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. The same year, she taught with Margaret Small the first course on lesbianism in the United States, titled "Lesbianism 101" at the University at Buffalo. In 1993, she co-authored Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, a history of gay women in Buffalo, New York, that won awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Anthropological Association and the Lambda Literary Foundation. She also participated in the founding of the HAG Theatre Company, the first all-lesbian theater company in the U.S., in 1994. 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. She was the oldest of three children and described a loving, affectionate upbringing in Buffalo's East Side, with parents she compared to the 1950s sitcom family Ozzie and Harriet and describing herself as a "nice Jewish girl". She had an early love of books and libraries, fascinated with University at Buffalo's Lockwood Memorial Library, and at 16 got a job at the North Jefferson branch of the public library. She graduated from Bennett High School in 1958 and earned a college scholarship, where she got a job working as a page at Lockwood. In the 1960s Davis graduated with a degree in English and a master's in library science from the University at Buffalo. Around this time, Davis also became a regular at Buffalo's beatnik coffeehouses and began singing in them. Politics and research Davis was a founder of the Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier in 1970 and eventually became president of the organization. She began by organizing a library for the group but, lacking publications, she and other members ended up creating Fifth Freedom, the earliest magazine for the LGBT community in western New York. 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. Davis marched and spoke at the first