6 25 297 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Edward Benfield Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Richard Davis Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Richard Davis, 1948-- Description An account of the resource Interested in listening to this audio? Email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> for access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/29/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release was used and all rights belong to RHP. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s to present. Richard Allen Davis was born in St. Paul Minnesota in 1948 and was raised in what he describes as a “nominally Methodist” family in the Twin Cities area. Davis accepted that he was a gay man in 1973 while he was attending law school at the University of Minnesota. By the summer of 1973 was publicly “out”. After completing law school Davis volunteered with Minnesota gay rights activist Stephen Endean and was active in the campaign to support a 1978 ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in St. Paul. When the voters of St. Paul that ordinance in a referendum Endean became convinced that state level progress was no longer possible in Minnesota. Endean moved to DC to become the Director of the Gay Rights National Lobby (GRNL), hiring Davis to work for him as the head of Right to Privacy Foundation - an organization tasked with performing research and analysis in support of the Gay Rights National Lobby’s efforts. Steve Endean was forced out of the Directorship in 1983, and Davis left the Right to Privacy Foundation shortly afterward. He remained in Washington DC, working for the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service until his retirement in 2010. Davis was introduced to DC gay community by Endean, who had formed many connections with the community through his work as an activist. Davis quickly became an active participant in the community socially. Davis has been a member of several Washington-area gay social organizations, including The Washington Bridge (an Asian/Non-Asian gay men’s social club that later became Asians and Friends Washington) from 1983 to 1992, and DC Lambda Squares (a gay and lesbian Contra Dancing/ Country and Western Line Dancing group) from the late 1980s until 1999. Davis has also been an active member of Bet Mishpachah (an LGBT Synagogue in the Dupont Circle area) and All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Mount Pleasant. Davis was involved in competitive swimming from 1970 to 1999, starting in his junior year of college. After moving to Washington DC he joined the DC Aquatics Club (DCAC), an all gay US Masters Swimming team that competed in local and national events. With the DCAC, Davis competed in the Gay Games in 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, and 1998 winning two medals: a bronze medal in the 100 Yard Mixed Medley Relay in 1982 and a gold medal in the Individual 200 Yard Breaststroke in 1986. In 2007 Davis auditioned for and was accepted as a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC. He remains a part of the organization to this day. Davis relates a number of remembrances from his time in these groups, especially his experiences competing in the Gay Games where he met and befriended swimmer Jay Frisette who went on to be elected to the Arlington County Council. Davis shares his memories of gay bars and social centers in Washington DC in the 80s and 90s, including the Lambda Rising bookstore, Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, The Lost and Found, Tracks, The Fraternity House (later Omega), and the Chesapeake House. Other topics discussed include the anxiety of the early days of the AIDS epidemic and how it affected every part of the gay community of the time and the ways that he believes the LGBT community of Washington DC has changed since the 1980s. Subject The topic of the resource Oral history with Richard Davis, who shares his remembrances from over thirty years of active participation in the Washington DC LGBT community, including his work with the Gay Rights National Lobby and the Right to Privacy Foundation, competing as a swimmer in five consecutive Gay Games, and singing in the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC. 1970s 1980s 1990s Activism Advocacy groups Dances Gay Games Law Nightlife The Fraternity House Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Edward+Benfield">Edward Benfield</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Barry+Robert+%22Bart%22+Forbes%2C+1956--">Barry Robert "Bart" Forbes, 1956--</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Robert Robert "Bart" Forbes, 1956-- Description An account of the resource Barry Robert “Bart” Forbes recounts his long career as a public television producer and political activist working on behalf of suburban gays and lesbians in Fairfax County, Virginia. Forbes’ accomplishments include the the founding of the Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizen’s Association and the creation of Gay Fairfax, a pioneering gay and lesbian newsmagazine television show. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=7+October%2C+2015">7 October, 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1980s-- Barry Robert “Bart” Forbes was born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1956 and spent his formative years in the small town of Newark in Upstate New York. After studying media education at Colgate University Forbes began a career in public television, working at WGBH in Boston and WFME in Orlando before being recruited for a job as the Director of Development for WAMU (NPR affiliate) in Washington DC, in 1987. He was first introduced to the gay and lesbian community of Washington DC in 1987 by his friend Urvashi Vaid, a leader in the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) at the time. Forbes quickly became an active member of the community, serving as the Vice President of the Alexandria Gay Citizens Organization and later as the founding President of the Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizen’s Association (FLGCA). Forbes created Virginians for Justice in his living room, an organization which eventually became known as Equality Virginia. Forbes was also active in local politics, working as the Finance Chair for the Lee District of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee. He was an elected delegate to the Virginia Democratic State Convention for gubernatorial candidates Doug Wilder in 1989 and Mary Sue Terry in 1993. Forbes strived to use his experience in both the gay community and local politics to act as a bridge between the suburban gays and lesbians of Fairfax County and the conservative community in which they lived. Forbes believed that the best way for gays and lesbians to fight discrimination and win acceptance was to publicly “be themselves” - demonstrating that they were integral parts of the community. Forbes put this philosophy into action with the creation of the public access television program Gay Fairfax, which premiered in May 1989 and aired weekly until 1993. Gay Fairfax was one of the first all-volunteer gay and lesbian newsmagazine television programs in the country to focus on a non-urban area, covering community forums, organization meetings, news events important to the gay and lesbian community and long-form stories about gay and lesbian issues. As producer Forbes focused on teaching his volunteers the skills to create their own media, which resulted in the creation of several spin-off programs including the soap opera Inside/Outside the Beltway and the newsmagazine One in Ten. Gay Fairfax allowed the gay and lesbian communities to be the media rather be covered by the media - regaining control of the way they were perceived by the larger public. Forbes remains active in public access television, working as a lobbyist for the Alliance for Community Media and the National Organization for Public Education in Government Access. Forbes also discusses his long friendship with former Republican congressman John Hinson and his involvement in the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) in the early 2000s. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autumn+Eastman">Autumn Eastman</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Helene+Bloom%2C+1943--">Helene Bloom, 1943--</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Helene Bloom, 1943- Description An account of the resource Want access to this audio? Request access by emailing <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=10+November+2015+">10 November 2015 </a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP. Subject The topic of the resource Helene Bloom is a lesbian woman and is co-owner with Fran Levine of Soho Tea & Coffee at 2150 P St NW, Washington, D.C., in Dupont Circle. Soho is the oldest independent tea and coffee house in Washington, D.C. Abstract A summary of the resource. 1970s-2010s Helene Bloom is co-owner, with Fran Levine, of Soho Tea & Coffee at 2150 P St NW, Washington, DC's Dupont Circle neighborhood. She describes the LGBTQ community in Washington DC, from 1974 to present. She remembers demonstrating and participating in marches in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s for gay causes and women’s movement and meeting ]some of the early activists such as Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Midge Costanza and Lily Tomlin. She speaks about various LGBTQ spaces in Dupont Circle such as bars, dance clubs and how Soho served as a gathering space. She discusses her professional experience and discrimination against her because she was a lesbian working in the United States government (National Institute for Mental Health, Health & Human Services, Department of Transportation) and as Executive Director of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She also remembers the AIDS Epidemic in terms of how the LGBTQ community reacted and the personal loss of a friend. She describes her personal life, being married to a man at a young age, the challenges of coming out in the 70’s and her family’s reaction. She speaks to themes the loss of gay gathering spaces and continued dispersion as LGBTQ lifestyles are more accepted and integrated into mainstream ways of life. 1970s 1980s 1990s Coffee houses HIV/AIDS Lesbians Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Elizabeth Lyttle Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Jean Ponton Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Jean Ponton, 1953- Description An account of the resource Jean Ponton worked as a volunteer for Gay Fairfax TV, an important LGBT television show. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights are reserved. Subject The topic of the resource Jean Ponton (b.1953) Gay Fairfax TV Dr. Jean Ponton is a historian for the Defense Department who worked as a volunteer for Gay Fairfax TV beginning in 1990 while she was coming out as a lesbian and through Gay Fairfax’s transition to another show called Gay Spectrum. Dr. Ponton worked as a volunteer for gay and lesbian TV through 2000, when the last legacy program that spun off from Gay Fairfax ended. She usually operated a camera, but also did audio, lighting, and set design, as well as occasional floor directing and set directing. Gay Fairfax is important as a very early gay and lesbian TV show. Gay Fairfax began in 1990 and the first show aired in 1991. The Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizens Association, which advocated for equality for lesbians and gays, sponsored the show. It was aired by Channel 10 TV, a public access station run by Cox. Gay Fairfax TV received good support from Channel 10 throughout its airing lifetime. Gay Fairfax TV was produced entirely by volunteers, including its executive producers, Barry Forbes and Rob Wilson. Gay Fairfax TV was a public access cable television show in a “talking heads” format by and for the gay and lesbian community. The programming presented issues of importance to gays and lesbians throughout the country as well as local color. Its mission was to present positive images of gays and lesbians in a news and information magazine-format. It aimed to make a difference in the wider community, as well as for gays and lesbians. Dr. Ponton highlights how far gays and lesbians have come in our struggle for equality in the 25 years since Gay Fairfax’s first show. Topics covered on Gay Fairfax include gays in the military, commitment ceremonies (marriage was only a dream), gay adoption, and child custody. Organizations such as PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, SMYAL (Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League), DC Lambda Squares (square dancing), and the Gay and Lesbian Chorus also were showcased on Gay Fairfax TV. These issues and organizations were “upfront and personal” during Gay Fairfax’s lifetime. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Diane+Barnes">Diane Barnes</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Isaiah+Poole%2C+1954-">Isaiah Poole, 1954-</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available, MP3. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Isaiah Poole, 1954- Description An account of the resource Isaiah Poole discusses his career as a journalist and advocate for newsroom diversity, including founding the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Washington Association of Black Journalists. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=9%2F2%2F2016">9/2/2016</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1982 - 2003 Poole describes struggling as a young adult in Washington, D.C., to reconcile his gay identity and Christian upbringing; finding community in the local prayer meetings organized for African-American gays and lesbians by Dr. James Tinney; and taking part in the early activities of Faith Temple, which formed in 1982 under Tinney's leadership. He recounts details of his early career as a journalist and an advocate of newsroom diversity, which included roles in founding the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the Washington Association of Black Journalists. After nine years at the Washington Times, the departure of other gay-identified staff from the newspaper prompted Poole in 1991 to take a new position at LifeLink, an advocacy organization for people living with HIV. He later resumed his journalism career, met his current spouse, and completed a university degree in New York. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Vincent+E.+Slatt">Vincent E. Slatt</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Robert+%22Bob%22+Roehr">Robert "Bob" Roehr</a> Location The location of the interview. Logan Circle neighborhood, Washington DC Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 file, .m4a format Plays online, using Music Player for Google Drive. <a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_rmd0YNI039WGN1SFp6MTlLUEE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_rmd0YNI039WGN1SFp6MTlLUEE</a> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:27:34 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Robert "Bob" Roehr, 1949 - Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=3%2F12%2F2017">3/12/2017</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=No+restrictions+on+access%3B+no+restrictions+on+use.">No restrictions on access; no restrictions on use.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-1990s. Born and raised in Barrington, Rhode Island, 28 April 1949. Briefly discusses his attendance of Marrietta College, Marietta Ohio, and his work there with local cable television station as his entree into journalism. His move to Washington DC in August 1971, to attend the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, his first sexual appearances and initial coming out. His work with the State Department, his overseas posting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and later work on the press team at the State Department during Kissinger's tenure. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Autumn+Eastman">Autumn Eastman</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Fran+Levine">Fran Levine</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data ma4, 25 MB Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 51:48 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Fran Levine, 1952- Description An account of the resource Oral history with Fran Levine, co-owner of Soho Tea & Coffee at 2150 P St NW, Washington, DC in Dupont Circle, the oldest independent Tea and Coffee house in DC who identifies as a lesbian woman. Interview by Autumn Eastman. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=10+November+2015">10 November 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1980s-- Fran Levine is co-owner of Soho Tea & Coffee at 2150 P St NW, Washington, D.C., in the Dupont Circle area. Soho is the oldest independent tea and coffee house in D.C. and the only one left in Dupont. She describes the changes Dupont Circle from the late 1980s to present, both as an independent business owner and in the LGBTQ community that congregates there. She speaks about various LGBTQ spaces in Dupont Circle such as bars, dance clubs and how Soho served as a gathering space. She discusses the AIDS epidemic in terms of how the LGBTQ community reacted and how people who were diagnosed with the once-unknown disease were treated by health care professionals. She additionally describes her personal life, the challenges of coming out in the 70’s and 80’s and how it still impacts her life today. She speaks to themes the loss of gay gathering spaces and continued dispersion as LGBTQ lifestyles are more accepted and integrated into mainstream ways of life. She also discusses the role of Millennials in LGBTQ acceptance. Interview by Autumn Eastman. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Caitlin+Firmage">Caitlin Firmage</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Randy+K.+">Randy K. </a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. (HIPS office, 906 H Street) Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data m4a sound file Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Randy K., 1967- Description An account of the resource Oral history with Randy K., who talk about his work as an advocate and activist and work with D.C.'s HIPS program, which provides harm-reduction services for sex workers. Interview conducted by Caitlin Firmage. