Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Conflict has context. In the first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall 50 season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to hear voices from the turbulent 1960s and take you to the tinderbox that was Greenwich Village on the eve of an uprising.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

A special season of Making Gay History to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Hear the voices of the rioters, and of the activists who turned a riot into gay liberation—a new and expansive phase in the LGBTQ rights movement.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Brooklyn-born Martha Shelley was a rebel. She didn’t like being told what to do, wear, or say. She hated the lesbian bars, and even after joining the Daughters of Bilitis she strained against the self-imposed limits of the homophile movement. All along, the 1960s revolution called to her.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Dick Leitsch came to New York City in the early 1960s to smoke cigarettes, drink cocktails, and pick up handsome young men. He got his wish and then some, but the native Kentuckian also took on the police and political power brokers to successfully fight entrapment and discrimination.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Ernestine Eckstein is an iconic figure from the 1960s homophile movement—from photos showing her as the only African American woman at the earliest protests, to her trailblazing cover story in The Ladder. Now we can put a voice to those images with a never-before-heard 1965 interview.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Bayard Rustin was a champion of the Black civil rights movement—mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. But because he was gay and out, he faced bigotry inside and outside the movement. The FBI and Sen. Strom Thurmond tried to destroy him. But he persisted.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Reed Erickson was a trans man with a big checkbook, a pet leopard, big dreams for a better world for gay people and trans folks—and he single-handedly financed ONE Incorporated and founded the first trans rights organization. Morgan M Page and AJ Lewis join MGH to help bring Reed’s story to life.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

“I’m a bisexual ki-ki s.o.b. butch-femme.” Stella Rush railed against rules and binaries: butch/femme, gay/straight. Fighting for social survival and wielding a pen, Stella (aka Sten Russell) carved out a place for herself on ONE magazine’s mostly male 1950s masthead and on the pages of The Ladder.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

ONE, the first national gay magazine, attracted the attention of the FBI and was at the heart of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case. Dorr Legg, Martin Block, and Jim Kepner were key to ONE’s success. But don’t expect them to agree on its origin story.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———

Investigated by the FBI, blackmailed, but bold enough to keep going, Billye Talmadge was one of the early members of the earliest lesbian rights organization in the U.S., the Daughters of Bilitis.

Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our ⁠Patreon community⁠.

———