Who made this?

The LGBTQ community of USC

Where was it made or acquired?

University of Southern California, One Archives, Daily Trojan, El Rodeo


Story

Exploring USC's LGBT and Lambda Alumni history from 1970-1992. ❤️💛❤️ Celebrating 50 Golden Years. Sources: USC Library Archives for El Rodeo and Daily Trojan. ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Paul C. Ballard papers.

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@USCGayHistory (Twitter)]]>
Who made this?

The History Project

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston, MA

Story

As the THP Pride marching group leader, I designed this t-shirt to highlight the lavender rhino (an early symbol of Pride with strong roots in Boston). I’ve been asked several times why the heart is on the rhino’s hindquarters, rather than on it’s chest as would be historically accurate, to which I say ‘it just looks better that way!’

History Project volunteers wore these shirts in Pride 2016. I chopped up my t-shirt at the time into a tank. The shirt pictured here remains whole because I gave it to my partner, who still wears it proudly but doesn’t share my taste in DIY fashion.

The two photos are from Pride 2016, one shows a group of THP volunteers holding signs, and the other is of me and my friend Andra Pham.

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@ilacquajoan (Twitter)]]> ]]>
Where was it made or acquired?


Home of Luis Aponte-Pares, Boston, MA

Story

This photo was snapped at The History Project's Volunteer Appreciation Brunch, held at board member Luis's condo in the South End. Left to right are: Volunteer Yves Agustin, (former) THP board member Craig Bailey, (current) THP board member and former chair Neal Kane, and me, then volunteer, current board member Tony Grima. Note the rainbow candles.

Neal noted that the minutes from the board meeting just prior to this party recorded: "Party for volunteers – Libby has sent out an email inviting people to the party at Luis’s. The board has to be notified about this as well. It will be a brunch, 1-5 at Luis’s house."

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@avg7967 (Instagram)]]> ]]>
Who made this?

Hawk, for The Ramrod bar in Boston

Where was it made or acquired?

Created circa 1990s, Boston, Massachusetts. Acquired circa 2010s

Story

I purchased this poster on eBay in the early 2010s, possibly earlier. I was (and still am) interested in queer BDSM material culture, but I initially purchased the poster as a decorative art piece for my apartment. When I won the bid, I noticed the seller was local. I asked If he was willing to meet in person so that I didn’t have to pay for shipping. We agreed to meet at The Alley, which was his place of employment at the time. When we met, he told me he was a bartender at the Ramrod in the 1990s, and got this poster from his time there. Unfortunately the bartender has since passed away, and I do not recall his name at this time, but I am hoping to find that out again once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted. The Ramrod became a regular hangout for me, but I wouldn’t go into the back room, mostly because I was too shy or insecure about my body (dress code was leather or your shirt off, and I didn’t own any leather at the time). Eventually I worked up the nerve. I will never forget my first time in the back room of The Ramrod.]]>
@thesinembargo (Twitter), @thesinembargo (Instagram)]]>
Who made this?

Photos taken by Peter Muise

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston, Massachusetts, June 2005

Story

These are some photos of the local Radical Faerie contingent at Boston Pride in 2005. I took the photos. We were marching with large umbrellas that Brian Powell owned (which he got at Mohr McPherson on sale a few years earlier). We also have large glitter banners that Brian made, and Brian and I made fairy wings from tights and coat hangers (which don't show up great in these photos sadly) for people to wear.]]>
Who made this?

LGBTOUT zine committee

Where was it made or acquired?


Toronto, Canada

Story

These zines from LGBTOUT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered of the University of Toronto) are currently stored in my extremely full filing cabinet. I was part of the zine committee for a few years in the early 2000s. The issue on top from June 2002 includes an old dance poster from 1988 advertising a Homo Hop with a satirical image of the Pope, an article on queer families, and a piece on bathroom cruising. Our motto was “We started in ’69 and we haven’t changed our position!”]]>
@ajessicataylor (Twitter); @thatjessicataylor (Instagram)]]> ]]>
Who made this?

Pat Donoghue

Where was it made or acquired?


