Sallie Maranda Fiske

Sallie Maranda Fiske (1928-2004) was a pioneering television journalist and a lesbian activist in California. She was among the first women to work in broadcast journalism in Los Angeles. In 1977, during Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign, she disclosed her sexuality on air during her afternoon talk show on KCOP. She was fired shortly after, ending her television career. Fiske went on to become an activist in California’s gay rights movement, serving as a press secretary for the campaign against the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned LGBTQ+ teachers from working in public schools. She later worked in West Hollywood politics, and in 1985 founded the West Hollywood Paper, a community weekly covering local politics and LGBTQ+ issues that ran for two years. She continued to freelance and edited “Queer Blood,” about the origins of HIV. Fiske died at her home in West Hollywood on February 19, 2004, at age 75.