Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

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.

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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.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Audio source: Louis Sullivan interviews #1, #2, and #4, GLBT Historical Society Film & Video Collection (GLBT-VIDEO), courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

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“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.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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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.   

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Raised in a religious home in 1920s and ’30s Texas, Jim Kepner pieced together a sense of his identity where he could—a homoerotic suggestion read between the lines here, a secretly acquired booklet there. His collection of gay-themed materials grew into the largest LGBTQ archive in the world.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Pat Bond joined the Women’s Army Corps in 1945, driven by patriotism and a desire to be among lesbians. The war required bodies, so the U.S. military turned a blind eye to service members’ sexual orientation. But as Pat witnessed firsthand, once WWII was won, the anti-gay witch hunts began.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Audio source: Oral history interview between Pat Bond and Allan Bérubé, September 30, 1990, World War II Project Papers (collection no. 1995-16), courtesy of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

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Mabel Hampton was a performer and domestic worker who lived as an out lesbian in New York City from 1920 until her death in 1989. Her recorded oral histories offer a rare firsthand account of Black lesbian life during the Harlem Renaissance.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Audio source: Mabel Hampton Oral History Collection, used by permission of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

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When news broke in 1952 that Christine Jorgensen, an ex-GI from the Bronx, had undergone gender-affirming surgery, she became a global sensation. In this 1957 interview, meet the thoughtful woman behind the frenzied headlines as she took on the burden of educating the public about trans people.

Visit our ⁠episode webpage⁠ for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode.

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Audio source: 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.

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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. 

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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.

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Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Stonewall National Monument in NYC as one of America’s "11 Most Endangered Historic Places." As an antidote to the threat of erasure facing the country’s only national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history, MGH is re-releasing its season about the Stonewall uprising with the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Parks Conservation Association.

MGH's Stonewall 50 season first aired in June 2019. Visit our ⁠season webpage⁠ to access background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as episode transcripts. 

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