Show Notes
MGH is back for another dive into the archives! Drawing from Eric’s own collection of rare interviews and other repositories of LGBTQ history, we’ll bring you the voices of seven LGBTQ change-makers and allies whose stories will take you from 1920s Harlem to the halls of power in 1980s D.C.
———
Audio sources:
- Christine Jorgensen Reveals, an LP recording of a 1957 interview between Christine Jorgensen and Nipsey Russell (credited as R. Russell), released in 1958 by J Records, New York, NY.
- Mabel Hampton Oral History Collection, used by permission of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
- Barney Frank interview via the Making Gay History archive.
- "Lou Sullivan and Dr. Ira Pauly Interview, Part 1," January 1988, GLBT Historical Society Film & Video Collection, courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society.
———
More from Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive
It was called the Fag Ward: a separate wing of the men’s penitentiary on NYC’s Welfare Island where gay inmates were kept in the 1920s and ’30s. Eric digs into the history of the infamous prison on what is now Roosevelt Island and shares archival glimpses into the lives of the queens it once held.
A century ago, at a notorious men’s penitentiary in New York City, gay inmates managed to find joy and community through their annual Christmas show, the “Fag Follies.” This season, join Eric Marcus as he delves into their lives and explores their world within and outside the prison walls.
When Lou Sullivan sought gender-affirming care in the 1970s, he was turned down. The reason? Lou identified as a gay man at a time when all trans people were assumed to be straight—a conflation of gender identity and sexual orientation that Lou made it his mission to dismantle.
“Are you gay?” a reporter asked U.S. Representative Barney Frank in 1987. “Yes, so what?” With that, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay. But the casualness of his reply hid decades of agonizing and a very real fear of torpedoing his political career.
Nancy May’s allyship was as personal as it was political. After all, she was married to a gay man. In 1965, her involvement in San Francisco’s homophile movement placed her at the center of a headline-making face-off between the police and the city’s LGBTQ community.