Madeleine Tress

Actress Cynthia Nixon read as Tress in the 2017 film The Lavender Scare. In the 2021 six -part documentary Pride, Tress was portrayed by actress Alia Shawkat.

In 2006 Tress self-published a memoir titled Rainbows on My Ceiling. She hoped her story would have a wider readership as in the book she wrote "I...want my book to be an Oprah selection." The book documented her childhood as well as her activism in the gay rights movement. The book also includes information about her long term relationship with partner Sibley. Tress donated a copy of this book to the San Francisco Public Library. In this memoir she wrote extensively about her life with Sibley after she died. According to Tress, "There is nothing like the death of a loved one to split your life apart. You feel like you are both before and after...Like the Tlingit Indians I believe that the rainbow is a communication device from the living to the dead."

In 1998 Tress wrote a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Examiner arguing President Bill Clinton should step down as a result of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. She wrote he should resign after giving a "strong State of the Union address, offer an apology to his wife and daughter (if nothing else for his stupidity in being set up) and turn over the reins to Vice President Al Gore."

In 1994 Tress published an article on Judaism titled, "Halakha, Zionism, and Gender: The Case of Gush Emunim" which appeared in the book, Identity Politics & Women: cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective. The book was edited by Valentine M. Moghadam.

Tress wrote about Jewish philanthropy. Her work was published in a 1991 essay titled, "Tradition and Transition in Jewish Women's Philanthropy."

Tress and her partner Jan Sibley attended LGBT marches in San Francisco yearly starting in 1983. They also attended the 1983 LGBT March on Washington. In Rainbows on My Ceiling, she documented her participation in this march writing, "Gays had just been barred from the military. Cammemeyer was kicked out of the Army for being a lesbian and thousands of gay men were dying of AIDS...It was the right time to tell Washington how we felt."

In the 1980s she owned a San Francisco business which specialized in cat artifacts named Wholly Cats.

She lived for decades with her partner, teacher Jan Sibley, who she met in 1962.

In the 1950s, Tress worked as a business economist for the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. In 1958 she was interrogated by the U.S. government for being a lesbian while working as a civil servant. After losing her job in the State Department due to the Lavender scare, Tress began working as a lawyer.

Madeleine Tress (1932–2009) was an American employment lawyer, LGBT rights activist and memoirist who worked in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. She lost her job working for the U.S. government in the 1950s as a direct result of the lavender scare.

Tress was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1932 to a Jewish family.