Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Photos:Boston Gay Pride 1991]]> Gay Press
Gay Press Publications
Social movements – -Gay liberation movement]]>
]]> Fag Rag (Publication) Collection]]> Gay Community News (GCN) was a weekly journal published in Boston from 1973 to 1999 by the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation. One of the most prominent LGBTQ+ weekly newspapers to grow out of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, GCN addressed a range of issues and controversies that were absent from the mainstream press and relevant to the gay, lesbian, and trans community. The paper was run by an evolving collective of staffers, members, and volunteers with a resolutely progressive and political orientation, but its coverage was inclusive of a diversity of thought and critically addressed the politics and experiences of sexuality, pornography, class, race, disability, relationships, incarceration, and parenthood.

The History Project houses the following materials related to Gay Community News:

• Coll. 016: Gay Community News Publication Collection
  • Note: All issues are viewable in person. To view issues online, see: Gay Community News: Internet Archive
    
    
• Coll. 104: Gay Community News Photograph Collection
  • Note: Only partially digitized. All photographs are viewable in person.
    
    
• Coll. 125: Gay Community News Internal History Collection
  
  • Note: Unprocessed; not digitized. More detailed description forthcoming.

All materials can be viewed in-person in Boston by appointment. If you are interested in arranging a time to see a collection in person, email us as info@historyproject.org. Please include which collection materials you are interested in seeing and the date(s) you would like to visit.

See also:
Visualizing Gay Community News, our digital exhibition.

 

]]> Community Guides and Yellow Pages Collection]]>
In 1974, the Boston newspaper Gay Community News (GCN) published the first such guide for the Boston area, focusing specifically on activities, organizations, and services in Boston and Cambridge. From 1975 to 1977, GCN published guides for activities, organizations, and services throughout New England.

In 1981, area publisher Mary Kennedy and others began producing the publication that would later become The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Communities’ Pink Pages (With All of New England). Like the GCN guides, the Pink Pages began by focusing on information pertaining to the Boston area, and later expanded to represent New England. A number of different guides to activities, organizations, and services have had brief publishing runs in Boston and New England, including DIRECTORY/New England and Private Lives.

Also, since 1993, various groups have published Boston area Yellow Page directories for the queer community.

This collection contains a complete run of the GCN-produced guides, and a near-complete run of Pink Pages. Guides produced by other groups are not complete.]]>
To view this collection in person, email: info@historyproject.org. ]]>
This collection is primarily comprised of speaker training materials and audience evaluations of speakers. It also contains grant applications, financial information, committee meeting minutes, workshops, resource packets, project planning papers, and the SpeakOut newsletter The Speaker. SpeakOut visited a large number of schools and other institutions in the Boston area throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. These included Brookline High School, Emerson College, Merrimack College, General Electric, Camp Atwater, Berklee College of Music, Lexington High School, Randolph High School, Stonehill College, and dozens of others. The audience was asked to fill out anonymous evaluations each time, and they were painstakingly collected and saved to improve future presentations. Training and evaluation materials which fall under a more specific category are filed with that category; for example, training for the Youth Speak Out project is filed in Series II, Projects. Evaluations of training exercises are filed within Series VI, Training.]]> Gay Community News (1973-1999), as well as the extensive Gay Community News photograph collection.

When Gay Community News began in 1973, it was as a fairly simple local newsletter featuring a calendar of events for the gay community in Boston and New England. In the first issue of the Gay Community Newsletter, as it was initially and very briefly called, the editors and collective members wrote about the need for a publication of this sort: "There has been a long-standing need in the Boston gay community for improved communication between the various gay organizations and the gay individual. The lack of coverage in the "straight" press has added to this problem of getting necessary information to our community. Gay groups have attempted to overcome this problem by newsletters to their members, but this has lead to duplication of efforts, with vast portions of the community left uninformed about events until after they have passed. The Gay Community Newsletter is meant as a means to solve this problem. The purpose will be to list all of the events and information of interest to the gay community in one publication. This will not be a literary publication. We are fortunate to have several already serving the community. We feel weekly publication will be necessary to fill this need for quick current information."

By the second issue of Gay Community News, just a week later, the editors had changed their tone and had this to say: "This will be the last issue of GCN that will have the appearance of a PTA bulletin. To give you a more concise professional paper, next week we will be switching to offset printing. The paper will be then printed on regular newsprint, with our manpower needs reduced ... We are trying to give you the best paper possible, but your interest and support alone will determine how well we can do this."

The news coverage in Gay Community News quickly expanded, then, and in a few short years, it was a national publication in both scope and readership. During a critical period in the lesbian and gay rights movement, GCN was a nationally respected, and oftentimes controversial, source of information about the community and a catalyst for political debate.]]>
To view this collection in person, email: info@historyproject.org. ]]> Massoud Bagheri (right)]]>
The Beantown Bowling League began in 1986. The group held weekly Tuesday night bowling and participated in a wide array of tournaments across the United States and Canada. Initially, the organization had approximately 70-80 bowlers, broken up into teams each assigned a captain. In addition to the Tuesday night bowling and tournaments, the organization participated in several fundraisers and held an annual Christmas banquet.

Also represented in the collection is the IGBO (International Gay Bowling Organization), which ran annual tournaments and sponsored tournaments for gay and lesbian bowlers. The IGBO was founded in 1980, and is considered “the sports membership organization of choice for the gay community worldwide.” Tournaments hosted by the IGBO include annual tournaments and mid-year tournaments. ]]>