1 25 2 https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/c5f167507bc01f59baed86b1f460b6ce.pdf 57a1339f9b7e3793c9831861adf48e29 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. Mark Meinke Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Nancy Tucker Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound. yes Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 46:18/33:15 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 Nancy Tucker 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 8/1/2009 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This oral history belongs to the Rainbow History Project In this interview, Nancy discusses AA a few times in this interview. We have removed all mentions of AA in her public interview. Only AA members can access the uncensored version. For more information, please reach out to: <a href="mailto:oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org">oralhistories@rainbowhistory.org</a> Abstract A summary of the resource. Nancy Tucker moved with her family to the DC metro area in the late 1950s when her father was hired at the Pentagon. In 1966, while a student at Mary Washington University, Tucker learned of The Mattachine Society of Washington from gay newspapers coming out from San Francisco. Upon turning twenty-one, Tucker applied for membership. At the time, the Mattachine Society preached concepts of civil libertarianism, in which homosexuals would receive their civil rights upon proving they were assimilated, upstanding citizens. However, the 1969 Stonewall riots (and the birth of the gay liberation movement) quickly began changing the face of gay activism in DC. During this time, The Mattachine Society of Washington asked Tucker if she would be the co-editor of a community newspaper for the DC gay community. Tucker agreed, and thus the famous Washington Blade was born. Tucker ran the Blade for several years–often as an entirely self-funded endeavor–and provided an invaluable resource to the DC gay community in the early 1970s. Although Tucker was involved in various activist groups during this time (often through her role as editor of the Blade), she found it difficult to find her place in these burgeoning movements, as she was uncomfortable with both the radical separatism of the women’s liberation movement as well as the misogyny of majority-male groups such as the Gay Liberation Front. By the mid-70s, Tucker handed off the Blade to others in the community, and left the world of gay activism. Tucker became re-involved in the DC gay community in the late 1980s via the Gay Women’s Alternative (where she eventually became president), and helped organize their programming around the wildly popular topics of “sex and shrinks.” In her later years, Tucker moved to San Francisco with her partner, and ultimately retired in Albuquerque. 1960s 1970s 1980s Activism Bars and clubs Blackmail Bookstores Cade Ware Community Dupont Circle Eva Freund Frank Kameny Furies Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) Gay Liberation Front Gay Women's Alternative (GWA) Jo-Anna's johnnie's jon swanson journalism martha taylor mattachine society of washington mimeograph pat kolar plus one publishing stonewall riots susan clark the advocate the insider the ladder university of mary washington Washington Blade washington ethical society zaps https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/349fe51fd86c0199d420ac4c82c0688a.pdf f26c1f4f77fc5993c259b770f697b1ac 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 Barbara Gittings Papers on the Mattachine Society and Other Homophile Organizations, 1962-2001 (Series VI) Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Papers: Digital Collection, 1962-1972 Description An account of the resource Includes copies of outgoing correspondence, news clippings, legal proceedings, ephemeral publications, flyers, press releases, and other documents generated by the activities of various homophile organizations, many of which Gittings was a member. A significant number of the items in this collection document the joint activities of Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny in their efforts to secure basic civil liberties for lesbians and gay men. The largest gathering of materials relate to the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. and the various homophile organization confederations of which it was a constituent member, such as East Coast Homophile Organization (ECHO), Eastern Regional Homophile Conference (ERCH), Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO), and North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO). <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTRDWwOCsnQ_1qBGlPn98_5-eF2NpGjraPqCt8Fsb6O6pipwI2vGxLoGQMFDjtPWjOBPlwzNQS3Cnzu/pub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VIEW ONLINE FINDING AID</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gittings, Barbara, 1932-2007 Tobin Lahusen, Katherine "Kay," 1930-2021 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. Some items available online. All other items open to all <a href="http://www.dchistory.org/research/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">people at the DC History Center</a>, MS 0764, Series VI. Collection is available for “fair use.” Material may be protected by copyright. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTRDWwOCsnQ_1qBGlPn98_5-eF2NpGjraPqCt8Fsb6O6pipwI2vGxLoGQMFDjtPWjOBPlwzNQS3Cnzu/pub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VIEW ONLINE FINDING AID</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barbara Gittings (July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007) was a prominent American activist for gay equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1965, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Gittings challenged the Daughters of Bilitis' conservative leadership by publishing an article by Kameny that urged readers to "move away from the comfortingly detached respectability of research into the often less pleasant rough-and-tumble of political and social activism." In response to her publishing this article, the Daughters of Bilitis leadership removed her as editor of The Ladder in 1965. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, forming the first gay caucus in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality that associated it with crime and mental illness. She was awarded a lifetime membership in the American Library Association, and the ALA named an annual award for the best gay or lesbian novel the The Barbara Gittings Award. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) also named an activist award for her. Abstract A summary of the resource. At the first GLBT ALMS (Archive, Library, Museum, Special Collection) conference in May 2006 at the University of Minnesota, she mesmerized the audience with her plenary speech. I remember speaking with other conferees who had never heard her before: the commanding tone, the warm smile and stories, and the eyes that asked "what more are you going to do for our cause?". They were agog. There are fewer and fewer living witnesses to the bad old days of federally enforced 'closetting' and socially mandated hatred, fewer and fewer of those distinctive personalities that gave up so much to make it a better place for those of us who followed. With Barbara's passing, we have lost all that and therole as moral compass that she still played. A presence is gone and we are the poorer for its departure. Jack Nichols, writing in 1997, about Barbara's selection as co-grand marshall of New York City's Pride Parade called her "the Grand Mother of Lesbian and Gay Liberation". Not the 'Grandmother' but the "Grand Mother'. Ms Gittings also had an uncompromising element of earth mother in her motherliness. She was forthright, out, and outspoken, organized, hardworking and a strategist. Nichols also paid tribute to the inseparability of the "Barbara-and-Kay" team of Barbara and her life partner Kay Tobin Lahusen. For those who have met the 'team', it is a life partnership the like of which we all would love to have in our lives. Lahusen is the documentarian on the team, whose photo collection is now one of the treasures of the LGBTQ community. In Washington, DC Barbara Gittings found a partner in activism, Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, whose uncompromising and innovative gay civil rights activism found an echo in Gittings. They met in 1963. Active since 1958 (at the age of 26) in gay civil rights, with an already established role in the Daughters of Bilitis (she organized a NY chapter in 1958), she embraced the then radical idea of gay picketing, joining the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW) in picketing the White House and other federal sites in Washington. She recalled in The Gay Crusaders (1972) that Kameny "was the first gay person I met who took firm, uncompromising positions about homosexuality and homosexuals' right to be considered fully on a par with heterosexuals.... Frank really raised my consciousness on this matter! Also thanks partly to him, I got turned on to gay civil rights issues." On July 4, 1965, she and Kameny brought gay picketing to Philadelphia's Independence Hall, three months after MSW began picketing. Gittings and Lahusen became active not only in the Daughters of Bilitis (where they met) and with Washington's Mattachine, but in the effort to organize regional homophile groups, beginning with the East Coast Homophile Organization and moving on to the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, and the nation conference, NACHO. At the Daughters of Bilitis, Gittings became editor of The Ladder, bringing the lesbian periodical into a bolder role, adding the subtitle "A Lesbian Review" in 1964 and adding cover photos of women in 1964. Gittings and Kameny worked together for nearly a decade to overturn the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder. In May 1971, they were seated at the front of the hall at the APA's Washington, DC convention when gay activists took over the proceedings and Kameny seized the microphone. The following year Gittings and Kameny staffed a booth on homosexuality at the next APA convention in Dallas, TX. Gittings and Kameny were both honored in October 2006 with the first Fyrer Award from the APA for their leadership in the relation between psychiatry and homosexuality. In 1966, Gittings gave up editorial control of The Ladder and became involved as a personal counsel working with Kameny, Mattachine and others to counsel those in conflict with the Department of Defense over security clearances and employment issues. Gittings and Lahusen were active in Dr. Kameny's March 1971 campaign for Congress, travelling down from Philadelphia to help canvas for petition signatures and to leaflet voters. They came down with the busloads of volunteers from Philly and New York and stayed for the strategizing and the parties. In 1972, Gittings, long involved with libraries though not a librarian, joined the American Library Association's Task Force on Gay Liberation, becoming its leader. She has played a major role in ensuring that libraries carry resources that will inform and support gays and lesbians. She never lost sight of the frustration of days in her youth when she combed through libraries and bookstores looking for explanation and validation of her affectional orientation. In 1971 she established a Gay Book Award focusing critical evaluation on fiction and non-fiction books dealing with homosexuality. Librarians recognized her enormous contributions. In 2003, the American Library Association made her an honorary member in recognition of her contributions. The Free Library of Philadelphia had honored her in 2001 with the creation of the Barbara Gittings Gay/Lesbian Collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-2001 (bulk 1962-1980) Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. 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 Questionnaire on blackmail of homosexuals Subject The topic of the resource Gay liberation movement--Washington (D.C.) Mattachine Society of Washington Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=39&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Mattachine+Society+of+Washington">Mattachine Society of Washington</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Mattachine Society of Washington 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=Reproduction+and+use+of+this+material+requires+permission+from+the+copyright+holder.+Please+contact+the+Rainbow+History+Project+for+more+information.">Reproduction and use of this material requires permission from the copyright holder. Please contact the Rainbow History Project for more information.</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Washington (D.C.) Blackmail