Browse material on the OutHistory website by time period.
A historian recalls the life of an early lesbian activist. First published on OutHistory in 2020.
In June 1980, OutHistory founder Jonathan Ned Katz wrote to Patricia Highsmith, asking her about her book The Price of Salt (1952), perhaps the first novel about lesbians that ended happily. This exhibit, first published on OutHistory in 2019,…
From the "revised" edition of Gay American History (Meridian/New American Library, a division of Penguin Books, 1992). The only revision was this new preface, written in 1991.
An introduction, by his long-time partner, to the life and work of a gay writer who specialized in "soft-porn." Born in Visalia, California, raised in Exeter, California, and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Derrick…
Forced by the coronavirus pandemic to vacate the safe-house she occupied with her husband, Bob, Carol Joyce moved with him and a beloved cousin, Isabel Soffer, to Soffer’s country home. There, Carol, who had withdrawn in old age into herself, was…
The Miss Gay Atlanta contest was first held on Halloween 1970 at Chuck's Rathskeller. It moved in 1972 to the Sweet Gum Head. In 1975 the event had become such an institution that it was moved to June, when it has been held ever since. First…
Excerpted from Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Cafe Theatre, co-edited by Holly Hughes, Jill S. Dolan, and Carmelita Tropicana (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).
This exhibit is adapted from Staley, Kathryn. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life at Appalachian State University.” Master’s Thesis, Appalachian State University, 2009.
See also: The Standard Model of the Social-Historical Universe, by Jonathan Ned Katz
An excerpt of Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (T.Y. Crowell, 1976), 129-34, along with a bibliography and sample document.
A theater piece, first performed in 1989-1992 and authored by OutHistory's founder, about love between men in the life of Walt Whitman, adapted from the words of Whitman, John Addington Symonds, and others, condensed from their letters, diaries,…
An interview with the author of a groundbreaking 1975 essay on lesbian history.
Atlanta Since Stonewall, 1969-2009: A Local History brings to life a segment of the city’s LGBTQ past, highlighting nationally recognized and little-known personalities, places, and events. Through photographs, printed materials, ephemera, and links…
An introduction to and overview of the story of Angela Calomiris, a working-class lesbian who was a key informant for the FBI in the 1940s against the Communist Party.
Following the death of historian Horacio N. Roque Ramírez in December 2015, OutHistory published a memorial by Nan Alamilla Boyd.
Reed Erickson used the wealth which his class privilege provided to support public education and activism about transgender lives and issues at a time when very little public attention was focused on the topic. Ada Bello, who wrote this account of…
The subject of a famous Nan Goldin photograph, Jimmy Paul, speaks about his life, and about encountering an inaccurate caption on that photograph in a major queer history art show. Published originally on OutHistory in 2015.
OutHistory presented the first public showing of a documentary film about long-time gay activist Randy Wicker. The 50 minute film, produced and directed by Michael Kasino, uses interviews, movies, and still photos to detail the life of this ornery,…
A memoir detailing the struggles of Gary Miller's childhood and youth in San Diego and Kansas City before turning to his subsequent political and community service in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Roseville, CA. Published originally on…
Larry Kramer's The American People, Volume I, Search for My Heart, A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) is a fictional meditation on history, especially on gay and lesbian history. Kramer and other activists founded the AIDS Coalition to…