Oral Histories of African American LGBTQ People Collected
BY Chris Howard-Woods ON July 22, 2015
From the New York Times, July 20, “Harlem Archive Collects Past Stories of Those Who Wrestled With Their Sexuality“:
Ms. Thompson, now 65, is part of a new oral history project in Harlem that captures the experiences of 13 pioneers in New York City’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Their stories tell of the hardship and discrimination they faced within their own families at a time when expressing their sexuality was neither encouraged nor accepted.
…Their stories will be shared Tuesday night at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library system. The project will become a permanent part of the center’s “In the Life Archive,” a trove of thousands of books, photographs, original manuscripts and other works produced by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender New Yorkers. “In the Life” refers both to a phrase used for those lifestyles in black culture, and to the title of a 1986 anthology of black gay writers that was edited by Joseph Beam….
For making this project happen OutHistory congratulates Steven G. Fullwood, assistant curator at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Peter Wright, a program coordinator at the Harlem center for older adults run by Services and Advocacy for G.L.B.T. Elders, known as SAGE.
Comments