Boston, Massachusetts, June 1974

Story


I took photographs at New England Gay Pride (March or Parade?) Boston in 1974

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Who made this?

Photo: David Herder

Where was it made or acquired?


Cambridge, MA

Story


I met David Feinberg in the spring of 1991. Our relationship combined two of the leitmotifs of the time: the growth of the nation’s gay literary scene, symbolized locally by events such as Boston’s OutWrite conference; and the continued, pervasive, relentless presence of AIDS, which showed no sign of abating as the crisis entered its second decade. Dave was an alumnus of MIT who, after living in New York City for a number of years, received positive notices for Eighty-Sixed, his first novel—a haunting, mordantly humorous chronicle of the early years of the epidemic and the years preceding it. We saw each other a number of times in the ensuing months; the accompanying photo was taken at his friend David Herder’s apartment in Cambridge. Dave was funny, subdued, and distracted; he was an exceptionally bright, intense guy whose looming medical plight lingered over every interaction and every conversation—a ubiquitous, lugubrious presence, the sword of Damocles. In those days, if you were among the worried well, you quickly learned a cardinal rule: when it came to discussing AIDS with someone who had been diagnosed, you always, always took your cues from them. If they wanted to talk about their treatments or their fears, you went there; if they wanted to talk about anything and everything else, you obliged. My conversation with Dave tended to focus on gossip about the gay literati (also known as the “glitterati”), culture, politics, and activism. Occasionally (OK, more than occasionally) he would make clipped, sardonic references to the catastrophe surrounding us, and him; gallows humor for the Age of AIDS. Romantic frustration was a constant theme in Dave’s life and work. When Spontaneous Combustion, his second novel, was published, I received a signed copy with a quasi-lovestruck inscription in which he referred to me as “half Pollyanna, half Lili Marlene”—a preternaturally accurate description of my persona at that time. Dave and I eventually lost touch; he died in November 1994. (I recently stumbled upon a blog post written by his close friend John Weir, which recounts Dave’s harrowing, horrifying—and yet, in their way, hilarious—final days.) Twenty-five years later, what endures? The exquisite pain that comes with remembering yet another deep, complicated, talented, entertaining guy gone fifty years too soon.

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@nealkane (Twitter)]]> ]]>
Where was it made or acquired?

Boston Ramrod, 1254 Boylston Street, Boston, MA

Story

The Mr. Boston Leather titleholders from 2003 to 2011. This picture was taken at the 2011 Mr Boston Leather Contest. From left to right: Rob Claffie 2003, Scott Erickson 2004, Jim Maciel 2005, Thomas Lewis 2006, Aaron Lenburg 2007, Joe Barlow 2008, Tim Starkey 2009, Justin Eddy 2010, David Durman 2011. This photo is part of a larger stash of photos of the Mr. Boston Leather contests from 2003 to 2011. They are only in digital format.  

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@LEATHERSAIL (Twitter)]]> ]]>
Who made this?

Maura Healey campaign members

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston Pride, 2018

Story

In 2018, some friends and I signed up to march in the Boston Pride Parade with Maura Healey and volunteers from her campaign. We are all supporters of her work and hadn't marched in the parade before, so we were excited to get the chance. It was a lot of fun! Supporters passed out bracelets, like this one, to people in the crowd as we passed. I am still impressed by how fast the Attorney General can walk while still stopping to shake hands with so many people. ]]>
Who made this?

Magnolia Committee members, St. Louis, MO

Where was it made or acquired?

Made in St.Louis, sent to me in 2014

Story

The Magnolia Committee, of which I was a member, organized the first Pride Parade in St.Louis in 1980. St.Louis was (and still is) a conservative city in a very conservative state, so it was a major step to plan, obtain permits and actually have a parade. The first meeting of the group was in an apartment on Magnolia Street. We picked the safest route possible, going from what was then the LGBTQ neighborhood (Central West End) out along the major city park, and ending with a rally on the Washington University campus. We had about 500 people, many of them, particularly teachers, with bags over their heads or mask. We deemed it a success. The 25th anniversary parade, in 2014, had perhaps 25,000 folks, including spectators, was downtown, with police protection and marchers.
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Who made this?

I don’t know. Perhaps a political action group in San Francisco, CA.

Where was it made or acquired?

San Francisco, CA

Story

I was visiting San Francisco for the second time in the summer of 2000 with my friends Sarah and David, and was given this button on the street in the Castro. I had just had a fight with a boyfriend in Amherst, Massachusetts, before I left for the trip and San Francisco was an amazing place to find myself at that moment. I was given the button by someone on the street in the Castro, and I loved it! It reflected my politics and had this implied queerness to it (though perhaps that queerness was lost when the button was being worn by a gay guy). Of course, Bush became President, so during the 2004 election I added the tape and the message “NOW.” Underneath the tape it just reads “2000.”]]>
Who made this?

Photos by Joel Benjamin

Where was it made or acquired?


Boston, MA

Story

There are a number of items in this collection, including work for the Boston Phoenix, AIDS Action Committee and the Mass Department of Health.]]>
@joelbphoto (Twitter), @joelbphoto (Instagram), http://joelbenjamin.com/]]> ]]>

Who made this?

Anna J. Cook

Where was it made or acquired?


Hawk Hill Community Land Trust (Drury, Missouri), 28 June 2005

Story


My undergraduate capstone project for my Women's Studies degree was to help document a lesbian feminist group, Aradia, Inc., that had been formed and was active in West Michigan during the 1970s and early 1980s. A number of key leaders in that group had migrated to Missouri and established a community on "womyn's land"; following graduation I spent a month with them at the Hawk Hill Community Land Trust (Drury, Missouri). Part of the reason for my being there was to transfer borrowed archival records back to the community. I was also assisting one of the community members with the organization of her own personal archives. At this time in my life (I was twenty-four), I had not yet articulated any type of sexual identity for myself beyond, when pressed, describing my sexuality as "mostly straight." Spending a month in a community of lesbian and bisexual women elders at that particular point in my life proved to be a really important physical, mental, and emotional way to step back from thinking about queer identities as a college student preoccupation and understand -- in a way much more concrete than reading archival sources and taking oral histories and reading memoirs had conveyed to me in the years prior to that visit -- that living an adult queer life, and having established same-sex relationships and households, was possible out in the world beyond the classroom. The person in this photograph was still several years away from being able to articulate her bisexuality, but the space of Hawk Hill was one of the many locations that made that articulation ultimately possible.

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@feministlib (Twitter), @feministlib_amsewing (Instagram)]]>
I used to lead a gay social group called Gen-X Bears Boston. It was a social group for bears 18+ and their allies. Their goal was to establish a bear community separate from the bars, to promote a healthy social environment. 

Gen-X bears originally started in Washington DC in 1995 by founder Randy Stern: Gen-X D.C. Bears: A Community Profile, Metro Weekly, 20 July 2005.

From there other chapters opened in cities like Boston, State College PA, Indianapolis, New York City, and other cities that I can’t recall at the moment. I do believe there was a Toronto chapter as well. Boston’s chapter started in 1998. I was one of the original members; the group was by Terry Jamro. I took over for him a few years later. The group was 18+, so we didn’t do bar events. We mainly did dinners, movie nights and outings to places like the Harbor Islands, Provincetown in November, or Yankee Candle Factory near Springfield. We marched in the Boston Gay Pride parade every year, flying our local chapter flag.
 
We were active until around 2005. At that point, more people were using the internet to meet up. A lot of members wound up meeting their best friends, boyfriends and future husbands from this group, so the demand wasn’t there anymore. 
 
I’m proud of what we did in that short window of time. They were the best group of people.
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Who made this?

The photographer is unknown.

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston Common, 1974 Pride parade & celebration

Story

Photo #1 shows GCN [Gay Community News] Office Manager Ron Arruda driving the birthday cake in the parade.

Photo #2 shows the cake cutting a little later during the Pride rally on the Common. L-R: unidentified child, Ron Arruda, Jared Goldfine, John Kyper, Ellen B. Davis (with knife), Bernie Toale and Jim Saslow. Ron was my lover at the time and passed these photos on to me, as they were not used in GCN's Pride coverage.

 

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Story

Advertising a gay dance at the Charles St Meeting House. Poster was made using a picture of me at the 1971 gay pride in Boston.]]>
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Who made this?

Jim Jackson

Where was it made or acquired?


Jamaica Plain, Spontaneous Celebration, circa 1998

Story

The Boston Faerie Circle put together a Cabaret fundraiser shortly after the purchase of the Faerie Camp Destiny property in Southern Vermont. Performers from around New England and NY came to help raise funds. Includes performances of opera, punk rock, improvisational dance, fantastical costume and an original song.

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We met when I was 21yo in the type of seedy San Francisco trannie bar which would have mortally shocked our parents. We were both from New England, same ~age, played high school tennis, and went to prestigious private schools yet found ourselves in a recklessly dangerous, hooker infested trannie bar in SF's infamous Tenderloin. We became instant friends, oblivious to, or liking, the desperate insanity raging around us. We both lived in dodgy SF residence hotels, sleazy places where meth needles were tucked into every crevice, and lived day-to-day. She hooked and I worked at an electronics store for min wage. We hung out at each other's apartments talking fashion & makeup, when she didn't have a "client", and played competitive tennis matches against each other at a local park, which she always won.

A couple of years after I moved back to Boston, age 23ish, Page called me and wanted to move to Boston too. I set her up with a residence and showed her the city. First stop was the local T bar Jacques on Piedmont Street. I remember we were at a drag show and the spotlight randomly landed on Page. Every T and drag queen in the packed nightclub jaws dropped - they had never seen such a stunningly beautiful, exotic trans woman! For the next few years Page and I carved a trail of fashion mayhem throughout Boston with our friends Robert, Xavier, Lenny, Greg, and an African dictator's drag queen son. Sparing NO ONE from a visual onslaught of hard-edge New Wave fashion!

Eventually, after much prodding by Boston's gay men that she was TOO fabulous for Boston and MUST move to Manhattan, she migrated to NYC. I was extremely wary. I could already see a budding drug habit and I worried Page would get hooked on H in Gotham. She did, albeit after being queen of the Manhattan nightlife, a cage dancer at the Limelight, and a feature model in an Absolute Vodka campaign. In a few years, after I fully transitioned, I also moved to NYC and looked Page up. But the friendship was NOT the same.

In my very early 20s I was not passable but Page was mostly passable and utterly fabulous. In a way, I was her admiring little sister (Jan Brady to Marsha Brady as she used to kid me). Then when I moved to NYC I was say 99.9% unclockable but she was still only say 95% unclockable. Silly, but we were a bit competitive w/each other and she could not be deep stealth like myself. Seeing how I leapfrogged her caused tension. When Page heard I got my SRS she freaked and soon after booked her surgery.

Yet the surgery was tragically wrong for Page. She later told me the "only" reason she got her surgery was because I got mine! Which was obviously unfair to suggest my SRS had such a causal relationship on her SRS. But I understood Page was in the throes of H addiction and her promising life had evaporated. Reality was NEITHER of us were to blame. It was the intolerance & ignorance of the times which prevented Page from getting the care she DESERVED for both her gender dysphoria and her consequential substance abuse! Page overdosed at age 41 in 2002, death by misadventure. Even famous Village Voice columnist Michael Musto wrote about Page as a "true lady" after her passing.

I write this in memory of Page, RIP dear friend.]]>
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I'll admit, nightlife in the 80s for a T girl was F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C. Gone was the strict binary sexuality of the disco era yet leftover was their repurposed venues. In Boston these became inhabited by Nietzche reading surrealists, new wavers, punks, glam rockers, nihilists, sissy boys, androgenists, gender benders, and above all transs3xuals. We Ts were the furthest extent forward of challenging the status quo and we punched-out angrily at the establishment! Manhattan was always haute with the Pyramid Club and the utterly, utterly decadent Limelight. But in my teens and 20s, the hard avant-gardne nighttime cutting edge of Boston, with its 300k students, had a luscious & magnificent texture. The concoction was a Salvador Dali aesthetic with evolved mods fasion and punk overtones. Clubs like Axis, Man-Ray (Cambridge), Bat Cave, and the Haymarket allowed us early Ts to move out of drag bars and into the mainstream. Precursors to rave warehouse parties provided all night fantasy wonderlands. And we were courted by the club owners!!! I NEVER, EVER paid a cover and we'd immediately be ushered to the front of the line. Bouncers would, unsolicited, hand us admission free lifetime cards. My fondest, youthful T memories are of this nightlife time with my friends!! ♥♥

BEING TRANS IN THE 1980S - NIGHTLIFE, PART 2
The best, best nightclub I went to as preop T was the Haymarket in Boston's Combat Zone. It was the old ballroom of the derelict Hotel Avery (pictured), back when Boston's fabled entertainment district was something other than racy sleaze. The Haymarket was in no way a drag/trannie bar, although a ~quarter of the clientele were T. It was a delightful concoction of equal parts gay, bi, T, chasers, hetero, lesbian, black, white, Asian, and Latino. It was mirrored all around from its previous incarnation as a disco. The music was funk and hip hop and the people were beautiful (a doorman culled the crowd). There was a kindred sense of LGBT community, especially when it closed at 2am and throngs of patrons would dump into the parking lot and just hangout w/each other until the police moved us on.

For a 22yo T girl the Haymarket was a perfect place to practice passing away from the dramatic gesticulating of drag queens and awkward frumpiness of xdressers. Nowadays lots of young Ts live 24/7 as female w/o completely passing. Back then a T needed to be unclockable to hold a job or even walk around. LGBT nightclubs/bars were the place to try different looks and acquire feminine experience. In the 80s one could start at drag bars, then progress to LGBT nightclubs, and then hetero new wave/punk clubs. All of which were accepting, assuming one looked the part.

The Haymarket was my bridge between LGBT and heterosexual clubs. The Ts were gorgeous and mostly passable. I started passing at the Haymarket, to the point where men were asking me what I was doing there. It was safe, for the Combat Zone, and had a free late night parking lot close by. The cover was pricey, which kept away most T hookers, but I got in mostly for free. All my friends partied there and it was sooo much fun! Years passed and the dodgy neighborhood morphed way upscale. The Haymarket is now a Ritz Carlton hotel but has a bar named the Avery Bar where the beloved Haymarket once stood.]]>

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Where was it made or acquired?

The Crown & Anchor Provincetown, Massachusetts

Story

In March of 2019 the Bay State Marauders celebrated their 16th Anniversary in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This was a 3 day event with 80 people in attendance. We had 18 clubs in attendance. Those would include: Bucks MC, C.O.M.M.A.N.D MC, Castaway MC, Centaur MC, DC Bear Club, Empire City MC, Excelsior MC, Fits Like A Glove (FLAG), Harbor Masters of Maine, Harness Albany, Iron Guard BC, Knight Hawks of Virginia, Long Island Ravens, Pennsmen, Philadelphians M.C., The ShipMates Club of Baltimore, Three Rivers Leather Club, Wicked PAH. This picture is of the full membership of the Marauders, plus the associates. This is part of a larger volume of pictures of the club in digital format.

 

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@LEATHERSAIL (Twitter)]]> ]]>
Who made this?

Tom Beauchamp-Arnold (member of the club)

Where was it made or acquired?


Boston Ramrod 1254 Boylston Street, Boston MA

Story

This picture is of the 1st Anniversary celebration held at the Boston Ramrod. This picture is of some of the members of the club. From left to right: David Lusignan, Jim Mills, Joe Loydd, Scott Erickson, Paul Beauchamp – Arnold, Rob Claffie. Other club that were in attendance that night: Fit Like a Glove, Kindred of Maine, The Imperial Court of Massachusetts, Boston Bears, and MOB. This is part of a larger collection of picture from the club in digital format. The Bay State was founded on March 1st 2003 in Quincy. The first meeting had 6 members in attendance. The club is currently 17 years old and has 42 full members and 10 associate members.

 

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@LEATHERSAIL (Twitter)]]> ]]> ]]>
Who made this?

John Kyper

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston

Story

In November 1972 I was refused employment as an aide at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, located on Fenwood Road near Brigham Circle, by a nursing supervisor who told me that my homosexuality made me "unsuitable to work with our younger patients." This file documents my unsuccessful attempt to obtain legal redress for this discrimination, then the testimony that I gave to the Commerce and Labor Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature detailing the incident in 1973 (anonymously) and publicly in 1974.]]>
Where was this made or acquired?

Javits Center, New York City

Story

My friend Mark Aurigemma and I both worked at Gay Men's Health Crisis during the height of the AIDS epidemic. This picture was taken at a dance-a-thon fundraiser, where I apparently was in charge of media check-in. I remember the performances of Salt n Pepa, Queen Latifah, and Nona Hendryx. Salt and Pepa did "Let's Talk about Sex" and their hip-hop, girl power energy was insane.

Mark worked in client services, which was the truly tough work. We were there just as AZT was developed, and (for me) just before the really significant treatment combinations began saving people's lives. So the death toll was overwhelming. As a woman who identified as straight at the time, I could leave a lot of the sorrow at work. But gay men like Mark swam in sorrow and of course rage, as friends, lovers, co-workers, neighbors and acquaintances sickened and died.

Mark was one of the early NYC ACT UP folks. Their creativity, boldness, and anger not only transformed activism and patient advocacy, ACT UP without question made treatments available much more quickly than they would have been otherwise.

That job and that time were transformative for me. I learned so much, I witnessed great bravery and pain, and I formed deep friendships. Late in life I started dating women, and it took virtually no courage for me to come out. In the 1980s, though, it took hourly and daily acts of courage to be LGBTQ in America.

Mark and I are still friends today, one of the great gifts of my life.
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@carisac (Twitter)]]> Copyright restrictions may apply. Visit https://historyproject.omeka.net/rights-and-reproductions for more information and to review The History Project's takedown policy.]]> #QueerArchivesAtHome, http://www.historyproject.org/project/QAAH]]>
Who made this?

Em Gamber, Black & Pink Boston

Where was it made or acquired?

Photo at Jamaica Plain branch of the USPS

Story

Black & Pink is an abolitionist organization that seeks to build community and liberation of LGBTQ and HIV+ people impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex. We know that our family held within prisons is particularly at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, so we raised over $30,000 to send to our members in prisons across New England. These letters are from those members telling us what they spent that money on (lots of soap!), thanking us for the donation during this crisis, and looking for connections outside prison walls. LGBTQ people know we cannot rely upon the government to help us in times of crisis, we are each others' help and we survive through mutual aid. ]]>
@BlackAndPinkBos (Twitter)]]>
Who made this?

Article written by John Kyper

Where was it made or acquired?

Boston, published in Gay Community News and elsewhere, 18 March 1978

Story

I wrote this analysis of the LGBT movement in early 1978, reflecting on the past year's events in Boston and around the nation (Anita Bryant, the Bible burning at Boston Pride, etc.)]]>
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Who made this?

Letter to the editor written by John Kyper

Where was it made or acquired?

Published in Boston After Dark, 1 April 1970

Story

This is a letter-to-the editor of Boston After Dark (which later became the Boston Phoenix), in response to their favorable review of the film version of Mart Crowley's play "The Boys in the Band." I was reminded of this long-forgotten letter when I found Crowley's obituary in early March and dug it out of a filebox of my writings over the years that I'm slowly sifting through to copy items of interest before I donate it and a companion filebox to THP.
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Who made this?

Jim Jackson

Where was it made or acquired?

Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 1984

Story

In 1984, Harry Hay was the keynote speaker at Boston Pride. This essay is an account of Jim Jackson's interaction with Harry during the march before his speech.

 

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Who made this?

Article written by John Kyper

Where was it made or acquired?

Published in Boston After Dark, written 27 June 1972, published 2 July 1972

Story

This is an article I wrote for Boston After Dark (later the Boston Phoenix), which was published soon afterwards.]]>