Wishing all our listeners happy holidays whether you’re spending it with your biological or chosen families! Here’s a photo from the first Mattachine Christmas party, December 1951. If you missed the episode from Season 1, Chuck Rowland recounts how the #LGBTQ civil rights movement got its start 67 years ago with the founding of the #MattachineSociety. To listen, visit http://bit.ly/mgh-rowland
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Photo: From left to right, Konrad Stevens (back of head), Dale Jennings (in profile), Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland (in glasses) and Paul Bernhard. © John Gruber.
Just as we did for our first two seasons, we’re taking a deep dive into my decades-old audio archive to bring you the voices of LGBTQ history. For the start of this new season, we’re bringing you the second part of a conversation that host Eric Marcus had with Sylvia Rivera back in 1989.
Listen at this link: http://bit.ly/mgh-rivera-part2
Or subscribe here: http://bit.ly/mgh-subscribe
Sylvia Rivera would have loved knowing that in the years since her death in 2002 she’s become an icon—a symbol of LGBTQ people fighting back against police repression and fighting for respect and equal rights. But she’d also want you to know that she was a human being, born in the Bronx in 1951. Eleven years later the self-described effeminate child found himself homeless and hustling on 42nd Street to scratch out enough money to get by. Sylvia was all of seventeen when she crossed paths with history at the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 28, 1969. She died at 51, having struggled with addiction and homelessness for much of her life, even as she continued to fight for trans rights and LGBTQ equality.
Photo: Sylvia Rivera posing in front of fountain, 1970
Credit: Photo by Kay Tobin courtesy of Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library
First episode of Season 3! Welcome back to Sylvia Rivera’s kitchen, for the second part of a never-before-heard interview from 1989. Pull up a chair for a conversation with the Stonewall veteran and trans rights pioneer who reflects on a life of activism while she cooks a pot of chili. Listen via your podcatcher or at this link : http://bit.ly/mgh-rivera-part2
STAR stands for the “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.”
Photo credit: Photo by Harvey Wang from Holding On: Dreamer’s, Visionaries, Eccentrics and other American Heroes (W.W. Norton & Co 1995).
Wendell Sayers was born 113 years ago today. Listen to his story in the episode from our 1st season at this link: http://bit.ly/mgh-sayers .
We’re back with more stories from queer history as told by the people who lived it. Drawing on decades-old archival audio tape, you’ll hear intimate, personal interviews with LGBTQ civil rights pioneers.
• Sylvia Rivera at a gay rights demonstration in Albany, New York, 1971. Photo by Diana Davies courtesy of the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. .
• Phyllis Lyon (left) and Del Martin in an undated photo (as seen in the 2003 documentary “No Secret Anymore: The Times Of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon”). Photo courtesy of A.F. Archive/Alamy.
• Block (left) and J. J. Belanger cheek-to-cheek in a photo booth at the PGE Exhibition, Hastings Park, Vancouver, Canada, 1953. Photo courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
• Sgt. Perry Watkins near his home in Tacoma, Washington, 1983. Photo by Steve Stewart from his book: Positive Image: A Portrait of Gay America, published in 1985 by William Morrow & Company.
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Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ history. In this preview we offer a taste of what’s to come in Season Three, featuring the extraordinary voices of J.J. Belanger, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, Morris Kight, Sylvia Rivera, Perry Watkins, Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Amato, and Ellen DeGeneres. Listen via your podcatcher or at MakingGayHistory.com
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Have you listened to our bonus episode: Edythe Eyde’s Gay Gal’s Mixtape? Listen to the full episode via your podcatcher, link in our bio or by retyping this link in your browser: http://bit.ly/mgh-mixtape
To learn more about #EdytheEyde (aka, Lisa Ben) and Vice Versa, her 1947 pioneering ‘zine for lesbians, have a listen to her Making Gay History season one episode. That’s where you’ll also find additional information about Edythe Eyde’s life, writings, and music. Image: Eyde in the 1950s. Credit: Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
October is #LGBTHistorymonth, and all month @1010WINS AM in #NYC is bringing the voices of LGBT champions from our podcast on air. Morty Manford was a gay rights activist in New York in the 1960s and ‘70s. When he was beaten up by anti-gay bigots as police officers looked on in 1972, his mother decided to speak up. That June, Jeanne Manford marched in the gay pride parade alongside her son, holding a sign that said “Parents of gays: unite in support of our children”. That something they started was #PFlag, originally known as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. @PFlagnational is now a national organization with more than 200 thousand members and supporters and 400 chapters nationwide. The Manfords have a street corner named after them in Flushing, and a post office in Jackson Heights has been named after Jeanne and her husband Jules. Morty Manford died of complications of AIDS in 1992, aged 41. Jeanne Manford died in 2013, aged 92.
Instagram family: help Making Gay History get a boost by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts/iTunes! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/making-gay-history/id1162447122?mt=2 Photo: Dear Abby.
For #NationalComingOutDay, Bonus Episode — Edythe Eyde’s Gay Gal’s Mixtape. Listen to full episode via your podcatcher or here: http://bit.ly/mgh-mixtape To learn more about #EdytheEyde (aka, Lisa Ben) and Vice Versa, her 1947 pioneering ‘zine for lesbians, have a listen to her Making Gay History season one episode: http://bit.ly/mgh-eyde1 . That’s where you’ll also find additional information about Edythe Eyde’s life, writings, and music. Image: Eyde in the 1950s. Credit: Courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
Last week, our host Eric Marcus received an award from the Oral History Association. Here’s a photo with an MGH fan, Karen Wisely, a graduate student from the University of North Texas. The second photo is the award which reads: “2017 Oral History in a Nonprint Format Award for outstanding use of oral history is presented to Making Gay History, Eric Marcus, creator and host.” .