The explosion of gay visibility following the street rebellion at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 brought for the first time tens of thousands of lesbians and gay men out of the closets and into headline news around the world. Never before had so many gay people at one time stepped into the spotlight of mainstream American politics, culture, and entertainment. More than any city, New York became the center of the new Gay Power movement, almost overnight. And for the next decade, New York City served as the focal point for gay protest and politics. In Gay Power, David Eisenbach chronicles the tumultuous first wave of the modern gay rights movement. From the first ever gay student group launched at Columbia University in 1965 to the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activist Alliance, and the vanguard organizations that emerged from the Stonewall riots, the author draws on archival material and dozens of firsthand accounts from individuals who built the movement. For unlike their predecessors, this new generation of lesbians and gay men spoke as a community, established political clout with elected officials, appeared openly on television and in the press as gay people, demanded equal rights with heterosexuals, and pioneered protest tactics like the zap, which later ACT UP employed famously during the 1980s. Gay Power is a complex, politically charged portrait of the birth of the modern gay rights movement.