4.5: Research Resources

Discuss, Present, Create, Debate

• Discuss: Choose one or two resources listed in this chapter, and discuss them in relation to what you have learned about LGBTQ+ history.
• Present: Choose a key topic or event found in this chapter. Then locate one or two resources from the “Quick Dip” and “Deep Dive” sections and develop a presentation for the class. Explain the significance of the topic, and provide additional details that support your explanation.
• Create: What idea, person, or event from this chapter really moved you? Do more research on that idea, person, or event based on the resources in this chapter. Then create your own artistic response. Consider writing a poem, drawing a picture, or editing a photograph in a way that demonstrates both what you have learned and how you feel about the issue or person.
• Debate: Find a partner or split into groups, and choose a topic, idea, or controversy from this chapter. Have each partner or group present an opposing perspective on it. Use at least two of the resources in this chapter to support your argument.

Quick Dip: Online Resources

ACT UP Oral History Project

The ACT UP Oral History Project (http://actuporalhistory.org/) interviews surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), New York. The project includes almost two hundred interviews, with five-minute clips and full-text transcriptions of each interview available on the website. This is a critical primary source for understanding the impact of AIDS on the LGBTQ+ community.

Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History

The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender History (http://clgbthistory.org/) is an affiliate organization of the American Historical Association and holds annual meetings in conjunction with the association’s conference. The committee was founded in 1979 to promote the study of LGBTQ+ populations in the past and present. Its website features a collection of syllabi from LGBTQ+ history courses (national and international), citations for dissertations focused on LGBTQ+ history, and other resources.

Digital Transgender Archive

The Digital Transgender Archive (https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net) provides an online repository of digitized historical materials, originally digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, the archive is an international collaboration among more than fifty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. This collection serves as a critical resource for researchers who need access to materials on transgender history and culture.

Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section

The Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section of the Society of American Archivists promotes the preservation and research use of records documenting LGBTQ+ history (https://www2.archivists.org/groups/diverse-sexuality-and-gender-section).

Lesbian Herstory Archives

The Lesbian Herstory Archives, in New York City, is home to the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. The Herstories project digitizes and makes available online some of the Herstory Archives’ audio and video interviews (https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org). Among the important items in this collection are audio recordings of speeches and readings by Audre Lorde; audio interviews from the Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold project, which documents a lesbian community in Buffalo, New York; and video interviews from the Daughters of Bilitis Video Project. This resource makes available invaluable primary sources on the history of lesbian life in the United States.

LGBTQ+ Archives, Libraries, Research Centers, and Special Collections

Karla Strand, Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian at the University of Wisconsin, compiled a list of links to and information about LGBTQ+ library and archival resources. Although most of these are physical locations, many also have a digital presence, with either portions of their collections digitized or other materials freely available, such as curriculum documents and lesson plans that center on LGBTQ+ studies and history. See https://www.library.wisc.edu/gwslibrarian/bibliographies/lgbtq-studies/lgbtq-archives-united-states/.

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives

The University of Southern California Digital Library makes some items from the ONE Archives collection available online (https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/CS.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=Home). Founded in 1952, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives is the oldest active LGBTQ+ organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBTQ+ materials in the world. The digital collection encompasses over six thousand artifacts, including photographs, flyers, letters, periodicals, audio recordings, advertisements, and other materials, mostly from the 1960s to mid-1990s.

OutHistory

Founded in 2008 by Jonathan Ned Katz (author of Gay American History), the website OutHistory (http://outhistory.org/) tells the stories of LGBTQ+ individuals, from the 1600s to present. Visitors can browse entries by time period, location, and subject or search among a collection of documents from the LGBTQ+ movement. The site also includes timelines, oral histories, curated bibliographies, and other materials that make it a rich source for both research and teaching.

Washington Blade Archive

Established in 1969, the Washington Blade is one of the oldest LGBTQ+ publications in the United States. Beginning as a monthly publication and eventually transitioning to a weekly publication, the Blade covers current events from an LGBTQ+ perspective and the social and political progress of the gay rights movement (https://www.washingtonblade.com). The digital archive (https://www.washingtonblade.com/archives/) from the Washington, D.C., Public Library encompasses issues from 1969 to 1989, with other issues to be added. The current publication is updated online daily and includes local, national, and world LGBTQ+ news.

