Professor Sally Gearhart Portrayed in Miniseries 'When We Rise'

AUTOSTRADDLE -- Gearhart grew up in Appalachaia and studied theatre and “public address” at Sweet Briar College, Bowling Green State University and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She worked as a teacher in Texas and the Midwest before moving to San Francisco in 1970. Eventually, she became a radical lesbian activist, working with Harvey Milk to defeat California Proposition 6 and later appearing in a number of documentaries and anthologies about LGBTQ activism in the ’70s.

In 1973, she became the first out lesbian to obtain a tenure-track faculty position at San Francisco State University, where she pioneered one of the country’s very first women and gender studies program.