gay rights rally at the New York State Capitol in 1971, and participated in the original effort to lobby that state's legislature on behalf of the gay rights movement. As part of the Political Action Committee of Mattachine, she confronted the Buffalo Vice Squad on the issue of entrapment and gay bar raids. In 1972, she became the first openly lesbian delegate in a major political convention when she was elected as a George McGovern delegate for New York's 37th Congressional district 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, speaking late into the night with a call to recognize "basic civil rights". Davis became a member of the Democratic Committee, and worked within the party for the acceptance of gays and lesbians. In 1972, while studying for a master's degree in women's history, Davis, with Margaret Small, taught the first course on lesbianism in the United States: Lesbianism 101 in the American studies department at University of Buffalo. About 20 students enrolled and up to another 20 audited that first course. Davis taught a renamed version of the course, "Woman + Woman", in 1978, with a focus on lesbian history. The interview tapes from this course's final project were used as a foundation for the Buffalo Women's Oral History Project, begun in 1978, seeking to document the lives of older lesbians. In 1973, Davis organized a Pride workshop for friends and families of gays and lesbians, which later became the local PFLAG chapter and continued to chair yearly Pride workshops on GLBT history and culture. The day before the 1976 DNC, she spoke at a protest near Madison Square Garden. "I don't want to have to be afraid of going to jail for being in love and doing something about it", she declared. In 1988, she addressed the American Library Association's 95th Conference on AIDS in the Workplace. Davis lectured on women's history, sex, and gender issues at a number of universities. In 1993, with Elizabeth L. Kennedy, Davis co-authored Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, gathering 14 years of research into the history of gay women in Buffalo from the 1930s to the 1960s. Based on oral histories of 45 women, the book won awards