Deep Dive: Books and Film

After Stonewall: From the Riots to the Millennium, directed by John Scagliotti

This 1999 sequel to the award-winning Before Stonewall, After Stonewall chronicles LGBTQ+ history in the United States from 1969 through the end of the twentieth century. It includes interviews with prominent LGBTQ+ figures, including Dorothy Allison, Armistead Maupin, Barney Frank, and Barbara Gittings. The film also examines how the AIDS crisis affected and changed the gay rights movement. After Stonewall won Outstanding Documentary Feature at the 1999 Outfest Los Angeles and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 2000 (New York: First Run Features).

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, by Randy Shilts

Shilts, a former reporter for the Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, broke new ground with his incisive exploration of the AIDS crisis as it ensnared the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century. This award-winning volume, which serves as the basis for the film of the same name, lays out the missteps of the federal government in not addressing the crisis and the response from the gay community. It is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the impact of the AIDS crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).

Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community, directed by Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg

Originally released in 1984, Before Stonewall was restored in 2019 in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion. It chronicles LGBTQ+ history in the United States from the early twentieth century up until the Stonewall rebellion in 1969. The film uses archival footage and interviews with LGBTQ+ activists, writers, and historians, including Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Barbara Gittings, and Martin Duberman. Before Stonewall is a vital documentation of LGBTQ+ life in the United States before the watershed moments in the gay rights movement. The film won an Emmy Award in 1987 for Best Historical/Cultural Program and Best Research (New York: First Run Features).

Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, by Marcia M. Gallo

Gallo chronicles the history of the Daughters of Bilitis, a San Francisco–based organization committed to lesbian visibility and empowerment that emerged in the Cold War era. Through interviews with several dozen former members of the Daughters of Bilitis, Gallo preserves a critical piece of lesbian history and the history of the larger LGBTQ+ community (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2006).

Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A., by Jonathan Ned Katz

Katz’s work encompasses a broad view of gay and lesbian history in the United States, from the sixteenth century through the 1970s. It covers U.S. history from the earliest European settlers and Native Americans to contemporary times. The book includes reprints of rare documents representing over four hundred years of oppression, conflict, and struggle experienced by the gay and lesbian community (New York: Meridian, 1992).

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, by Lillian Faderman

This extensive history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States covers the 1950s through 2010s. Faderman’s lengthy volume, which was honored as a Stonewall Honor Book in Non-Fiction, is based on thorough research and interviews with more than 150 individuals who were part of the LGBTQ+ rights movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015).

Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis, by Kevin Mumford

This volume examines the history of Black gay men from the 1950s through the 1990s in the United States. It covers the lives of both famous and little-known Black gay activists, including James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, Joseph Beam, and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald. Mumford additionally analyzes how social movements inspired and marginalized Black gay men, and he draws on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents and personal papers, to support his arguments (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

Our Gay History in 50 States, by Zaylore Stout

Created as an educational resource for ages fifteen and up, this book tells the story of queer U.S. history, state by state. It covers significant people, places, and events and highlights struggles, successes, and contributions of the LGBTQ+ community in all fifty states (Minneapolis, MN: Inflection Point Media, 2019).

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism, edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz

This volume breaks ground in chronicling LGBTQ+ activism in the Latinx community in the 1970s through the 1990s. The experiences of fourteen activists from the United States and Puerto Rico are presented in essays and oral histories, offering a new perspective on the history of LGBTQ+ mobilization and activism within the Latinx community. Activists profiled in the book detail their work in LGBTQ+ organizations and discuss the impacts of racism and discrimination in the larger LGBTQ+ community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015).

Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America, by Martin Duberman

Originally published in 1993, Martin Duberman’s history of the Stonewall rebellion remains a definitive account of the landmark event in the gay rights movement. Through interviews with several who were present at Stonewall, Duberman describes the transformational event and its impact on U.S. gay rights history. A Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the City University of New York and author of multiple works on gay history, Duberman is a leading scholar in the field, and Stonewall is a scholarly yet accessible work that chronicles an important period in history (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019).

The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Robert Epstein

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician in California when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. This 1984 film documents Milk’s rise from a neighborhood activist to his work on the board of supervisors and his assassination in November 1978 at San Francisco’s city hall. In 2012, the film was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry (New York: New Yorker Films, 1984).

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution, by Susan Stryker

Stryker’s concise history of transgender life and activism in the United States is essential reading for those who want to understand the history of this community. A renowned researcher and professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Arizona, Stryker in this volume covers U.S. transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today. She highlights major texts and speeches in transgender history and provides brief biographies of key figures in the transgender community (New York: Seal Press, 2017)