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=4+December%2C+2015">4 December, 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s-- Randy K. was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan in 1967. His family moved to D.C. in 1974, and he has lived in the city since then, and sees it as his home. Randy grew up in the Adams Morgan neighborhood with his mother and four siblings. He knew he was gay from a young age and was often bullied in school. He was also caught up in the juvenile judicial system, and as a result became involved with the Big Brothers of America program. The program matched him up with Congressman Mickey Leland. Leland helped Randy with his schoolwork and helped him start taking horseback riding lessons. He served as a mentor to Randy until his death in 1989, and remained the person to whom Randy would attribute much of his success later in life. As a teenager in the 1980s, Randy often walked through the Dupont Circle neighborhood and observed the many gay clubs in the area. He would often stand in front of them and watch patrons leave, afraid to be seen going to the clubs himself. In 1984, Leland flew Randy to Houston, where the latter took aptitude tests and was diagnosed with dyslexia. This discovery made Randy feel pessimistic about the trouble he was having in school, and he decided to drop out as a result. After he dropped out, Randy started going to gay bars such as the Clubhouse, Tracks, Bachelor’s Mill, and Brass Rail. Around this time he also began engaging in sex work, as well as burglary, to make money. It was during this period that Randy first became acquainted with HIPS, a harm-reduction organization that provides services for sex workers and drug users. Randy recalls HIPS volunteers providing him and other sex workers with condoms, candy, hot chocolate, and clothes. Randy was diagnosed with HIV on January 28th, 1986, the day of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. He was devastated by the diagnosis, and remembers wishing he were on the space shuttle because he dreaded the thought of his friends and family seeing him waste away. Randy was in the Job Corps at the time, but was asked to move out of his dorm after his diagnosis because doctors there couldn’t help him. He was given the address of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a D.C. health center that specializes in HIV/AIDS care. Despite the medications he received from the clinic, Randy felt hopeless about his illness, and as a result smoked crack, drank, and wouldn’t take his medication for many years after his diagnosis. He eventually decided to stop taking drugs, start taking his meds regularly, and turn his life around. Randy says that “HIV is the reason [he is] here today” because if not for his diagnosis, he would not have started living a healthier life. Randy lost many friends during the AIDS epidemic; he remembers going to “three funerals a week” and feeling numb to death. After being in and out of prison for many years, Randy was released in 2011 and decided that he wanted things to be different, and to stick to his plan of going back to school. He took part in Narcotics Anonymous, began attending church and eventually graduated from UDC, where he studied social work with an emphasis on public health. Randy came to HIPS as an HIV activist and advocate, working with HIPS staff member Earline Budd. He then met with HIPS harm reduction service manager Debbie Macmillan, who told him he should apply for the community health worker position, because of his HIV status and his relationship with the community. Randy loves his job, which involves helping make daily life easier for people living with chronic illness, because he feels that HIPS is a safe space in which he can be himself. He also feels that the organization does a good job of welcoming its clients, many of whom are transgender women, because the whole staff is very caring and committed to the work that HIPS does, and because many HIPS workers share experiences that the organization’s clientele also struggle with. He especially appreciates the commitment of administrators Cyndee Clay, Elizabeth MacIntosh, and Sara Knotts. Some services HIPS provides, in addition to the outreach van, which Randy says clients flock to “like ants on a sugar hill,” include a syringe exchange, showers, a clothing closet, a 24/7 hotline, laundry service, legal help, and linking clients to medical care. Randy is also a commissioner on the Ryan White Planning Council, which plans for the allocation of HIV/AIDS services and resources in the D.C. metropolitan area. This position allows him to serve as a voice for people with HIV/AIDS in the D.C. area. Randy feels that although organizations like HIPS and Whitman-Walker have pushed against the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, this stigma is still a major barrier towards seeking care for the infection or disease. Randy is glad that, as a community health worker, he is part of the fight against HIV/AIDS and the stigma associated with it. Bars and clubs Brass Rail ClubHouse HIV/AIDS Nightlife Restaurants Whitman-Walker Clinic Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Jerry+Wei">Jerry Wei</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ken+South">Ken South</a> Location The location of the interview. Dupont Circle neighborhood, Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available (.m4a, 14.5 MB) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) Duration: 1:21:17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Ken South, 1945- Description An account of the resource Ken South recounts his coming(s) out, his relationship with religion, his work on HIV/AIDS, and his advocacy on LGBT aging issues. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=9+June+2016">9 June 2016</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1980s- present Around the same time Ken South had his first experience with another gay man, he also got involved with the United Methodist Church. After coming more fully out, after study at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, he was defrocked by the West Virginia Conference of the Methodist Church and discharged from the Navy Chaplaincy. He was later ordained by the United Church of Christ. He began his AIDS work with AID Atlanta and later came to Washington, DC to work with the AIDS Institute of KOBA Associates and the AIDS National Interfaith Network. He was a staffer on Ronald Reagan’s President’s Commission on the AIDS Epidemic. Later, the worked on LGBT aging issues with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and served as president of the Prime Timers DC Chapter. Discussion also covered: ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act),Windows (DIK Bar),DC Eagle, Gay Marriage, SAGE, the FDA, and the American Society on Aging. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Moriah+Petty">Moriah Petty</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Thomas+Bower">Thomas Bower</a> Location The location of the interview. Interviewee's home in Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:14:41 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Tom Bower, 1948- Description An account of the resource Want access to this audio? Please email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> to request access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=19+March+2016">19 March 2016</a> Subject The topic of the resource Moriah Petty interviews Tom Bower, a Catholic gay-identified man who has lived in DC since the 1960s working in museums and organizing the LGBTQ Catholics and greater gay community. Abstract A summary of the resource. 1950s-present. Tom Bower was an early organizer of the Washington DC chapter of Dignity, a group for Catholic LGBT-identified individuals and remains an active participant. It is a support system and a social justice organization that donates to community groups. Tom speaks of his dual-identity as Catholic and gay and his personal choice to stick with his faith. He describes the ways Dignity was embraced by DC Catholics and the times when they faced discrimination and rejection form the Church. Tom has lived in Washington DC since the 1960s and worked in the Smithsonian museums. Due to the intellectual and artistic leaning of his job and social circles, Tom found fairly easy acceptance as an out gay man. He describes attending the first Pride parade (more of a rally), the demographics of the gay community over the decades, the gay job network, and popular gathering places such as leather bar The Eagle, P St. Beach and Lamda Rising bookstore. He shares memories of the AIDS crisis including seeing the memorial quilt on the Mall and volunteering for the Whitman Walker clinic. Tom reflects on his childhood growing up in the Midwest with zero visibility of LGBT individuals and of knowing his sexual orientation but not how to express it. He is out to his family. Tom Bower is interviewed by Moriah Petty. 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Catholic Gay men Religion Religious facilities Whitman-Walker Clinic Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Jeffrey Donahoe Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Boden Sandstrom Location The location of the interview. Takoma Park, Maryland Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .m4a Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history with Boden Sandstrom Description An account of the resource Would you like to listen to this audio? Please email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> to request access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=01042016">01/04/2016</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s to present. Boden Sandstrom, was born and grew up in Fairport, N.Y. (Born Barbara Carol Sandstrom.) While earning a Master’s Degree in Library Science at the University of Michigan (1967-68), she became more politically engaged due to the social and political upheaval of the day. She then moved to San Jose, Calif., where she met (and eventually married) folk/flamenco singer, educator and Brown Beret member Rogelio Reyes. She lived and worked in Boston from 1970-72, where she became further engaged in feminist consciousness and political activism. During this time, Sandstrom came out as a lesbian. Arriving in D.C. in 1972, she found new ways to be involved in feminist activism. Beginning about 1974, Sandstrom began what would become a major part of her career: recording, engineering and mixing live music, especially within the women’s music and political communities. Early sound engineer experiences included Sophie’s Parlor, the oldest women’s music show on radio and the 1st National Women’s Music Festival. Sandstrom co-founded with Casse Culver a woman-run sound co., Woman Sound (later City Sound Productions), in Washington, D.C. During her career as a sound engineer/technical producer Sandstrom worked for many major events and artists including the American Folklife Festival, NOW, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Cris Williamson’s Flying Color Tour, the 1978 ERA rally, Michigan Womyn’s Festival, Sisterfire, D.C. Gay Pride Days, RFK Stadium, Lily Tomlin, Hispanic American Cultural Festivals and the 1979, 1987 and 1993 LGTBQ March on Washington and March for Women’s Lives, 2004. After the sale of Woman Sound, Sandstrom enrolled in the ethnomusicology program at the University of Maryland. She earned her Ph.D. in 2002, and taught in the School of Music from 1996 until her retirement in 2013. Sandstrom was co-producer of the documentary, Radical Harmonies, which documents the women’s music movement from the 1970s through 1990s. Sandstrom also discusses her relationship and eventual marriage with well-known musician Casse Culver. Abstract A summary of the resource. Oral history with Boden Sandstrom, know for recording, engineering and mixing live music, especially within the women’s music and political communities. Later also ethnomusicologist and professor at University of Maryland. 1980s Lesbians Music Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Cassandra+Ake">Cassandra Ake</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=David+Michael+Perez">David Michael Perez</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav file Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with David Perez, 1983- Description An account of the resource Interview describes D.C. Latino Pride, Latino LGBT History Project, D.C. Latino Pride, D.C. Mayor's Office LGBT advisory council. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=04042015">04/04/2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=This+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">This interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Coverage: 2000 to present. David M. Perez, 1983-present. Born in Torrance, Califonia to a tight-knit evangelical Christian family with roots in New Mexico, Mexico, and Detroit, David attended the evangelical Biola University to study Latin American studies, religion, and Spanish language. Although he began questioning his sexuality midway through college, it wasn’t until he moved to DC in 2005 to attend graduate school at Georgetown that he began making gay friends and entering more gay spaces. Though his friends never pushed him, he came out in 2006 to a largely supportive family and friends. He eventually felt less comfortable attending his home church in San Diego with his family and switched to the open and affirming St Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Dupont Circle, but his family knew that none of his core values, like the importance of volunteerism and family, had changed. He joined the building and grounds community for the church and began seeking out events that honored both his gay and his Latino identity. He had a hard time finding any details about DC Latino Pride, but eventually he found it at the HRC with a panel moderated by Jose Guttierez, founder of the Latino GLBT History Project, and Laura Esquivel, Political Director for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. Laura told a story from her time in the first national Latino LGBT Organization, Llego, when it marched on Washington in 1987 accompanied by Cesar Chavez. She had also been involved in mobilizing farm workers, and she told Cesar that she was having a hard time choosing which cause to dedicate her energies to. And Cesar said, ‘you can do both.” This was a story that resonated strongly with David, who had often noted that events honoring LGBT or Latino leaders rarely had anyone representing both communities. He then got more involved in volunteering for Latino Pride and the Latino GLBT History Project, becoming its board chair in 2011 along with Vice President Esther Hidalgo, who founded Mujeres en el Movimiento. They found letters to pride from the 80s and 90s complaining about lack of inclusion, and David still saw problems with that today in the way groups of color were clumped together at the back of the parade and not announced properly. However, they found Pride to be generally responsive to their comments and grew Latino Pride programming. Events included the selection of a Royal Court to serve as media ambassadors, a bilingual interfaith service at MCC DC, an annual fundraising dance party at Town, and the Plactica panel. The group also facilitated increased participation from El Sol Radio station in Pride festivities, from marching in the Pride Parade to DJ’ing the dance party at Town, and holding radio spots to discuss HIV and trans issues. David has also focused his advocacy efforts at the local government level, and is passionate about language access, increasing support for victims of hate crimes, and serving on Mayor Gray’s GLBT advisory committee. On that committee, they discussed issues like public safety, health, housing and homelessness, trans inclusivity, and the effectiveness of competency training provided to DC government employees. David values working in coalition with other groups of color to ensure that they all have a seat at the table and are visibly honored whenever award nominations are possible, and intends to continue his involvement in the community for years to come. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource StoryCorps: Bonnie and Vincent Subject The topic of the resource StoryCorps Interview Lesbian History The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture Rainbow History Project Description An account of the resource Rainbow History Project board members Dr. Bonnie Morris and Vincent E. Slatt participate in StoryCorps, during its 2016 visit to DC. Vincent interviews Bonnie concerning her latest book, The Disappearing L, and the relevance of lesbian history for the present and future, and the role of RHP in documenting women's history--especially the difficulty of tracking events that were intentionally not recorded at the time. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rmd0YNI039MzlibTg1Q21POTA/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-lbAu1S4wj0ub9cNkjgU9nw">CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE RECORDING</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 22 April 2016, Washington DC Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. The interview is part of StoryCorps, and can be accessed through their site: https://storycorps.org, or by <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rmd0YNI039MzlibTg1Q21POTA/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-lbAu1S4wj0ub9cNkjgU9nw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">clicking on this link</a>. Bars and clubs Feminism Lesbian bars and clubs Lesbians Music Musicians Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Jerry+Wei">Jerry Wei</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Frank+Blackburn%2C+1936-">Frank Blackburn, 1936-</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available (.mp3, 13.6 MB) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 59:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Frank Blackburn, 1936- Description An account of the resource Want access to this audio file? Email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> to request access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=20+September+2015">20 September 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used, and all right belong to RHP. Subject The topic of the resource Frank Blackburn, a long-time resident of Washington, D.C., recounts his arrival in the DC area, coming out, being a doctor during the AIDS crisis, and meeting his partner. Abstract A summary of the resource. 1960s-2010s Frank Blackburn was born in Jersey City, New Jersey but moved to the DC area when he enlisted in the Navy as a doctor. He discusses his divorce, coming out to his family, and the acceptance of his children. He eventually met his current partner and joined the social group Asians and Friends. Asians and Friends was one of the first gay support groups for Asian-Americans in the nation, yet the splits emerged over the inclusion of non-Asians in the group. All the while, his time as a doctor, both in the Navy and in private practice was marked by homophobia and trepidation. While the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis did not hit his social group hard, he describes treating what he believes was the first AIDS case in the DC area. He bought a house in the Dupont area in 1986 with his partner and has lived there ever since. He describes LGBT places such as Mr. Ps, Badlands, Friends, Lost and Found, Tracks, JRs, Lambda Rising bookstore, and Whitman Walker Clinic. 1980s Bars and clubs Dupont Circle HIV/AIDS Nightlife Whitman-Walker Clinic Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Cassandra+Ake">Cassandra Ake</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Bryan+Dalton">Bryan Dalton</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history with Bryan Dalton (1962-present) Description An account of the resource Interested in listening to this audio? Email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> for access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2/28/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights below to RHP. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1980s to present. Bryan Dalton-1962-present. Bryan came to DC in the early 1980s to attend Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, later joining the Foreign Service in 1987 and going on to serve in a number of posts around the world, including Mexico City, Taipei, Bangkok, Hanoi, Chennai, Romania, and Bulgaria. He began his career under the assumption that he should be in the closet professionally. Early on, however, he began singing with the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington, and was introduced to other gay Foreign Service members, which proved helpful when in 1991 he came under investigation at work due to his sexual orientation. Though it was never explicitly outlawed or accepted in the Foreign Service and Dalton found a number of passive supporters among his straight colleagues, the theory at the time was that any gay person could easily be blackmailed if an unfriendly foreign element were to learn of their “lifestyle.” With the legal assistance of Frank Kameny, however, Bryan successfully argued that as he was out in all aspects of his life, he could not be blackmailed and therefore should be permitted to continue his service. He went on to cofound GLIFAA (Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies) in 1992. GLIFAA struggled in the early years with gender inclusivity and maintaining a balance between social and political goals, but its advocacy led to a number of important strides, including the removal of sodomy as grounds for visa ineligibility and the inclusion of same-sex partners in Eligible Family Member Status. This allowed same-sex partners access to official visa sponsorship, flights to and from post, embassy medical facilities, and paid evacuation, but currently same-sex partners can only access federal health plans and pensions if legally married. Bryan also speaks about his parents’ extensive PFLAG involvement in the upper Midwest and his partner of 22 years’ role in their foreign posts in local GLBT activism and organizing gay pride parades and other events. Though he marvels that there are now 7 openly gay ambassadors serving around the world and that Randy Barry was just named Special Envoy to the State Department for the Rights of LGBT persons, Bryan believes the next step for the State Department would be to extend protections to LGBT foreign service nationals, to better integrate transgender employees and family members, and to extend rights and benefits to all partners regardless of legal status. He also speaks about local reactions to his sexual orientation in several of the countries he served in as well as the ways that DC’s neighborhoods and communities have changed since he first arrived in the late 80s, from specific neighborhoods where all gay establishments were located to one in which gay establishments are interspersed with straight venues. Subject The topic of the resource Oral history interview with Bryan Dalton, who cofounded Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies in 1992. Advocacy groups Discrimination Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Jerry+Wei">Jerry Wei</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Tom+Goss">Tom Goss</a> Location The location of the interview. Los Angeles, California, via Skype. