They worked with a clear awareness of the real dangers they confronted. But in the middle of the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, during the years that deserve to be called the worst time to be queer in the United States, small numbers of men and women in a few cities came together, formed organizations, published magazines and held public meetings. John D’Emilio: It didn’t achieve the same visibility and influence that came in later decades. It wasn’t loud and militant in the way that gay liberation and lesbian feminism was in the early 1970s. And, in fact, as I searched for documentary evidence and made contact with activists who could tell me their stories from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, it became apparent that there was indeed a movement in those decades. Surely, I thought, there must’ve been something that came before Stonewall. In the end, I decided that I would write about the LGBT activism that preceded the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the birth of gay liberation. But it did set me on a productive path of focusing my search for a new kind of history. The experienced faculty mentor offering wise advice. The naïve graduate student enthusiastically venturing into new and unexplored territory. John D’Emilio: Now, of course, I laugh whenever I think of that moment. But in New York, where I lived at the time, I had recently met a circle of people who were trying to figure out how research and writing could contribute to the LGBTQ movement of those years, and I was excited about the possibilities. I told him, “I want to write a history of homosexuality in America.” