Laura McMurry was born in Troy, New York, and grew up in Oklahoma and Idaho, before receiving her undergraduate degree at Reed College in Oregon. She moved to Boston in the mid-sixties to join Harvard’s graduate program in biology, receiving her degree in 1971. In 1969, McMurry became involved with the newly-formed Boston chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. McMurry was active in the Daughters of Bilitis from 1971-1975, at one time serving as secretary.

Through the Daughters of Bilitis, McMurry also became involved in political action, including protesting anti-sodomy legislation. In the 1970s McMurry became involved in many Boston gay and lesbian organizations such as the Gay Speakers Bureau and the Gay Community News.

In spring of 1970, she participated in Come Help Us Celebrate, and spoke at the first Boston Pride Celebration.

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The material from the Bar Collection has been gathered by patrons and employees of local bars and has been donated to The History Project with the intention of providing a more comprehensive history of the social life of gay men (and, to a smaller extent, women) via the bars they frequented.]]>
Michael Riegle, journalist, gay liberationist and prisoner rights activist, was born in 1943 in Gary, Indiana. The son of a steel mill worker, he attended Knox College where he received his Bachelors Degree; he later received his Doctorate in the psychology of language from the University of Minnesota. Upon receiving his Doctorate, Riegle taught at Franklin and Marshall College and ended his teaching career at Cornell. Throughout the 1970s, Riegle traveled extensively through Europe, primarily Italy and France where he worked as a translator, English and children’s tutor. Fluent in both French and Italian, Riegle maintained an avid interest in language and continued studying Russian, Spanish, Greek and American Sign Language until his death. In 1978, upon his return to the United States, Riegle became involved with the anarchist paper The Fag Rag and became part of the Gay Community News staff in 1979. Riegle expanded the newspaper’s policy of providing free penpal ads to prisoners and began a program providing gays and lesbians behind bars with legal and health information. Riegle was an active advocate for prisoners and published on the subject extensively in GCN. He became a part of the Redbook Prison Book Program and advised the American Friends Service Committee and the AIDS Action Committee on the concerns of prisoners. Mike Riegle died on January 10, 1992 after a long struggle with AIDS.

The Mike Riegle Papers contain a variety of printed media, including newspaper articles, magazine clippings, whole newspapers and magazine issues, published essays, bibliographies, advertisements, pamphlets, newsletters, comics, fiction and poetry all related to the research and collective interests of Gay Community News journalist Michael Riegle. Although the collection consists primarily of clippings and other collected materials from various gay and mainstream media from 1973 to 1990, Riegle’s handwritten research notes on a variety of subjects can be found throughout, including those used in preparation for a review of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality for Gay Community News.

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Boston Lesbian and Gays Against the Right (BLAGMAR) and its parent organization, Lavender Resistance, were groups formed in the last half of the 1970s to negotiate between issues relating to the LGBT community and the concerns of leftist politics. Lavender Resistance, active from 1976-1979, was primarily a discussion and study group that focused on defining this relationship, and because some members wanted a more action-oriented environment, BLAGMAR was formed to meet this need in 1978. BLAGMAR specifically was a reaction against the emergence of the New Right, a political movement of evangelical Christians, headed by people like Anita Bryant, that actively targeted the gay and lesbian community.

The records of the organizations reflect the political and activist LGBT community during one of the Gay Rights Movement’s most active periods. Perhaps most importantly, these records, particularly the meeting minutes and discussion notes, are very relevant for any study of how gay and lesbian issues related to socialist and progressive politics, and how certain members of the community chose to approach this relationship. The group’s records represent an intellectual and economically progressive approach to LGBT issues. Lavender Resistance, a socialist-feminist voice in the gay community, was particularly invested in the study of the historic interactions between race, class, gender, and homosexuality in a capitalist environment, while BLAGMAR focused on current political trends and activism.

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an apparent way of predicting the direction of the stock market.]]>