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available (.mp3, 57.4 MB) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:02:42 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Tom Goss, 1981-. Subject The topic of the resource Tom Goss, a musician now living in Los Angeles, recounts his arrival in D.C . for seminary school, his musical career and its intersection with gay rights advances in the late 2000s, and meeting his partner. Description An account of the resource Interested in listening to this audio? Email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> for access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/11/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used%2C+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used, and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1990s-present Tom Goss was born in Quincy Illinois, and moved to Washington, D.C., to attend seminary school. After leaving, he began a musical career while working for a nonprofit serving the homeless, Charlie’s Place. The music he wrote spoke to central gay rights fights of the 2000s, including the repeal of DADT and marriage equality. As a result, he partnered with gay-rights organizations such as the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), for benefits and awareness raising efforts. He discusses his relationship with his sexuality, meeting and marrying his husband, and his support for Bears. Discussion covered: DADT, DOMA, Marriage Equality, SLDN, The New Gay (blog), Bear Happy Hour at Town, Cobalt. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Margaret+Connelly">Margaret Connelly</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Ellen+Kahn">Ellen Kahn</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. m4a. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Ellen Kahn, 1963- Description An account of the resource Oral history with Ellen Khan, director of the Children, Youth, and Families Program at the Human Rights Campaign and former Lesbian Services Program Director at Whitman-Walker Clinic. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=10-11-2015">10-11-2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1990s to present. Ellen Khan is currently the director of the Children, Youth, and Families Program at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington D.C. Kahn has worked at LGBT organizations for most of her life and the Human Rights Campaign is her first nationally focused job. Prior to working at HRC, she also worked at Whitman-Walker Health (formerly Whitman-Walker Clinic) for thirteen years. While there, she served as the third director of the Lesbian Services Program. In addition to that work, Kahn serves on the board of Rainbow Families DC, an organization that she raised up to what it is today. Kahn, the mother of two daughters, tells her story of growth in the LGBT community in D.C. since she moved here in 1993. She highlights some of her proudest accomplishments such as her work with HIV/AIDS in the 90s, Maybe Baby queer parenting support groups, and HRC’s Welcoming Schools program, which promotes LGBT inclusive environments at elementary schools across the country. Kahn also shares her experiences of being an active participant in the D.C. LGBT social scene. Whitman-Walker Clinic https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/906e5b6321b2c5cb54f34a2f83b30ab4.pdf 73aa5317f2d44a761bf130d9fef8c8fe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Mary Baldo Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. Yes, transcribed. Location The location of the interview. Fort Belvoir, VA Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 mp3 file (12.6 MB) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:43 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Brigadier General Tammy Smith, 1962- Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 27 September 2015 (Interview) 13 July 2016 (promotion to rank of Major General) 30 April 2021 (retirement) Access Rights Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XSFZCTmadogjSM0pfUvPyrC1Ykai68bl/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LISTEN TO INTERVIEW ONLINE</a> The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP. No restrictions on access, no restrictions on use. Description An account of the resource Army Brigadier General (BG) Tammy Smith is the first openly gay general in the United States military. Smith discusses her life in the military before, during, and after DADT. Abstract A summary of the resource. Army Brigadier General (BG) Tammy Smith is the first openly gay general in the United States military. Her wife, Tracey Hepner, pinned the star onto her uniform in a private August 10, 2012 ceremony at the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. BG Smith is a native of Oakland, Oregon. She was the recipient of a four-year Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1986. She was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. In this interview BG Smith discusses her self-discovery, her wife (Tracey Hepner), and her life of military service before, during, and after the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/e9dbd009c136e8ab01981f67c4e0a0a1.pdf 2020b6528a054339d2f24412acc65613 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Sarah+Welz+Geselowitz">Sarah Welz Geselowitz</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Denise+Bump">Denise Bump</a> Location The location of the interview. 17th and Rhode Island Ave., Washington, D.C. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available (.mp3, 45.9 MB) <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rmd0YNI039bllxbVo2U19QMHM/view?usp=sharing">Link</a> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:06:32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview With Denise Bump, 1971- Description An account of the resource Interested in listening to this audio? Email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> to get access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/30/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP. Subject The topic of the resource Denise Bump, former owner of Lammas Books and a leader of the D.C. Women's Initiative, discusses finding and sustaining LGBT community and women's spaces in D.C. and elsewhere. Abstract A summary of the resource. 1990s-2010s Denise Bump discusses her early life and coming out, her bisexual identity and Catholic faith, her move to D.C. in the early '90s, her efforts to find LGBT community in London and in D.C., her participation in a rap group through the Lesbian Services Program, her role as a volunteer at and owner of Lammas Books, the closing of Lammas, and her role in the D.C. Women's Initiative. 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Activism Black Bookstores Catholic Coming out Deaf people Feminism Lesbian Avengers Lesbians Medical facilities Poetry Publications Student groups Whitman-Walker Clinic Women Women's rights https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/648abd400f29763ed0c4f45b56e9f3ee.pdf c1eab893a72256a043a53835988975cd PDF Text Text WASHINGTON, D.C. RAINBOW HISTORY PROJECT Oral History Interview with Bonnie Morris By Rebecca Day 837 22nd St NW Washington DC 20016 #105 The George Washington University April 6, 2015 �WASHINGTON, D.C. RAINBOW HISTORY PROJECT NARRATOR: Bonnie Morris DATE: April 6, 2015 INTERVIEWER: Rebecca Day PLACE: George Washington University NARRATOR’S PERSONAL DATA Birthdate: May 14, 1961 Spouse: N/A Occupation: Professor & Writer SUMMARY OF INTERVIEW Dr. Bonnie Morris is interviewed by Rebecca Day. Dr. Morris describes her childhood and family life, her education, her family’s geographical history, and her coming out experience, describing both her intellectual and sexual awakening. She speaks about various LGBTQ spaces in Washington, D.C. bookstores, women’s groups, concerts and festivals, bars and clubs, et cetera. She discusses feminism, women’s culture of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, the era of the womanidentified woman, and several landmark events in women’s, LGBTQ, and civil rights history. There are various accounts of her education and her career including work as a professor, writer, speaker, performer, and working with institutions including Michigan Women’s Music Festival, Olivia Cruises, and Semester at Sea. Dr. Morris speaks to various movers and shakers in the gay rights movement, and landmark media and publications. She additionally describes her personal life, including several girlfriends and lovers. Dr. Morris speaks to themes of intersectionality, racism and homophobia, progressive politics and the effects of technological advancements, and the erasure of her generation’s era in the modern LGBTQ dialogue. INTERVIEWER'S COMMENTS A background journal entry entry exists for this interview and can be provided by contacting the interviewer, Rebecca Day at day.rebeccac@gmail.com. It may be informative to know that Dr. Bonnie Morris attended American University for undergrad, where Rebecca Day is a current undergraduate student; it is referenced in the interview. The two had met once before, at the annual meeting of the Rainbow History Project. COPYRIGHT STATUS This interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. � INDEX TERMS Bonnie Morris. Rebecca Day. LGBT. LGBTQ. Gay. Lesbian. Washington, DC. Los Angeles. North Carolina. Montgomery County. Durham. Bethesda. Carolina Friends School. Western Junior High. Westland Middle School. American University. George Washington University. Saint Lawrence University. Harvard University. Kentucky. Boston. London. Israel. Tel Aviv University. Hebrew University. California. Alabama. Birmingham. Freedom Riders. KKK. Klansmen. Mother’s Day. Jewish. Intermarriage. Jewish women. Jewish lesbian. Segregation. Yiddish. WomanIdentified Woman. Phyllis Diller. Ms. Magazine. Equal Rights Amendment. Woman’s Studies. Gender Studies. Feminism. Hollywood. Amazon Quarterly. Late bloomer. Lesbian sex. To Kill a Mockingbird. I Am Woman. Helen Reddy. Girls and intelligence. Gender roles. Gendered expectations. Adrienne Rich. June Arnold. Jill Johnston. Lesbian Nation. Maryland. Virginia. Law and legal statutes. LGBTQ legal rights and protections. Junior high. High school. College. Coming out. Professor. Quaker school. Alternative school. Antiwar. Peace camps. Activism. Audre Lorde. Sandy Boucher. Marcy Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld. Our Bodies Ourselves. Rubyfruit Jungle. Women Loving. Ruth Fulk. Gay activism. LGBTQ activism. Lesbian Resource Counseling Center. Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton. Theatre. Dance. Musicals. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Key Theatre. Georgetown. Circle Theatre. Booeymonger. Friendship Heights. Mead Andrews. Cris Williamson. Bayou. Gypsy Sally’s. Phase 1. The Other Side. The Lost and Found. Rascal’s. Holly Near. The Pier. Dupont Circle. Asian Shophouse. Modern Dance. Dynamic Alignment. Rolfing. Alexander Technique. Alcohol. Marijuana. Substances and intoxication. Gender expression. Charlie Rose show. Frank Kameny. Jewish Studies. Michigan Women’s Music Festival. Middle East. Brazil. Women’s History. Sisterfire. Takoma Park. Women’s Center. Transportation and access. Gay Women’s Alternative. Silver Spring. Metro. World Bank. Pennsylvannia Avenue. Connecticut Avenue. Massachusetts Avenue. The Boys in the Band. Something for Everyone. Steppenwolf. Personal Best. Media representation. LGBTQ representation. Lesbian representation. Lammas Books. Evelyn Tortenback. Nice Jewish Girls. University of Maryland. Jewish lesbian culture. Holocaust. Intersectionality. Joan Byron. JEB. Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians. Washington Blade. AIDS. Off Our Backs. The AIDS crisis. Lambda Rising. Gentrification. Adams Morgan. WhitmanWalker. Capitol Hill. Eleanor Clift. Barney Frank. Tracey Thorn. Margaretta Cammermeyer. Internet. Journals. Journaling. Writing. Mary Farmer. Jane Troxell. Denise Bump and Sylvia. Karla Jay. Tales of the Lavender Menace. Art. Literature. Culture. Spoken word. Slam. Poetry. music festivals. Concerts. 9:30 Club. Wax Museum. Birchmere. Tracks. Chaos. Nationals Stadium. New York. Homophobia. Mother Tongue. Lesbian Avengers. Black Cat. Women’s Rugby. Drag king performance. George W. Bush. War on Terror. September Eleventh. Iraq. Afghanistan. Daphne Scholinski. Ken Las Vegas. Alix Dobkin. Hung Jury. Maria Maggenti. The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love. Matthew Shepard. Ellen Degeneres. Cheryl Spector. The Bar Notebooks. Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor. Onewoman performance. Lavender Languages conference. Sarah Shulman. ACT UP. AIDS Coaltition to Unleash Power. Queer Nation. Protest. Dyke March. �Stonewall. Women’s Issues. Concerned Women for America. Mississippi. Berkshire Women’s History Conference. National Women’s Studies Association. Feminist Writer’s Guild. Horizon. Binghamton University. Southern Poverty Law Center. Planned Parenthood. Feminist Majority Foundation. National Organization for Women. Lambda Literary Foundation. Lammy. Outwrite. Environmental Protection Agency. Peace camps. Women and sports. Title IX. AP Exams. College Board. The DC Center. DCJCC DC Jewish Community Center. GLOE. Real Affirmations. Speaking Our Minds. Radical Harmonies. Out of Season. Jeanette Buck. Film. Film festivals. Brooklyn Lesbian Herstory Archives. TERFs Trans Excluding Radical Feminists. The Mystery of the Vanishing Lesbian. Millennium March. Robin Tyler. Judaism. The Changer and the Changed. Olivia Records. Olivia Cruises. Semester at Sea. National Women’s History Museum. Girls Going Out. Nice Jewish Girls. Acting. Teaching. Education. Globalization. Global women. Longdistance relationship. Breakups. Canada. Iceland. New Zealand. Ireland. Adjunct faculty. Rally. GLAAD. GLSEN. Cathy Renna. Phyllis Lyon. Del Martin. Daughters of Bilitis. Pacifica Radio Archives. Disney Pictures. State Department. Michell Obama. West Coast. Charles Barkley. CNN. Racism. Discrimination. Indiana. Evi Beck. Religious organizations and LGBTQ rights. Kevin Jennings. Safe schools for LGBTQ youth. LGBTQ youth. Safe space. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. LGBTQ and the military. LGBTQ and the government. Security clearance. Sodomy laws. Income. Housing accessibility. Socioeconomic status. The criminalization of homosexuality. Patchwork of state laws. Women’s Peace Camp. Puget Sound. Greenham Common. Senaca. England. Nuclear weapons. Military policy. Pentagon. Abortion rights. Rally for Women’s Lives. Desert Hearts. Technology. VCR. Technological advancement. Progressive politics. Era erasure. Hot Wire Magazine. Historians. Archiving. Visibility. Coming out. Social movements. Women space. Lesbian space. Generational disconnects. Georgetown University. Paul Tagliabue. Women’s Sports Foundation. Study abroad. Sign language interpretation. Privilege. Radical activism. Sixties. Seventies. Eighties. Nineties. Women’s culture. Womenonly space. �Washington, DC Rainbow History Project Transcription of Interview with Bonnie Morris on April 6, 2015 at 837 22nd St NW #105 Washington DC, 20016: GWU RD: Initials of Interviewer Rebecca Day BM: Initials of Interviewee Bonnie Morris [00:00] RD: This is an interview with Dr. Bonnie Morris BM: Okay. RD: It is Monday, April 6, 2015 at 4:27 PM in Dr. Morris’ office at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. The interviewer’s name is Rebecca Day and this interview is being recorded for the Rainbow History Project. BM: Okay. RD: So where and when were you born? BM: I was born in Los Angeles, California May 14, 1961, which is a fairly historic date because it’s the date the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham, Alabama and were set on fire so I’m very much aware that that’s what was going on the hour I came into the world and I was born on Mother’s Day and I know that the chief of police who let the Klansmen beat up the Freedom Riders explained why there were no police to protect the Riders, he said, it being Mother’s Day, he expected they were all visiting their mamas. RD: Were you born into any particular ethnic, national, racial, or religious groups? BM: Yes, I’m the daughter of an intermarriage between a Jewish mom and a gentile dad and their marriage was considered controversial in it’s day. [Here we had trouble with the recorder and had to stop and restart, so the question is asked again.] RD: Were you born into any particular ethnic, national, racial, or religious groups? BM: Yes. I’m the daughter of an intermarriage. I was made very aware from the minute I was born that my parents were intermarried not racially but that my father had marriage a Jewish woman at a time when that was still controversial and that my mother’s family included Jews who were very darkskinned who had been assumed to be black in segregated places in the South and those discussions about my mother’s family �immigrating to the U.S., my mother being a firstgeneration American, my Yiddishspeaking grandmother, that was all very much part of my early childhood. RD: What is your sexual orientation and gender identity and do you have any specific reasons for identifying in the way that you do? BM: Yeah, I’m a lesbian and a woman. I’m very different from the current generation with an emphasis on queer and trans. I came out in a very specific womanidentified woman ethos, which informed a lot of my politics. I’m doing a lot of research now on the erasure of the L identity, which I feel is underrepresented in the emphasis on G and T. And I had a student today complain that B isn’t addressed at all. So, yeah, and I never identified as anything other than female but I certainly identified as different from an early age and I think probably the first time I saw the word lesbian I know I asked my father when I was about nine what it meant and he said, “Oh it’s someone like Phyllis Diller” which was such a nonanswer I mean, it’s an entertainer but I began subscribing to s. Magazine M when I was in seventh grade actually, no, I began reading Ms. Magazine as soon as it was in publication. I didn’t get a subscription until I was fourteen. But I began reading essays about the women’s movement and lesbian issues pretty much at the end of sixth grade. Yeah. RD: Can you tell me a little bit more about the phrase womanidentified woman and what that means to you? BM: Sure. The era that I came out in, which was the late seventies had a very prolific women’s culture which was very much about separating from men and interrogating the way patriarchal ideals had either disappeared traditional women’s culture or had made it difficult for women in the gay liberation movement to have their issues front and center and so I was certainly involved in the gay rights movement which I participated in with male friends and allies consistently from the minute I came out actually, earlier when as soon as I knew gay guys. But when I came out I was already very much involved in political feminism. I had gone doortodoor for the ERA. I had taken Women’s Studies in seventh grade and I was delighted to, in my late teens, discover the women’s music movement and women’s bookstores and a whole sort of separate movement of women’s culture which was blossoming in the United States and was very prolific, from city to city, there was a women’s bookstore and a cultural space and concerts and what was called womenonly space in many urban locations, and I was delirious; I thought that was fantastic. And the phrase the womanidentified woman that was popular at the time comes from a famous piece of writing, The omanIdentified Woman W . I cannot remember the author and I hang my head in shame. But it was in part about the fact that people who were hostile to lesbians in particular used a kind of sexism that said if you’re a lesbian, it must be because you can’t get a man, you look like a man, you wish you were a man, you should have been a man, and there was nothing in there about being comfortable being a woman and liking women what would today be I suppose cissexual, but cisgender but a term nobody I knew ever used and the idea was to regain what had been stolen from women’s knowledge about women’s history so I �plunged in and got a doctorate in Women’s History, and at AU I was the first person to minor in Women’s Studies as soon as the minor was established in the spring of eightythree. I had to do all of the credits in one semester, but they counted retroactively, everything I had done thus far. I’d taken Women in Society and Women in American Feminism and so on. [6:51] RD: So let’s jump back for just a moment. Who was Phyllis Diller and BM: Such baloney. A very famous married woman comedian. I’m sure my dad was trying to make a point that she was this kind of abrasive female and he was dodging my question. Later on, I mean, my parents were very liberated about sex and very affectionate and made it very clear that a happy sex life was a very important part of adult identity. They were not prepared to have me come out. They had modeled a very loving and, again, very sexually satisfying heterosexual couplehood and they saw me as, you know, attractive enough to get any man I wanted, or at least, that was my dad’s response when I came out, was like, Why? You know? So again I think that as Hollywood a very glamorouslooking Hollywood couple, they identified profoundly with the idea that if you were attractive you should not have a problem getting a mate, and the idea that you would do something else or that you would not make that your goal, or you would deflect male attention if you were female, was baffling to them. They had no moral quarrel with gay people, they it didn’t occur to them socially how it would work for me and they didn’t have a sense of the intellectual tradition of lesbian and gay writers that I identified with as a writer. They did, however, have a vast empathy for alternative cultures because they took my brother and I on peace marches and we went to an alternative school and antiwar activity and movement issues and reading the works of people of color and experimenting with diversity in terms of our weekend activities was all very much part of our household. It just the gay part was something I added, which felt like a very natural continuum to me. So I discovered intellectually everything I knew about the gay community. I was too little, as a kid, to go to bars or anything that involved, you know, alcohol. I didn’t have a car, and I didn’t have a lot of dough; I didn’t have much pocket money. So I was limited to what I read about and what was shown at the local art cinema. But I selfeducated profoundly, and again I have to thank s. Magazine M because s. M had a whole back wantad section in it’s seventies issues that promoted lesbian music, books, and shirts. (Chuckles.) And at fourteen I fell in love with my best friend and I sent away for a copy of the Amazon Quarterly , which was advertised in the back of s. M Came in a plain brown wrapper, and I read it over the phone to one of my friends and it freaked me out. I was so underprepared for the depiction of adult female genital contact. I didn’t identify with that at all. I was a real late bloomer in terms of what you would call, you know, arousal and selfexploration. I was completely in my mind and politically and morally interested in women’s culture and female love. I was in a group of girls who were all in love with each other and we all saw it as okay because it was quote innocent. It was very different that the kind of, you know, street smart, working class, embodied sexuality that comes from any kind of being active in sports or being around people who �talked about sex and its consequences. We were pretty sheltered in some ways and but here was this magazine. And it depicted what I thought was a very insulting view of what I was interested in. I didn’t understand why an adult woman would want to suck somebody else’s nipples; that seemed very infantile to me. Like, why would I want to breastfeed? What I wanted was just to live with my best friend for the rest of our adult lives. So one version was genital and the other was I felt sort of this fantasy of being her partnerprotector figure and it never involved anyone taking their clothes off. So that’s what I mean by late bloomer. RD: And just to clarify a few of the things that you mentioned (BM chuckling in background) could you tell me a little more about s. Magazine M BM: Yeah. RD: and was that a particularly BM: Sure. RD: Yeah. BM: Okay so I identified at a really early age as different because I was a smart girl. I was in a lot of classes for gifted kids. I was in lots of extracurricular art and drama. I was sent to have my IQ tested several times. It all had a big impact on me. I was reading at an adult level when I was seven and I felt definitely queer, but queer in a sense of being ahead of and different than other kids in a way I felt it was rude to articulate. And I began writing and illustrative stories when I was five and I knew very clearly I wanted to be a writer and I knew I was reading material other kids didn’t enjoy and I maybe didn’t need to talk about that. So it wasn’t difficult for me to identify as a feminist because I was disgusted by the portrayal of girls being dumb and boys being smarter in a lot of the schoolbooks we had and I was outraged in reading about the rules for girls. You know, I read To Kill A Mockingbird when I was nine and various other classics of literature that talked about the awkward separate spheres for men and women. I know that I longed to go back in time and punch out anyone who said you can’t do this because you’re a girl and I always wondered why the girls in these stories didn’t stand up to authority and say this is bullshit. So I was very ripe to join the movement that was ongoing and, you know, on the radio you have to remember at the time was I Am Woman hear me roar by Helen Reddy which played all through seventh grade and then I was at this school that offered radical feminist classes starting in the spring of seventythree. And I had teachers that were feminist who took us to different events. So s. M was in our school library right next to Boy’s Life (laughs) and it was terrific in introducing the writings by some of the best lesbian authors at the time or even now. It printed Adrienne Rich and June Arnold and it introduced Jill Johnston who had written Lesbian Nation and it had interviews with women who were trying to articulate the limited laws that supported lesbian mothers. And I read this every month from cover to cover so I was sort of robotically knowledgeable in law, politics, who was who in the movement. I didn’t know how to �participate as a girl other than to defend and to study and I believed that experience would happen much, much, much, much later, you know? If anyone had asked me, if I go back and look at my journals, they’re very clear about how ambivalent I was that I thought gay people were fine but I didn’t I wasn’t one. I just was more enlightened so, you know, the usual crap. And in part its because the friend that I was very in love with at fourteen, right here in Montgomery County, Maryland was being abused by her dad at home and I felt that it would be just one more blow against her safety and normalcy if I laid any kind of hand on her, loving or otherwise. It felt just the wrong direction in her troubled life for us to do anything other than hold hands. But we did. And we were very expressive in school and people did talk about us. They did write about us in yearbooks: Have a good summer. Don’t go queer like Bonnie. And we would sit in the lunch room and tap, you know, with a fork, “I love you” in Morse code. We carved our names into a tree. So it was a little bit beyond nothing is going on here. It just was not consummated. So I think because there was absolutely no gay youth group, or school gaystraight alliance at the time, we were fortunate to have a counseling center which supported us and we would hang out there. We understood it was a place for kids who were different and that we were identified as such for reasons nobody really spelled out loud. But I should make clear that what happened is my family moved from LA in the sixties, where we were, you know active in all kinds of social movements, to North Carolina, which was very much just crawling out of segregation but I attended this alternative Quaker school that was the first desegregated school in the state, Carolina Friends. And then having found feminism and a writing network and a wonderful sense of place in that school, I was very unhappy when my family then moved to Washington and my dad got a promotion and we moved here. So we moved from Durham, North Carolina to Bethesda in nineteen seventyfour, forty years ago. I was very unaware that I had landed in affluent Montgomery County where many of my friends’ parents were Senators and Congressmen. I went to junior high with Marcy Rumsfeld, Donald Rumsfeld’s daughter and I didn’t have the worldliness to understand the socioeconomic background or the political loyalties, you know, my friends’ families but the junior high I went to in Bethesda, which was called Western it’s now Westland Middle School was, according to almost everyone who went there and almost all the teachers, almost like a private school. Pretty much every kid was from a high powered family and there were several gay teachers but they certainly were not out. We just sort of identified them as such. And some I am still friends with now, but that’s a whole other story. [18:26] RD: So what was the Amazon Quarterly ? BM: The Amazon Quarterly that I sent away for was produced in Massachusetts. It was an arts and literature magazine that looked at the lesbian experience and featured poetry and stories. The issue that I sent away for was this sample sexuality issue is a fantastic collector’s items now, and it started with poems by Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich and Sandy Boucher and it included an overview of some of the writing groups and presses that were burgeoning, it was also a big part of women’s culture at the time. There was �one story in that issue about two like twelveyearold girls, so of course I related to that one. But I also sent away for, you know, a couple of other magazines. I ended up reading the lesbian section of Our Bodies Ourselves as kind of the first (not transcribable noise) literature and then I read Rubyfruit Jungle , which at the time was sort of the It book. And then a wonderful book called omen Loving W by Ruth Fulk, which was in a lot of women’s collections at the time. It was sold through women’s bookstores and it was a big, fat book that was all oral histories like you’re doing. The author had come out at thirty and had to reconstruct what it meant to be, sort of a white, Jewish lesbian at thirty and she had interviewed a whole bunch of other women in the community she found and those were amazing narratives and it was a huge book; you could read little bits and pieces at lunch or whatever and it was much more of a weaving of sensuality, politics, relationships, it was a very good quote safe introduction because it had women talking about their sort of dating stories and so forth. RD: When and where did you first feel comfortable identifying yourself by your sexual orientation? BM: Well I knew when I was in when I was sixteen that I wanted yet another best friend to make love to me, and it was a big act of courage to write in my journal that I wanted this. That was the first statement of a desire to be seduced. And it was clear to me I did not want to be the seducer, that I was not I didn’t have any moves, but that was I wanted was not an adult male. And then about a year after that, although I had gone around and told people that summer, that I thought I wanted a woman and I thought I was gonna be a lesbian, then I had a wonderful love affair with a guy in my school for my senior year and I thought, well, this proves that I’m not normal but it sort of shelved the other part. And that was the only relationship that I ever had with a guy that was sexual. Well, I mean, other than grappling on dates, it was the only guy I ever made love with. The minute that I began college pretty much the first person I was really attracted to was another female my age and that was it. So I plunged into the DC world of gay activism. So I know this is a very the honest truth is it’s a very checkerboarded story and it goes: twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen. Twelve is when I discovered the literature of the women’s movement that included lesbian life. Fourteen was when I held a woman and held her hand and told her I loved her in a way that wasn’t otherwise acting out sexually. Sixteen was when I wrote in my journal I know I want to act out sexually. And eighteen was when I finally kissed a girl, came out, told my family, and never looked back. So I was a teenage dyke. [23:10] RD: So to whom and in what settings are you out and are there places where you don’t feel comfortable being out? BM: I’m out almost everywhere. I don’t hide or lie. I’m discreet if I’m oh my God, you know, entertaining someone from another country in a context where we’re just talking about diplomatic relations between our nations, I don’t bring up my personal life but I’m �out in the classroom. I usually wait for a specific moment to sort of announce it, though I think many students know anyway. I think it’s important for the first year students to hear a professor come out. It always goes over well. I haven’t really ever had any backlash wherever I’ve taught. I’ve been really lucky. I’m certainly out to my whole family, relatives, people I’ve grown up with. I have, however, had the recent experience of being in a tenyear relationship with a woman who was closeted and a lot of that had to do with why the relationship ended and my partner lived in another city and we went back and forth and while I was very out and open about her and had her picture on my desk, she could have no such arrangement. She taught in a religious school. And we gradually gained acceptance by most of her family but she was very careful not to be demonstrative with me in public, not to be seen with me where people she worked with at school might run into us and it was how I lasted all that time a rainbow person is a miracle to me but I really really tried. So I was willing to play it down for love but in the end that’s not me. RD: How and when did you first come to the D.C. area? You mentioned that you moved to Bethesda with your family in nineteen seventyfour BM: Mhm. RD: and then you stayed here for college at AU? BM: Yes. I lived I went back to my Quaker school and graduated from there in North Carolina. I had a deal with my parents. I really didn’t like going to public school in Montgomery County, in part because I felt I was different and I had been very affirmed at my Quaker school and I liked its philosophy so I made a deal with my parents if I could go back to this private school for two years, then I would live at home at college to save money. In other words, would they spend some of my college money for me to finish high school, and then I would be a commuter student and get a scholarship in the DC area. So that worked out and I lived at home for three out of four years while I commuted to AU but it was awkward because whoopsie! here I was coming out at home, in my old bedroom. And the year I was exploring my new found commitment to being out, my parents were not comfortable initially and I had to lie to them about being more successful as a homo than I was. My mother was like, well I don’t see you bringing a girlfriend home it’s like, so painful. So I sort of had to go out with, again, no car I’d borrow my parents’ car or take the bus and I started going to coming out groups and young women and mixed youngold women’s discussions at the what was called the Washington Area Women’s Center very important place and it was at either, God, 18th and R or something like that, it’s a matter of record. There’s a it’s on the walking tour brochure that we have. And it had a group called the Lesbian Resource Counseling Center and they had a Thursday night rap group and when you say that now, people think you mean rap musically. I started going to that thing the minute I came out to my parents and by the way this was all the same year Reagan was elected so I made it clear to my family I know that conservative views are gonna come in, I know homophobic laws are gonna be passed, I know this country is gonna turn to the right. Are you gonna stand by me, your gay kid? And my brother said yes, he was so cool. And I toughed it out �the first year, with my parents worrying that here was this gifted kid that’s never gonna get a job if she insisted on being out. Again, their concern was not moral but that I would be ostracized or beaten. I wondered too. But I had a great group of gay friends in tada (chuckling) the theatre department and we were in a lot of musicals together and I was welcome in the homes, at AU, of all these people. I forget I’m talking to an AU student. So you need to know that AU was a great place to come out, and we’re talking nineteen eighty now. I was in every musical in the theatre program. I met all of these terrific gay guys who were dancers and actors. They took me under their wing and took me out. We went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend at the Key Theatre in Georgetown, then we’d go eat at Booeymongers in Friendship Heights. It was great. The girl I’d kissed for the first time didn’t want to have anything to do with me. She was scared. She’s now one of my closest friends but at the time, they sort of took me in and said, Don’t worry, love will come later, you hang with us, we think you’re great. And they were all sort of, you know, punk and goth and not particularly political or bookwormy but great in terms of a safe space. So on the one hand, I had a social life, and I wrote considerably in my journal that people who said you would be lonely and outcast if you were gay were full of shit because the people I was meeting were so generous and loving. I felt very safe. I felt I would never be alone. And then one of my friends from junior high showed up and had come out a year ahead of me and had introduced me to the bars, the music, and the poetry that she thought I should know. And then I had an affair with my dance professor. And I didn’t feel like there was anything shameful about it because it was dance as opposed to math or something where I needed credit or whatever excuse and it was certainly consensual and fairly platonic. Not much happened. But a hugely important relationship because this was somebody who used language that was very helpful to me and she said, “How long have you known that you loved women?” So that was, even now, I think a really great expression of an identity, and it released me from saying are we going to be sexual and it could just sort of go in this loving direction. Again a person who introduced me to music, literature, poems, women’s theatre and dance groups, this is what I mean by all this womanidentified stuff, sort of like, here’s the culture you are now a part of. And then this connected me with starting to go to women’s music concerts and she took me to hear Cris Williamson at the Bayou, which is now something like Gypsy Sally’s under the bridge in Georgetown. I went to concerts with her. I went to hear Holly Near with my young, lesbian group, and I started going occasionally I suppose this was when you could drink at nineteen but I never ordered liquor. I just went to look at girls I went to Phase 1. I went to a bar called The Other Side and I went to a men’s bar called The Lost and Found and I went to The Pier, which was a lot of fun. Boy, I haven’t thought of The Pier in a really long time. Also very important, a bar called Rascals at Dupont Circle which is where I’m gonna get my dinner later; it’s now the Asian Shophouse but that was a place where I took a dancer in my dance class that I really liked, who I later found out was straight, but who agreed to go out dancing with me and it was probably one of the most sensual nights of my entire life. We were the only women in the entire place. It was all guys but it was a really good dace space. And all the men backed away and made a circle around us. And I was such a nerd. I had my hair in two braids. I didn’t know how to dress. I didn’t know how to move. I didn’t know how to seduce. I was a hopeless case. Anyway, we were dancing in this �circle of guys and she reached out and ripped the rubber bands out of my hair and ran her hands through my hair. I just melted. Even now, it’s like oh my freakin’ God. [33:26] RD: Do you feel comfortable disclosing the name of the professor or the course that she taught or any more information about BM: Sure. Mead Andrews, who was the most beloved person on the dance faculty. I’m still friends with her. I’m gonna have a reunion with her in June. And she’s now like in her seventies. It’s freaky to think about. At the time we were nineteen and thirtyeight. She taught Modern Dance and a very popular class called Dynamic Alignment which was basically how to avoid injury and stress on the body and it introduced rolfing, Alexander technique. She’s now one of the country’s preeminent Alexander Technique instructors. She had formerly been married to the drama professor, who also came out. So the two of them had had a marriage that parted amicably and they both continued as faculty and moved into their different worlds. But she eventually backed away and said, “We can’t do this. I don’t feel comfortable” and I was sorry. But, you know, it ended without bloodshed and it was just fabulous because the mood was everything that’s a cliche now of the idea that two women together is gentle and sweet and beautiful and ethereal and that was what I wanted and boy, was that what I got. And everyone was hugely envious. Everybody in my posse of gay friends wanted her and it would never have occurred to them that I would be the one that she would go out with because I was such a naive little toadstool but it happened and it was terrific. [35:46] RD: Could you tell me a little bit more (BM chuckling) about some of the bars and restaurants and spaces that you mentioned? BM: Yeah, sure. So again I was so behind the curve. I was not I was not interested in alcohol. In fact, I came out of a generation where everyone smoked pot. And it never occurred to me that drinking was for squares. Certainly the vibe I had gotten from my parents’ friends, who grew their own weed. And, anyway and I don’t like anything fizzy to this day so I don’t like beer or anything carbonated. It finally occurred to me in a bar I could get like, a pina colada or something tat tasted like dessert so I mean even now I’ll get Bailey’s on ice. So I was not looking to get drunk. I was not interested in substances. I’m proud to say I never smoked cigarettes. I was not attracted to dulling down because I am naturally very cheerful and up. I have plenty of serotonin and I’ve never I never felt like there was anything sick, bad, or wrong, and I never had an issue with depression or stimulants so it never occurred to me to go to why would I spend my limited money on drink. But, okay, this was where some lesbians were. So with this insanely untutored attitude, I entered Phase 1 and immediately had women coming up to me going, “I’d like to get to know you, honey baby.” And I was so shocked. People called me jail bait, they offered me poppers. I didn’t understand that I was young and cute, I had long hair I could �sit on, the whole thing. People weren’t sure if I was really gay because I had long hair at a time when it was the political thing to have short hair and overalls. A lot of women were just really aggressive in a way I found distasteful and I don’t mean butch versus femme I just mean the lines, like, “I’d like to get to know you better honey baby,” you know, like really? Okay. So that was my first impression was I was terrified. I was not a good dancer even though I was in all these musicals. I was just a very uptight babe in that first year. The Other Side was a women's bar it had a restaurant. I went to some men’s bars and I was shocked to overhear men using the nword and being racist and I was really put off. I was disappointed. In the same way, the first time I heard Jews be conservative or racist. I had been very sheltered from the range of bologna in the LGBT community and it never occurred to me that people wouldn’t be advocated for their own rights and then other people’s as well. So that put me off and I learned to sort of tune in. I also encountered women in the military who were gay and who were racist and I sort of filed away in my mind that I would probably not be comfortable dating a woman in the military; I was very much out of a pacifist tradition. So I set up my own rules about who I was open to and what I was willing to do but I did have a fight with my mom one night who said she could understand my cousin Shannon being gay but not me and the implication that Shannon looked more like a lesbian than I did. And I sort of yelled, “That’s not how it works. Don’t expect me home tonight.” And I stomped out of the car and I went to the young wmen’s discussion group and I asked one of the women there if I could spend the night with her, just to show my parents that they shouldn’t expect that I wasn’t out there and having a good time. Of course, all I did was sit up and talk with her all night long about how I could change my parents’ minds. But I remember walking home the next day at five A.M. and not telling my mother where I’d been. So it was a lot of testing about I went on television on the Charlie Rose show with a panel of other students and Frank Kameny was in that as well as a woman who’s very well known in the area, oh God whose name I always blank on...Eva shoot, her last name will come to me, something German. Anyway, I went to this discussion that was televised about gay rights and a guy got up in the audience and started giving us fundamentalist hellfire and brimstone and Frank Kameny laid him out flat. I was so impressed that a guy could just immediately respond point by point. It was such a model for you have to respond, don’t be rattled, don’t cave. And then at school the next day, a young man in my Jewish Studies program, a young, black, rabbinical student, so he represented multiple intersectional identities, came up to me and said, “I heard you went on TV and defended gay rights. I thought you were moral. I hope you get help.” And I was shocked again to find someone who had every reason to experience prejudice daily would not defend me. And another guy jumped in and did defend me but I was very sorry because this young rabbinical student had been a good colleague and friend. And then when I went home and told my parents about it they said, Well what do you expect? So it was very difficult between nineteen eighty and eightyone when I was living at home and learning about let’s see alcohol in the gay community, race issues in the gay community, being an advocate who goes on TV in the gay community, being young without a lot of credibility, pedigree, income, and yet wanting to speak to the issues. So at this point, two giant changes occurred and I went to my first women’s music festival, Michigan Festival, where I’ve worked ever since in August eightyone and a week after the festival, I went off to live in �the Middle East for a year and spent my junior year in Israel. And I went to Israel knowing I was gay and that I was going to be a lesbian in a Middle Eastern country with no rights and no protection. And I was put in to this was an American oversees program where we had other American roommates my first roommate, Miriam Himmelfarb, is the daughter of one of the most famous conservatives in North America, Milton Himmelfarb. And the niece of a very famous antifeminist conservative, Gertrude Himmelfarb. Again, not understanding her family. And I came out to her and she fled. She changed schools. She transferred to Hebrew University and wrote me a letter saying, you know, “This is not what I have in mind for my future.” And I hadn’t really, I wasn’t interested in her, I just was honest with her and it scared her. So I was in a position then where I either had to have a new roommate put in or I had to go into another dorm room. And I elected to take the chance to move into a better dorm. And the house mother said, Well we can put you in with Paula but she’s from Brazil. She doesn’t speak much English and she smokes. And I said, I don’t care, I want to move into the building with the balcony. Boy was that a good decision! So within weeks, Paula had come out to me, we pushed the beds together, crawled in, and we were lovers for a year and it was unbelieveable. And the only two lesbians in the whole program and here we were roommates. It was fantastic. So everything I learned I learned well, not everything, but most of what I needed to know I learned that year and when I had an opportunity I wrote my parents a very serious letter saying, This is who I am. I will always love you and be no different than I was before I came out to you. And then I waited nervously for overseas mail and they sent beautiful, loving letters of acceptance. It was just incredible. Wonderful letters I treasure to this day. And my brother wrote me one too, as a high school kid. So when I returned to the United States for my senior year at AU, I had a better understanding with my family, I had had a year where I was a domestic partner with a woman, and everybody in my old theatre gang said, What the fuck happened to you over there? You are so different. You are so changed. I was like, Yeah, I have a few moves, I know who I am, and I am no longer going to be a Jewish Studies major. I am going to completely focus on women’s rights. I had actually thought of going to rabbinical school but I was very shaken by the status of women I observed in Israel. So I decided I’ll graduate with the Jewish Studies major but I’m gonna minor in Women’s Studies and go to grad school in Women’s History. So I returned to a Washington that had, still, a very active women’s culture. Now I was twentyone. The big local women’s festival was Sisterfire, held in Takoma Park Junior High and featuring many of the same artists I had seen in concert or had seen at Michigan. There was still not really a big gay group at AU. AU did not have a very good, or interesting, gay activist group. It had a very good undergraduate feminist group and my friend Jeannette was a role model for me. She also did the women’s studies minor and graduate with me. I went all over D.C., going to this weekly discussion group at the Women’s Center. Pretty much everything was at Dupont Circle with the exception of stuff I just didn’t have the car to get to. The Gay Women’s Alternative, which I would have loved to attend, was always held, you know, kind of in the ethical culture of Unitarian churches, whatever. It was held way up towards Silver Spring and there really wasn’t Metro wasn’t completed at that time. I went to many gay and lesbian films that were shown at the Circle Theatre, which is right across from my office now. It was on Pennsylvania Avenue, which is where the World �Bank is and the bus stop I wait at everyday, now that I think about it, to go from here to Georgetown. But they showed incredible, good gay films, mostly about the lives of gay guys but some of the films that were made a huge impression on me were The Boys in the Bandomething for Everyone , S , I saw Steppenwolf which had a lesbian kiss in one scene; that was very exciting. By then the film Personal Best was out, which featured a relationship between two athletes. That was very sexy. It had a naked sex scene with the two women. So there was the beginning of the gay and lesbian film festival subculture and that was the theatre that tended to bring those films. Of course there were all the gay people who went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show but again, that didn’t have much for women. Where you went to see films or hear authors speak was a very specific part of the women’s bookstore. So Lammas Books had lots of events, bringing in many of the authors I loved. And it was also a very good year if you were a Jewish lesbian feminist because Evelyn Tortenback’s book Nice Jewish Girls was published. She was local, teaching at the University of Maryland and GW hosted a huge celebration for the book, hosting a night of Jewish lesbian culture. In the fall of eightytwo and it was great. I went to that. I can still remember everything about it and I still have the ticket stub. A lot of humor, about how you explained yourself as a Jewish lesbian who might not have children, but you know, it was filled with comedy and it connected directly to the memory of gays and lesbians who were killed in the Holocaust. That whole history was being explored. And I was introduced to Joan Byron, who went by the acronym JEB, also in DC and an activist photographer who had put together the book Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians . So because of where I was, I was able to meet pretty much all the movers and shakers in Jewish lesbian culture and that really shaped me. And it also put me in a position of being pretty relaxed about approaching women in the movement to either befriend them or do interviews like this. [50:52] RD: How has the LGBTQ community in DC changed since you arrived here, and how has it remained the same? BM: That’s such a great question. Okay. Well, I started going to Pride festivals in the same year that the first large scale marches occurred. I missed the first one in the fall of seventynine because I was just on the cusp of coming out. I participated in the eightyseven, ninetythree, and 2000 marches. And the fact that D.C. was a place of big demonstrations was something I was very comfortable with from my antiwar years as a kid in LA. So I felt delirious about how lucky I was to participate in something like that and I would run around and try and do everything when these big events hit town. That was a sort of consistent pattern for a while. You knew there would be another march. I felt that from what I could observe, the gay scene was pretty separated, that women were over here and men were over here and they had different bars. I found I was not always welltreated in men’s bars and that was disappointing. I read the Blade and then the Blade became sort of filled with more material on men because of course we’re talking about the AIDS crisis. So there was a lot of awareness that the predicament was particularly acute for men and women were not experiencing the same illness. At the same time, �women were really taking off with literature, music, albums, concerts, and that was reported separately in Off Our Backs . So the place that lesbians got their information was essentially through feminism and I think this has had a huge impact more recently. A friend of mine said that what she observes is a difference between lesbians who came out through the feminist movement and women who identify as queer who came out through LGBT activism and see that as somewhat more monolithic. In my day you would find, you know, women going to feminist events ,antiviolence events and, you know, raising questions about things like childcare. But we were not dying in huge numbers. So I was active in some things that were contingent to the AIDS crisis like publicizing the quilt and lost a number of male friends, definitely. My sense was that in the first years that I came out, Dupont Circle was super queer. It was referred to as the “fruit loop”. I knew I wanted to live there when I grew up, quote unquote. It had movies, bars, and bookstores, and Lambda Rising was a total center of activity. If anyone had told me when I was too afraid to walk into it that I would have my book in the window the year before it closed, I would’ve said, What? You know? That was great because it brough authors I was eager to hear and it centered gay life about literature and learning. And it was thrilling to me when I became a professor in DC, I moved into the same apartment where I live now, on the same street as Lambda Rising. You know, Lambda Rising was 1625 Connecticut and I was 2000 Connecticut and I felt so linked. Then it started to be clear to everyone that straight people were moving in and the area became sort of gentrified but more just straightified. It had already been, you know, fairly uppermiddle class but it became less bars and I don’t know, more restaurants. It changed. On the other hand, by then, Adams Morgan had really taken off as a center of Latino, Ethiopian, North African culture and was very attractive in my twenties as a place to hang out. So I wasn’t dependent on one neighborhood. I certainly saw that change. It was obvious that a big dividing line in D.C. was people in the military and government who were not protected by gay rights laws and who had to sneak around, and students who felt able to be out or other activists who didn’t depend upon a security clearance job. So the discussions that I continued to attend, that moved to WhitmanWalker. And those discussions, which were still excellent, continued to have about at fifty percent people for the first time telling their coming out story versus women who had gone to the group for years. It was really fun. But there were always women who were in the military who had to really hedge who they were and what was going on. And there began to be a huge pressure to change the military expulsion of gay people and I was very active in going to those hearings and I discovered you could go to hearings on Capitol Hill and that was very exciting, especially I would say around the ninetythree March on Washington, there was an open discussion with Eleanor Clift, Barney Frank, a couple of young men who had come out and were Tracey Thorn, I think who had been expelled from the military. Margaretta Cammermeyer. The ability to be close to these individuals and really take their stories down in my own journal was a big attraction of DC. But it changed as the Internet came along, and people did not go out to physical spaces as much as they used to. And the Internet broke down isolation among women and allowed for getting info if you were closeted but I quickly saw bars closing and women were getting sober and settling down and then our women’s bookstore closed, the gay bookstore closed, the women’s bars started to close. And it’s �like if you put a map up with lavender pushpins where all that stuff was, people don’t know. [58:42] RD: Could you tell me a little bit more about where these places were BM: Mhm. RD: maybe some of the names of the bookstores. BM: Sure. Okay. Lammas Books, started by Mary Farmer, began on Capitol Hill. That’s where I first saw a notice: Get a ride to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. Ten it moved to the corner of P and I wanna say 21st across from where there’s a Starbucks now. It’s a dry cleaner’s now. It’s so depressing. And it was successful there under the direction of Jane Troxell. And then it moved to 17th Street and was taken over by Denise Bump and her partner Sylvia until it closed. And I am embarrassed I don’t have an exact location. It was certainly flourishing through the publication of Karla Jay’s memoir Tales of the Lavender Menace because she went up there and said, “How come you don’t have my book in the window?” (laughs) And I know that the events that went on there were different than Lambda Rising. The first time I went to Lambda Rising I was nineteen. I was very intimidated by the whole back wall of porn and that men in business suits were spending their lunch hour looking at pictures of young, possibly underage guys. And I thought, Well, this ain’t for me. And the mood at Lammas was very different. It had a very good range of art and literature. But they also brought in very diverse speakers and occasionally concerts. The other places gosh, I know I’m leaving out some. So for me it was going to the bookstore, the women’s discussion group, the women’s music festivals, concerts which were sometimes lesbian performers were at the 9:30 Club, the Wax Museum. I was not yet going to the Birchmere but I know they appeared there and then there was a a place I went to mentally rummaging around here oh, Tracks opened this giant, big dance palace and where is now the Nationals Stadium. So I know there was a lot of tension when all those bars were plowed under to make for our baseball stadium. Tracks was a