and an October 23rd picket in front of the White House. Photos indicate that she was the only participant of color and one of a handful of women. DOB activists Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin (real name Kay Lahusen) conducted her only known interview, published in the June 1966 issue of The Ladder (1957-1972), DOB’s national magazine, in which Eckstein became the first lesbian of color to be featured on the cover (in 1964, a year after Gittings became editor of The Ladder, photos of real lesbians replaced line drawings on the cover). In the interview, Eckstein speaks of the importance of LGBT people getting more involved in courtroom action in order to change laws and gain public exposure for gay rights, as was already happening in the black civil rights movement. Eckstein’s wish to bring more progressive changes to DOB was met with challenges, such as when her plan to have gay rights leader Frank Kameny speak to the New York chapter was ultimately overruled. By June 1966, she stepped down as vice president. Eventually growing tired of the conservatism and infighting, she left for the Bay Area and became involved in black feminist issues with Black Women Organized for Action (BWOA). Little is known about her later life. She died in San Pablo, CA, at the age of 51.

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