giant dance palace and I would go there with my young lesbian group, and I actually got my mom to go to my group one night and then go out dancing with us which was just awesome. So it changed to there were fewer places to go but some of them were really cool and palatial and then, you know, I had moved away. My family was here until ninetyfive. My parents house was in Bethesda until my father’s retirement, but by then I was teaching in Massachusetts. Kentucky I taught at Harvard. I taught in California. I got my appointment at GW the same year my parents were packing up to sell the house and retire, so we had an overlap year. And I came back, in part, because it was a gay positive city. I had had very bitter experience in the job in upstate New York where I taught at Saint Lawrence University. It was very homophobic. [63:04] �RD: So we talked a lot about changes in spaces. What changes have you seen in spaces specifically for LGBTQ women? BM: Yeah, well Phase 1 has Oh, I’m leaving out a whole story, oh my God well, the biggest cultural event that I felt was a diverse and hopeful shift was Mother Tongue which started in the late nineties and became a women’s spoken word group. There’s the Mother Tongue poster right on the wall. And I came in as a judge and then became a host and a competitor in the poetry slam stuff. That brought together women who were bi, lesbianidentified, queeridentified, trans. It was very much an overlap with the old dyke culture. The Lesbian Avengers were in that, women on rugby teams it was black, Asian, Latina, single moms, disability awareness, punk, drumming, witchidentified it was fantastic. And for fourteen years that became home. And that was the last Wednesday or Thursday of every month and then everybody would go over to Chaos for the drag king show. So a big shift in the nineties was to spoken word, drag king performance which embodied a whole new kind of maxing out butch masculinity just sort of trans, and then that vanished and trans took over. But there was a very different vibe of women who simply liked performing as Elvis or whomever and it was on women’s night in Chaos which was really fun, awfully fun. And I would often run into my own students there and say, “Look, I am not leaving because you’re here. I live here. This is my neighborhood. You behave but I’m gonna have a good time.” And eventually I was aware that I was getting older, by then I was forty and it didn’t matter. So there was a whole subculture in my neighborhood that was poetry slams which were very much tied to antiwar activism right after the September eleventh events. People that were uncomfortable with the invasion of Iraq and the policies of George W. Bush were activists from the stage. Mother Tongue used the Black Cat and it used both the upstairs and downstairs spaces. And at it’s peak you would have like threehundred people and no seats and it was just great. So it was an activist center that spilled over into a couple of different groups. And then there was a sort of minislam and drag king show that began to be held at Phase 1 on Capitol Hill. So it was drag king and spoken word were so successful they branched out, essentially. So I found myself at forty going back to the same bar where I went when I was nineteen actually, fortyfive because I remember having my fortyfifth birthday up there. And you would run into Daphne Scholinski, the artist, Ken Las Vegas, who had started drag king in DC and you would still have someone like Alix Dobkin, you know, a lesbian separtist, coming and doing a concert at Phase, and then you would have the student athletes come and hang out there. It was wonderful, a real mixed bag. That was a women’s I know that now Phase is either temporarily closed or whatever but its that was such a consistent space. Not a good dance floor, but cool and it there were a couple on intermediary spaces that were temporary. There was a place called Elon(??) for a little bit and the first few years I taught at GW where all the women went was the Hung Jury and that was over on right near here H and jeepers, something like H and 18th or 19th. It was within walking distance. It had a terrific dance floor. It was run by a Lebanese family or a Middle Eastern family. The sons took your money, the mom, you know the mom took your money, the sons were sort of security and then dad tended bar. And I had a wonderful night there with three friends who had all become successful. One had become a filmmaker. One was in the band Betty, which had become pretty �successful. And one was Maria Maggenti who directed the film The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls in Love . And I had gone to junior high with her. And the four of us had this night out dancing, going we followed our dreams. So that’s gone. That was a really great dance space that was also a restaurant. I went there with the whole gay GW women’s rugby team in probably around the year 2000 or ninetynine I had a lot of students come out to me. Actually what happened was, Matthew Shepard had just been killed and I made a speech in class and they came up and said we’d like to buy you a drink and that was, you know, a wonderful night. So I should add that because of my own experience with a professor as an undergrad, I was aware that I had to keep a boundary as a professor myself. On the other hand, I wanted to be an available role model. So I often went out with student and, you know, if someone started to like, grind on med I’d go, okay, that’s it you know, night’s over. But I went to see some of my own students perform. I certainly encouraged them to read their writing at Mother Tongue. It was really hard to get them to do that. People who would get up and do like, karaoke were embarrassed to read a poem. But the point of all this is that a space for women on that whole spectrum from ninetyeight to about twothousand eleven was at corridor of spoken word and drag king and it moved then Chaos closed. [70:04] RD: When did Chaos close? BM: Jeepers. After Cheryl Spector died so I’m thinking about twothousand seven. I wrote about all of this in the book I published called The Bar Notebooks . I kept a journal that I only wrote in when I went into Mother Tongue and Chaos and Phase. And a couple years ago I typed the whole thing up over like a fourteen year era and made it into one giant sort of Ginsberglike thing and I read it at Lavender Languages and the response was really positive and they said, You should publish that. So I self published it and now it’s a text book that’s being used in Wisconsin. But it has a very goo history of everything I’m telling you about and I donated a copy to Rainbow some time ago, but I’ll get you one too, okay? Cause it has RD: Oh, thank you. BM: a whole lot of AU stuff. I’ll take it right off the shelf when we’re done. RD: Thank you so much. BM: Yeah. RD: Who were the Lesbian Avengers? BM: Lesbian Avengers was started in New York by Sarah Shulman as a means of making lesbian issues visible and in particular, issues of poverty, unaffordability of housing, art spaces. It was in alliance with ACT UP and Queer Nation but a lot of �lesbians felt they were marginalized in those groups, and they became famous for eating fire as a public way of showing strength and their tshirts and propaganda were very provocative among other things it featured a little bomb and said, Be the bomb you throw, and, We recruit. That changed after twothousand one but they were very adamant about, you know, protesting anywhere there had been violence against a lesbian or where homophobia was affecting women in particular. And they began to organize a D.C. version of the Dyke March. So there had been a Dyke March in New York at the twentyfifth anniversary of Stonewall in June of ninetyfour as a way of giving women a particular visibility. And we now we started to have one in D.C. the it used to be the Saturday night before the Pride festival but now Pride’s parade has moved to Saturday evening. So we had a fairly anemic Dyke March for a couple of years. It just kind of went around Dupont Circle and up to U Street and back and just kind of fizzled out. But the original purpose was to bring particular visibility to women. So that was wonderful. And I have all the old tshirts form all of this, I have all the old tshirts from this era in a big plastic Tupperware tub in my apartment closet. RD: That’s amazing. Who were ACT UP and Queer Nation? BM: Ah. Yes, of course. ACT UP. AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Wow, I can’t believe I pulled that out of my mind. And that was formed to demand accountability by drug companies to hasten medical research. Queer Nation was more something that began in the nineties as a means of visibility in particular in tackling homophobia and it had bright stickers that you wore on your leather jacket. Those groups I observed burgeoning particularly in places like Boston and the Bay Area. They were a very different kind of inyourface activism. Particularly as people became discussed with the slow pace I think Larry Kramer was probably involved with ACT UP or was it’s founder. I should know this instantly. And dieins and sitins and spilling fake blood in front of drug companies were hallmarks of these demos. Women were very much involved in them, but again, a lot of what you would think of as women’s issues were completely neglected in all of this. No one talked about Breast Cancer. And women’s vulnerability to rape, which was directly connected to the abortion rights, was not a priority for a lot of the gay guys organizations. So those tensions remained. But I went to many a protest that was simply about the lack of legal support for people who were denied hospital visits by their partner and so on. And often these were located literally in Dupont Circle. You would meet there and march around. I went to a couple of demonstrations in front of the white house. I personally never experienced violence. I was very I’ve had lots of straightlooking privilege but definitely observed at some of the big marches heckling buy fundamentalists groups and I was keenly aware of the organized backlash by evangelicals, In ninetyfour I put on a disguise and infiltrated a Concerned Women for America meeting in Mississippi to take notes on what I understood to be planned political actions against lesbian rights and I take recorded all the proceedings and I tried to sell, or promote the idea of an article for Ms. Magazine. They were not interested but I still have those tapes, so. [76:36] � RD: Have you been involved in any other movements related to politics, social change, or activism? BM: Sure. Yes. Gosh. Well, I’ve been a member of a lot of women’s history groups the Berkshire Women’s History Conference, the National Women’s Studies Association, the Feminist Writer’s Guild. I belong to a lesbian bar that was a private membership in upstate New York for eight years Horizon when I went to graduate school at Binghamton but also I belong to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Majority, the National Organization for Women just name any feminist organization. Then I belonged to the Lambda shoot, Lambda Literary Foundation, which has burgeoned into the Lammies and I’m a threetime Lammy finalist. But I supported the literary foundation and they also did a series of other conferences called Outwrite. In terms of other activism, I’ve been active with peace groups I know I’m leaving out giant, important things I’ve been active on behalf of the deaf community through being exposed to sign language interpretation through women’s music. I dated two interpreters so I became part of the deaf community for a while. And I’m thinking of where I give donations as a good marker. You now, I’ve done a lot of work with the environment. My dad worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. And then I started teaching a Women’s Sports History class so I became part of the advisory board of the Women’s Sports Foundation and joined a number of groups that were active in promoting Title IX and women’s sports opportunity. I’m also one of the evil people who grades AP U.S. History exams so starting in 2000 I became a person who scores AP exams but I deliberately was out and I was the only out lesbian the first few years in a gathering of eleven hundred people. I wore all rainbow all the time and I helped eight other women come out. And date two of them. Anyway, the deal there was that I pushed for greater inclusion of questions about women in standardized testing and greater sensitivity to the presence of the LGBT historians. So I’ve pretty much bee out everything I’ve belonged to yeah. RD: And then, I guess one more quick question about spaces. What LGBTQ space exist today in DC? BM: Yeah. Well, it’s really changed. I mean, there’s the DC Center, which is very big and huge, but it’s sort of unique. There’s support groups at the different universities [calling to someone walking by] Hi! The best one of course is Georgetown has this big LGBT center that was funded in part by donations from Paul Tagliabue, former NFL commissioner, who had a son who came out apparently, and donated a lot to move Georgetown along the path to safe space. My mom taught little Tagliabue, which is really cool, back in the day, when she did a daycare dance class. So there’s university support spaces, there’s the DC Center. I’m sorry to say that the bars I’ve gone to recently, like there was a second Phase down at the old bar whose name I cannot remember at P and 22nd and that had huge dance nights for women and was such a big draw for so long and that doesn’t happen anymore so that was a guy’s bar, kind of a leather bar and then it became something else and then it became Phase at whatever and that has shut down. �(pause) It’s just sad. I don’t know. I go to poetry slams that are very, sort of, queer positive. And I go to a few events that are held in Takoma Park which still has a lot of sort of settled, married lesbian couples, if you will. I go to some of the GLOE events at the DCJCC and some of the film festivals. I was very involved with Real Affirmations for a very long time because I was in at least three movies that screened at the film fest: Speaking Our Minds , which was a history of Mother Tongue; Radical Harmonies , a history of lesbian music which is being shown Wednesday night in Takoma Park; and Out of Season , directed by my friend Jeanette Buck and I was a production assistant on that film. So these are just sort of more occasional events and a lot of the stuff I do is sort of out of town and a lot of it is working at women’s music events in other cities or fundraising, yeah. [82:45] RD: What do you think this loss of permanent space means for the community? BM: More work for me. This is why I’m so exhausted. I’m writing as fast as I can about lost lesbian spaces. I’m trying to do this panel on lost lesbian spaces. I have copied everything I’ve collected from Mother Tongue and sent it to the Brooklyn Lesbian Herstory Archives. I have the rest right there on the shelf under your left elbow labeled Mother Tonuge in that giant brown folder. And then I have a whole shelf at home of Mother Tongue memorabilia. I have all of the archives from the women’s music concerts and stuff I attended in the eighties in a drawer in my apartment. I’ve put all of it in better shape. This week I’ve been reorganizing it from year to year so it’s all in order. But the unrenumerated, thankless job of being an archivist is very tiring because, you know, occasionally I’ve applied for grants and maybe once or twice I’ve won one but it’s simply about preserving what a next generation would have to consider valuable. And what we’re in now is this rollover era where there’s an almost palpable disdain for what lesbians as lesbians used to do. It’s all thrown in the barrel with really negative depictions of feminists as TERFs trans excluding radical feminists or women with cisgender privilege who oppress their trans sisters. There’s no space for historicizing how women contributed to the arrogant culture I’m seeing now. That’s a cranky as I’ll get. But it’s more like, when I came out, I just wanted to sit at the feet of and worship the women who had made everything happen that was in place. It never occurred to me to critique them. Now, I did say to you that I critiqued the racism that I occurred so I understand somebody coming into the community and interrogating what lesbians have built up to now in terms of a lack of a space for trans women. I get that. What I don’t feel comfortable with is the slander that exists in cyberspace because coming from an era when you couldn’t write something mean about someone and send it to a million instantly, there was infighting in lesbian publications but you waited six weeks to get one mailed to you, and by then the parties had made up. The kind of defaming and the threatening and the, Let’s go burn down the Michigan Festival, which is a place of old women, women in wheelchairs, and children, thank you very much that is very threatening to me because it’s not just, you know, write a death threat and push send, which is so easy, but it means that there is instant info you can do a search and you’ll get all this nasty stuff but you won’t find the �preexisting history because the paper trail is much smaller than the space in the Internet if you follow. And as fast as I can get the paper trail digitized, people are erasing my era. I’ve never expected anything like this to happen and it’s a unique meld of progressive politics and technological advancement. So the book I’ve just written, which is called The Mystery of the Vanishing Lesbian , speaks to that point, which is the reason you don’t have more info about the seventies, eighties, nineties is because it was illegal to be a homo and everybody his what they were doing, they didn’t give their real name, there wasn’t a yearbook of lesbian activists, and there were no mailing lists for the Michigan Festival. Everything was passed handtohand. And people didn’t dare keep a scrapbook because if your boss found it, you were out. So everyone was very private and reconstructing all that is very difficult and time consuming. In contrast, people without journalistic credentials can write a critique and launch it to the world and it’s not vetted by any traditional editorial oversight so a lot of falsehoods are out there which is just exhausting to try and undo. So anyway, I think the vanishing of physical space women are emailing each other, How are you dealing with the aging thing? but there isn’t a place to go hang out. It’s academically never been easier to do great writing, publishing, and research about the community, which is wonderful. So if I’m nostalgic about he past, it also would have been difficult to publish and be out in academia in a way it’s not now. So it’s a great moment to do history and advocacy. But I also think as we achieve our mainstream goals (pause) I came out of an era that was not about marriage, faith, and family. It was about critiquing the church, the family, and the idea that all women had to have babies and the turning point was the 2000 Millennium March, which Robin Tyler produced, which was about I think it’s tag line was something like, Faith and family, and it was very much about bringing firefighters and ministers and people from the military to show they are the face of America, we are the face of America. But I always expected to be married to the movement, and not to an actual wife. It’s weird to hear the word wife being used. I I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future but I think in about ten years there’s gonna be another pendulum swing and people will come to me interested in knowing what it was like to be part of the women’s culture of the seventies and eighties. [89:37] RD: Do you consider yourself a member of any other communities like academic, drag, sports BM: Sure. RD: and how does your involvement in those communities intersect with your LGBTQ identity? BM: My God. Hang on, I’m just okay, no I’m good for a little while longer. I totally identify with academia,being a Women’s Studies professor. I’m pretty loyal to Women’s Studies versus Gender Studies because I like to put the word “woman” out there. I really identified with being a progressive Jewish feminist. I’m certainly sensitive to issues about �Palestine and the patriarchal aspects of Judaism. But I I’ve been comfortable identifying as a Jew from the womb. I identify to a certain degree as an actress. I do a onewoman play and I travel around the world with my play Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor so I’m interested in other women’s onewoman shows and I’m active in the theatre community. I taught on Semester at Sea, which is a shipboard program that takes students around the world and I’m very close to them and their programs and to globalizing how students learn about women’s lives and feminism so I’m connected to various international programs and the best overlap of all of that is Olivia Cruises, where I guest lecture on women’s history while at sea. And that’s a great pleasure. And Olivia Cruises grew out of Olivia Records, which was the first women’s lesbian recording company and they produced Chris Williamson’s album The Changer and the Changed to this day the bestselling women’s music album ever. And I’ve gone on about six trips with them. I’m going to do two more this summer. They have a primarily lesbian clientele. So I’m involved with them, with the College Board, with Lavender Languages at AU, definitely with women’s sports. I’m on the Athletics Counsel here at GW. I’m the faculty advisor to Women’s Rugby. (Laugh) And I’m sure I’m leaving out something massive. I’m a scholarly advisor to the National Women’s History Museum which is yet to be built, but I’ve been trying to get that built. In the past few years, I would’ve said first Mother Tongue and it’s a real sorrow that that is gone. That’s like the last place to go every month thing for women. Although, you know, if I just looked more, there’s Girls Going Out and Nice Jewish Girls and so forth. But also I’m sort of older now. So its for ten years, you know, I was in a longdistance relationship and I was out of town during some of the social events I would have otherwise attended so there’s kind of a lapse in local activism. So. RD: What happened to Mother Tongue? BM: We just had fewer and fewer women going and the Black Cat couldn’t justify giving us the space when they could rake in the money to have a concert the same evening. So we had to sort of just stop. It’s a real shame. It was still attracting people for the big events was the AntiValentine’s Slam and then we would do a big anniversary party in October so February and October were the high points and usually a June Pride show. RD: Your onewoman play BM: Mhm. RD: is called Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor BM: Yeah. RD: correct? Could You tell me just a little about that? BM: Sure. It’s about, you know, negotiating the labyrinth of being a feminist scholar and how people make fun of that, how my students are afraid to take a Women’s Studies class �lest they, you know, they how they deal with the stereotypes, what the discover about themselves. I wrote it while I was experiencing real backlash, misogyny, and homophobia at Saint Lawrence University in ninetytwo and I decided to take various situations that were occurring often and turn them into entertainment to try and broaden an audience’s awareness of what’s it like if you just want to learn about your own foremothers people would call you gay, I had students who would come home and guys would drive by and throw tampons on their front porches, there was horrible graffiti about women in the school library, on the desks, in the cafeteria, and I also include scenes about job interviews I’ve had where even the Dean of a university would mock the Women’s Studies program a lot about what students would confide to me that I can’t act on or fix and how burdened the faculty are that are in a position to know what’s going on and some of it is just plain old funny about one scene addresses I confronted President Bill Clinton. He came to a men’s basketball game but he wouldn’t stay for the women’s game and I got in his face and said, “Mr President, sit back down. You can’t walk out while the women take the court. What kind of example are you setting for your daughter and the women of America?” And he sat back down. So RD: Wow. BM: I’ve done that all over the world: Israel, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland, yeah. It’s been great. RD: So you’re an accomplished professor, author, speaker, playwright, performer BM: and still buying one potato at a time because I’m badly paid. I’m halftime at two schools technically adjunct but things are starting to improve a little bit. And my story is very atypical and yet typical at the same time. More faculty are hired as parttime so that schools can save money but I’m the only person who has become fulltime parttime and does nothing but teach Women’s Studies. I really stuck it out and created a job for myself here and I don’t regret it, you know. I’m about to publish my fourteenth book. That’s all I ever wanted to do and I’m sad that I’m not with the partner who I had a very wonderful era with but I have to be out, I have to be an activist, I have to be on stage. If I’m on the evening news or the cover of a magazine, it can’t be seen as a threat to the person I love; it has to be seen as getting the word out and the way I expressed it in my journal recently is, I want to reach more than the person lying next to me. I want to make a mark on more than one individual. So. (nontranscribable sound) [97:29] RD: So you’ve spoken about your journals a lot and I did read a little about them on your website BM: Yeah. �RD: How long have you been writing them and about how many do you think you have by now? BM: I have a hundred I’m about to start journal number one hundred and seventythree. Here’s one hundred and seventytwo. So they look like this and they’re each about two to threehundred pages long . I’ve been doing this since I was twelve. You know, it didn’t even occur to me dag! last year to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of starting keeping a journal. So much happened in ninety excuse me, two thousand and four, was like the fortieth anniversary of a lot of stuff. Anyway, I started with a little diary that you get from Woolworth’s and then I moved to a notebook format by the end of seventyfour and I’ve used that and I write with a fountain pen. So, yeah, I have a very good record of demonstrations, the vigil for Matthew Shepard was particularly intense. I should mention that that was a great coming together immediately. I mean, there was a tiny notice in the window of Lambda Rising: Rally at the Capitol steps and everybody was there. I lunged out of my house, direct from watching a rerun of Ellen DeGeneres's’ coming out episode to standing next to Ellen herself in the same night and it never occurred to me that she would be there giving a speech. Eventually I met Ellen and her mom. My mother met her mom. I was on the same bill as Ellen and my mom was introduced by Ellen’s mom at another event. It was all really cool. But for a very sorrowful occasion and that particular evening, what was terrific in the community was a particular Congressman took the mic and tried to make a statement and a local woman pretty much wrestled the mic out of his hand sand said, “You demean the name of this young man with your politicking. This is not a time for you to pitch to voters” and just moved him off the stage. It was unbelievable. And what was terrific about that evening was when Ellen stood up, she had written her speech in her journal and torn the pages. You could see the little curly edges. And she began by saying, “I wrote this in my journal in the limo on the way over .” And I was holding my journal and Ellen was reading from handwritten in her journal. It was before everybody went to their smart phone. I really miss that era and it’s hard to describe because there’s such convenience in the smart phone stuff. But as a writer, I felt that we were all writing speeches in our notebooks that night. It’s hard to explain. The other thing about that week I was a volunteer for GLAAD at the time, meeting with Cathy Renna and talking about, you know, representations, and I was a volunteer at the GLAAD awards. And I went to, in just the span of a few days, a memorial service for Shepard in the Saint Margaret’s church down the block from me with Cathy. And then taught did teachins with my students on both campuses. There was a lot going on and it felt like we were very much the center of some of that. RD: When you say Cathy BM: Cathy Renna, who was the director the media director of GLAAD. And she’s now weorks for I think Veleraco(??) , she’s continued to be an activist media specialist. There was a lot of I had, and continued to have, access to a lot of people who were movers and shakers in the community. I went from being very starryeyed about leaders and performers to befriending as my peer group and people I wanted to interview and just know and pick their brains intellectually people I felt had made a mark on history, and I �became kind of the biographerarchivist to a bunch of people and then I kind of became a performerleader myself. It’s been interesting watching that in this contained story because now people will call me and they’ll say, Well I know you’ll have this information or you might have you might know or it might be in your house. And probably the most flattering was when Phyllis Lyon of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who founded Daughters of Bilitis called and asked if I had somebody’s phone number. (Laughs) And I said, “Shouldn’t I be asking y’all?” But at the same time, younger students are rapidly less and less familiar with these names of people that I think of as the top tier or whatever. So it’s I’m really aware of being in a different generation but being very active with (pause) usually I’m either with people much younger than me or much older. I don’t get to see people my age very often. And that’s part of the disappearance of women’s space. Because the thing that was a hallmark of my time is gone, I tend to be interviewing people older than me who started it all, and then explaining that to my students who are younger than me, and many of my friends express a sentiment that what’s happened with gay rights we are like this pipeline. We’re explaining what we received from those who came before us to those who came after us. But by now we’ve had forty years of activism that hardly anybody asks about so when do we get taken seriously, you know? So it’s nice to put that in this interview. I feel very much like I’ve been a conduit. And my friends as well. But in our fifties we’re still being told by our friends in their sixties and seventies, You weren’t there and you can’t know. So I don’t want to sound like that to my students and I know I do sometimes. But it’s more like I haven’t even begin to scratch the surface of getting the stories from the women who started Olivia or started the women’s bookstores and they’re they’re a generation that will soon be passing so I feel so much urgency and yet I have to like, slow down and take care of myself. So. (untranscribable sound) [104:53] RD: So what do you see in your future, and in the future of the LGBT community here in D.C.? BM: Well in my future, I intend to teach for another ten years. I have up to book nineteen plotted out and I have contracts for up to probably fifteen books and then there’s four others that I want to publish. I would like to continue work I have started recently, which is working with Pacifica Radio Archives on their women’s music collection and they brought me in just this winter to do a Women’s History Moth radio show and I’ve been invited to work with them on a longterm, multiseries project. I am now working as a historical consultant to Disney Pictures but I am forbidden to talk more about it. I signed a topsecret contract. I can say, however, that it’s it’s taking things in a good direction, which is why they approached me. I know. So I would love to talk more about that and I’m so frustrated I can’t. I am going to probably write several books on the meaning of and backlash against women’s music and the Michigan Festival but I’m also going to make more and more pitches for archiving and understanding the forty other festivals aside from Michigan. So something I’m frustrated by is that there’s a lot of backlash against this one Fest that asks for womenborn space but I never saw anybody trans �putting a nickel into the other forty festivals that have all gone bankrupt that were completely open to whomever and their stories are gone in the overshadowing of this other festival. So I’m gonna keep archiving and giving speeches about that. In terms of Olivia, I plan to keep lecturing on the ship. I don’t know about D.C. I feel like eventually I may be ready to leave and go back to the West Coast, where my family’s returned and teach part time in some Women’s Studies program and just write. But I’m really right now at the top of my game here. I mean, the State Department calls me and I give talks to visiting women from other countries and working on museum initiatives. I got invited to take students to the White House. I just here’s this fan letter from Michelle Obama right on the desk. So, yeah I think I’ll be here for a while but I also think a lot of what I’m doing is historical and that the movement is at a crossroads where my experience may not be as valued, which is painful. But I’m delighted to see what happened in one week with Indiana, which makes me feel very affirmed as a citizen. I can’t say enough about Charles Barkley on CNN, calling in and demanding a denouncement of homophobia and connecting it to racism. It was thrilling! Frankly, I can tell you back to my origins at AU everything I became an expert on is too controversial to write about. I lived in Israel which is now considered an evil location. I worked for thirty years at Michigan, now considered an evil location. Everything that was my sacred space is now considered exclusionary, rather than a place that welcomed the outcast. I don’t know how history will interpret that in another generation but right now, there is a rejection of the places I became an expert on, which limits my ability to articulate what I know. And that’s a very unusual position for a historian to be in. So I have to twiddle my resume and sometimes I take off the year at Tel Aviv University or the forty years of working at Michigan or whatever and it’s a shame but I also understand that there’s a new kind of are you now or have you ever been a Zionist or Michigan worker, which I never expected. And I ran a support group for Jewish lesbians at Michigan for fifteen years so that overlap was a very cherished identity which is now just interrogated by everybody. So the fact that D.C. initiated a wonderful space for Jewish lesbian activism with Evi Beck’s book it’s probably been a long, strange trip for her as well. [110:17] RD: I wanted to backtrack for just a second BM: Okay. RD: because you mentioned Indiana BM: Yeah. Yeah. RD: How do you feel about legislation changes over the years in D.C. and do you think that that has shaped or changed the community and do you think that it will in the future? BM: Well I always felt like D.C. had my back. I felt aware of the work done by Frank Kameny and others. I was privileged to meet him a few times. I felt safe as a district �resident safe out ,like, you know, whatever. Although, I have to say, for many years I refused to do jury duty, saying, “When I have the same rights as other Americans, I’ll participate in the judicial system. But you shouldn’t ask me to skip a day of teaching gay history to be a juror until I can marry in the district.” And I you know, that didn’t work. I ended up going and doing jury duty but I have primarily felt threatened by religious organizations and this still goes on. I think the turning point was not only the attack on Matthew Shepard, flawed figure that he might be. It is regrettable that it takes hate crimes and violence and bullying I think people are acutely aware of the attempted suicides of young people and it’s a shame that that has to lead to other protections. But I think an uncredited group was GLSEN the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network, that began as a means of protecting schoolkids and faculty, and defending Gay Straight Alliances in schools. And because I had been helped with my best friend by a sheltering space in my junior high in Maryland in the seventies, I was very much supportive of GLSEN and its work and it’s founder Kevin Jennings was very wise in speaking to mixed groups saying, One thing that we can all agree on is school should be safe for every kid. And that and a couple of lawsuits pushed schools to have protective clauses for gay students and I think that was the first shift in legal statutes that acknowledged you could identify as gay as a kid before you had any rights. And that if kids needed protections, what about the adults charged with protecting them. Obviously I think it’s great that I never expected to see the change I’m seeing now and I’m sure everybody says that like, Wow, you know, gay marriage in our lifetime, oh my God. The end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was very exciting, although I have mixed feelings about the military. The end of sodomy laws thrilling. And something that a lot of people don’t understand, that you could be denied a role in any organization on the grounds you were a criminal if you lived in a state with a sodomy law. And that’s the one thing I tell my students about over and over. I could walk into Virginia, I’m a felon, walk back in to D.C., not. And I guess most recently what’s distressing is the resistance to (pause) recognition of adoptive, fostered children. Because I have friends desperately looking for jobs who turn down work made available to them in Florida or wherever because they wouldn’t be able to adopt or foster a child. So it;s had a direct impact on the employment of people I know that you have to do this whole investigation of state laws before you can accept work in a location. So D.C. has been a good safe space. I’ve had people say, “Oh, if you’re on like a fixed income, why don’t you look for cheaper rent in Virgina?” And my response has been, “I can’t live in Virginia. I’m a criminal there.” You know? [115:06] RD: Is there anything else that you would like to say to our listeners BM: oh my God RD: to researchers, or future generations? BM: Oh my God. Two hours of talking. I can’t believe it. I have to go home and do so much stuff. Sure. I was very much part of the I’m looking at this Women’s Peace Camp �poster behind your head and I realize I’ve failed to mention that in the eighties, with the Regan era Cold War, facing against the Soviet Union, which lasted until eightynine, I was part of the Women’s Peace Camp movement which had sites at several locations: Puget Sound, Greenham Common in England, and then upstate New York. That was a very lesbian top heavy gathering of women trying to bring attention to the insanity of nuclear war and those sites were at spaces that were either where nuclear weapons were either stored or deployed. Seneca was a place where nuclear weapons were stored before they were shipped to Greenham. I was arrested there twice and for trespass. That lesbian peace activist wing has completely lost any attention because we have rushed to embrace LGBT in the military and it has been awkward to be antimilitary but coming out of a peace activist background, I mentioned the peace camps because you would see women of all backgrounds working together Buddhist nuns, lesbian moms. And that history has vanished because those military bases have been dismantled so unfortunately launched into the war on terror and that has brought many gay servicemen and women into a particular role in Middle East policy which again has launched quite a bit of racism and depiction of Iraqis and Afghanis but before that, I would have said I identified throughout the ‘80s with peace camp memberships, which were of course, not ever written down but this is significant because when I went to international lesbian conferences, there were always contingents from the peace camps and that was always considered part of the lesbian movement. And I hope for more retelling of that era. (pause) I think there’s there was a pang I felt when the Pentagon was attacked. I wrote in my journal on September eleventh I stood on my roof watching the Pentagon burning and I felt embarrassed by the times I had said in a public place, “I won’t date women in the military” out of a sense of being committed to the peace movement and now I wrote in my journal, Is some Was somebody killed today that I turned down for a date? And I just I have to say that’s a part of being a Washington lesbian. On that day I think a lot of people emphasize New York being attacked and forget that D.C. was attacked. And I was aware lesbian lives were lost that day, closeted lives, lives I had engaged with in discussions that I treasure at the lesbian rap group but that I had put up a wall about being intimate with for political reasons. And I think there are people all over D.C. who have a political storyline to their dating life because of jobs they accepted or turned down and I think that’s something you wouldn’t get in a narrative from someone who lived in South Dakota. I don’t know. Maybe. [120:06] RD: Is there anything I didn’t ask you today that you wish I had? BM: I think it’s important to acknowledge that from the minute I was a teenager I was committed tot the Equal Rights Amendment and also to abortion rights and many of the abortion rights and clinic defenses I participated in in D.C. were majority lesbian although lesbians are less likely to sleep with men and require abortions. And I think there’s always been a tension a tension(??) with an S tension between well, about how lesbians have supported straight women’s rights and vice versa has not always been consistent. I was proud to march with my mom and my aunt in the nineteen eightynine �Rally for Women’s Lives. It was a prochoice demo that was enormous. But I think that the contributions of lesbians to all progressive movements cannot be overestimated. And one of the things I also would add I’ve emphasized in my classes it’s really only been since about nineteen eightyeight that it became normal to have a VCR in your house so that you could watch any gay movie you wanted over and over and over. And I still am amazed by that. I’m still amazed that I can watch over and over movies that I spent years hunting down and treasured to find a depiction not often realistic but what a breakthrough that was because there were hardly any movies and you had to pay your money each time to see it a second time. There was no such thing as having it in your house. But now you can have all your friends over and watch, you know, Desert Hearts . And that changed the sense of visibility in media because you could create an all gay or lesbian evening of viewing and have an all you could have a whole evening where you saw yourself instead of just one movie once every other year. And so I have to credit technology with bringing into the home the sense that you could create a mirror of your life. RD: Hm. Have you left anything unsaid today? BM: Oh, I’m sure. God. Well, I I’m able to get in my car and drive directly from Dupont Circle on Mass Avenue to Mass Avenue at the other end my junior high, where I was in love with my best friend. I can go from the adult I am now to the gay kid I was at fourteen on one road and I can go right into the neighborhood where my family moved to that first house we rented and look at the window where I held a girl for the first time. That geography has not been, you know, bulldozed or replaced with a big condominium or anything so I do a certain amount of nostalgic driving around once in a while. I want to state for the record I am on very good loving terms with that best friend, with the best friend I had at sixteen, with the best friend I has at eighteen who I came out with, with the dance teacher I went out with, and if I’m honest I could say I have emailed every single on of them in the past four days. So my past is very close to me but I’ve worked very hard to be on good terms with people I might have, you know, broken up with or what have you. So there is nobody from my past I wouldn’t welcome walking through the door right now. I’m sort of determined to be that open door. But I think I identified as a historian from a pretty early age because when I was sixteen by best friend of an earlier earlier time was killed in a car accident and I was very much aware I had the burden of remember everything for two. So I think that has made me aware of being the keeper of certain memories. That’s probably the key to various other adult aspects. [125:44] RD: So I think my very last question BM: Okay. Holy mackerel. RD: is what ever happened to Paula? �BM: I just had a reunion with her in London. Let’s look at a hot picture of Paula, shall we? I went and gave a talk about these very issues at the Lesbian Lives Conference in Brighton, England. And I looked up Paula who had by then long since moved to London and we had a tender reunion in Camden Town. There she is, wiping away a tear. Just awesome. [Sound of book closing.] So that was a sort of odd you know, like, the relationship ended because I went back to American and she was angry for a while and then but we had stayed in touch. We really did. She tried to convince me, even at this last reunion that I wasn’t really gay. I was like, “Are you out of your freaking mind?” and for her it was because she was raised with a woman was either macho or she was like, someone like me could not really be gay. And I’m like, “Hello, you made love to me every night for a year.” But I was aware that my American brand of rainbow identity for her as a Brazilian woman, she used to say “Boy, if you acted like that in Brazil, they’d just come in with a machine gun and take you out.” And I’ve often been involved with people who had to be more closeted or came from a more difficult past, let’s put it that way. I’ve often been able to be the out one or the strong one or the protector figure. But in part because pretty much except for that first year, I’ve had my parents at my back and my home was a safe space. So yeah Paula also in the last week God, how embarrassing but yeah, my journal is filled with emails from girl after girl after girl. My friend Toni who edits Hot Wire I wrote for Hot Wire Magazine for many years once said to me, “Here’s the deal: I like the girls and the girls like me.” And I’m like, Okay, I could pick up that motto myself. (Laugh) RD: Well, I really appreciate BM: Okay. RD: you taking the time to with me BM: No. RD: today BM: this is amazing. RD: Yeah, your interview was really informative and I know it’ll make a great BM: Okay. RD: contribution to the rainbow history project so thank you very much. BM: (Deep breath/sigh) Sure. Thank you. RD: That was an interview with Dr. Bonnie Morris on Monday BM: Oh my God. � RD: April 6th, 2015 in her office here at GWU. The time is now 6:41. BM: Holy shit. RD: The interviewer’s name is Rebecca Day and this interview was recorded for the Rainbow History Project. The End. BM: Wow. That was so long. [128:53] � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Rebecca+Day">Rebecca Day</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Dr.+Bonnie+Morris">Dr. Bonnie Morris</a> Location The location of the interview. George Washington University Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. Yes, courtesy of Rebecca Day Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available (.wav, 1.38 GB) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:08:53 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with Bonnie Morris, 1961- Description An account of the resource AU student Rebecca Day interviews Dr. Bonnie Morris, a long-time resident of Washington, D.C. who identifies as a lesbian woman and works as a professor and writer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=06+April+2015">06 April 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+interview+belongs+to+the+Rainbow+History+Project.+The+RHP+release+form+was+used+and+all+rights+belong+to+RHP.">The interview belongs to the Rainbow History Project. The RHP release form was used and all rights belong to RHP.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-present Dr. Bonnie Morris is interviewed by Rebecca Day. Dr. Morris describes her childhood and family life, her education, her family’s geographical history, and her coming out experience, describing both her intellectual and sexual awakening. She speaks about various LGBTQ spaces in Washington, D.C. - bookstores, women’s groups, concerts and festivals, bars and clubs, et cetera. She discusses feminism, women’s culture of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, the era of the woman-identified woman, and several landmark events in women’s, LGBTQ, and civil rights history. There are various accounts of her education and her career - including work as a professor, writer, speaker, performer, and working with institutions including Michigan Women’s Music Festival, Olivia Cruises, and Semester at Sea. Dr. Morris speaks to various movers and shakers in the gay rights movement, and landmark media and publications. She additionally describes her personal life, including several girlfriends and lovers. Dr. Morris speaks to themes of intersectionality, racism and homophobia, progressive politics and the effects of technological advancements, and the erasure of her generation’s era in the modern LGBTQ dialogue. https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/41201fb3922ce63b0716b9b757ce824d.pdf 86776be00cd02ea16f7c525fec8a2d2a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Elliott Wrenn Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Anne Q. Scott Location The location of the interview. Washington, DC Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. Yes Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Anne Q. Scott, 1982- Description An account of the resource Would you like to listen to this audio? Please email <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> to request access Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 5, 2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No restrictions on access; no restrictions on use. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1982-2015 (bulk 2005-2015) Anne Q. Scott was born outside of Boston, MA, on January 29, 1982. In this Rainbow History Project (RHP) oral history Scott briefly discusses her background and life at Mount Holyoke College before graduation and relocation to the Washington, DC area (Alexandria, VA) in 2004. Scott discusses her interests in moving to the District and her introduction to the city and its gay community. The largest part of the interview involves Scott’s involvement (2005-2012) in Capital Pride and the different entities that managed the annual LGBT pride festival. She documents the transition period (2007-2009) of Capital Pride management from the Whitman-Walker Clinic (clinic) to the Capital Pride Alliance (Alliance). As a founding member of the Alliance, Anne discusses the clinic’s Capital Pride Request for Proposal (RFP) process and her expertise in non-profit finance. Scott explains the Alliance’s transition from RFP candidate to Capital Pride steward and subsequent years of the festival. Scott closes the oral history reflecting on changes in the city and the gay community during her years in the District. Keywords: Dumbarton House, Capital Pride, Whitman-Walker Clinic, the DC Center for the LGBT Community, Capital Pride Alliance, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington Plaza Hotel, Tagg Magazine, Vincent Slatt, Dave Mallory, Bill Miles, Larry Stansbury, Michael Lutz, Bernie Delia, Adrianne Jones, Dyana Mason. Subject The topic of the resource Anne Scott discusses her life in the Washington DC LGBT community, highlighting her experience with Capital Pride (2005-2012). Abstract A summary of the resource. Anne Q. Scott was born outside of Boston, MA, on January 29, 1982. In this Rainbow History Project (RHP) oral history Scott briefly discusses her background and life at Mount Holyoke College before graduation and relocation to the Washington, DC area (Alexandria, VA) in 2004. Scott discusses her interests in moving to the District and her introduction to the city and its gay community. The largest part of the interview involves Scott’s involvement (2005-2012) in Capital Pride and the different entities that managed the annual LGBT pride festival. She documents the transition period (2007-2009) of Capital Pride management from the Whitman-Walker Clinic (clinic) to the Capital Pride Alliance (Alliance). As a founding member of the Alliance, Anne discusses the clinic’s Capital Pride Request for Proposal (RFP) process and her expertise in non-profit finance. Scott explains the Alliance’s transition from RFP candidate to Capital Pride steward and subsequent years of the festival. Scott closes the oral history reflecting on changes in the city and the gay community during her years in the District 2000s 2010s Advocacy groups Bars and clubs Bookstores Capital Pride Capital Pride Alliance Community centers Dance clubs Dupont Circle Employment HIV/AIDS Lambda Rising Marches Nightlife Phase One Pride Publications Washington D.C. Whitman-Walker Clinic Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=David+Quick">David Quick</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=David+Mariner">David Mariner</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, DC Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet available. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. 1 mp3 file. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with David Mariner, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=12+Feb+2015">12 Feb 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=No+restrictions+on+access%3B+no+restrictions+on+use.">No restrictions on access; no restrictions on use.</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant David Mariner is the current director of the DC Center for the LGBT Community. He grew up in Corning, New York and attended Furman University where he came out and began work as an activist around LGBT issues, HIV, and sex education. His work with Advocates for Youth brought him to Washington, DC where he has lived most of his adult life and worked as a leader in the LGBT community. Topics of the interview include his early life, aspects of community education around HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, organizing early HIV vaccine studies, description of the gay scene in DC, decision to become director of the DC Center, history of the DC Center, current activities at the DC Center. https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/0be61ce1506732f9c13eb731f37d3e15.pdf e0a2c95b8b4266ec73f79fd42f39f68a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Esperanza+Pastor+Nu%C3%B1ez+de+Castro">Esperanza Pastor Nuñez de Castro</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=3&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Susan+Silber">Susan Silber</a> Location The location of the interview. Takoma Park Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. Yes, transcript available Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history with Susan Silber, 1948- Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=30+January+2015">30 January 2015</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=47&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=No+restrictions+on+access%3B+no+restrictions+on+use.%0D%0A">No restrictions on access; no restrictions on use. </a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Susan, originally from New Jersey and currently living in Takoma Park, is an active lawyer and mother of two children who has lived in the DC area since 1977. In the decade of 1980’s she was co-chair of the Gay and Lesbian Section of the D.C. Bar. Through her work she has treated Lesbian and Gay parenting issues and has experienced some shocking situations. Susan testimony is an overview of the lesbian and gay life in university, bar association and activist groups from the times of the First National March in the capital of the United States (1979). Abstract A summary of the resource. Susan Silber (1948-) discusses moving from Buffalo, NY to the D.C. area [00:29], her involvement in gay organizing through Antioch Law School, the National Lawyers' Guild, and the 1979 National March on Washington [03:22], practicing family law as a lesbian lawyer [08:52], efforts to educate D.C. judges in LGBT issues [16:40], the formation of Gay Law and efforts to establish domestic partnership in D.C. [20:54], her efforts to educate clients and groups about legal issues [26:08], the Solomon Act [27:44], her role in organizing the conference Law and the Fight for Lesbian and Gay Rights [28:53], her legal work in response to the HIV crisis [31:23], her work advocating for non-discrimination law in Maryland [34:26], her efforts to create equality as Takoma Park's city attorney [40:04], her involvement in small LGBT organizations and Bet Mishpachah [41:26], her coming out experience [43:53], raising her children [46:40], the atmosphere of the 1979 National March on Washington [48:52], the changes she has witnessed in the status of gays and lesbians [50:46], and the roles of history and collaboration in building a better world [53:38]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Esperanza Pastor Nuñez de Castro Location The location of the interview. Cheverly, MD Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet transcribed. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Mindy Daniels Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history with Mindy A. Daniels, 1954- Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1/17/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No restrictions on access; no restrictions on use. This oral history belongs to the Rainbow History Project Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Mindy Daniels came to the DC area in 1976 leaving her native New York behind. She served as President of GLAA during 1990-1992 and as Vice-president prior and after those years. She has always been an active member in the community. She initiated Walk without Fear in 1991 to highlight the difficult situation of violence against the LGBT community. She also organized a campaign of public service announcements on radio to make people become more aware and sensitive about the inequities that LGBT community suffered. In 1996 Mindy founded the National Lesbian Political Action Committee. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Eye-witness accounts of what we’ve seen and experienced provide a valuable resource to researchers and future generations to understand our past and how we arrived where we are today. Each interview in this collection has a narrator telling the story and a documenter guiding the process. Collected since the founding of the RHP, this collection is growing and is open to researchers. All interviews have been digitized and are described in the catalog; only some of them have transcripts available. None of the interviews stream online. To obtain access to an interview, you must request by contacting us directly, providing a brief description of your project and your research interests. Our email address is: info AT rainbowhistory DOT org One of our team will share the file from our Google Drive, and you can listen from home. Please be sure to have "Music Player for Google Drive" enabled on your machine to play the recording. www.driveplayer.com Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. To see all interviews in the collection, click on "Items in the Rainbow History Project Oral History Collection" link below. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rainbow History Project Various narrators per oral history Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=2&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Adam+Weiss">Adam Weiss</a> Location The location of the interview. Washington, DC Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. No, not yet transcribed. Original Format If the image is of an object, state the type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Yes, recording available. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral history interview with Paul Albergo Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant In this interview, Paul Albergo discusses his involvement with a number of LGBTQ organizations, including Dignity Washington, the Gay Rights National Lobby (which preceded the Human Rights Campaign) , the National Lesbian and Gay Health Foundation, the National Association of People with AIDS, and Whitman-Walker Health's peer counseling program. Paul was president of the Washington DC chapter of DignityUSA, a national organization of LGBTQ Catholics, from 1986 through 1989. During that time, the group was ousted from its first home on the Georgetown campus because of its LTBTQ affiliation, and it moved to St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, where it still celebrates Mass today. Whitman-Walker Clinic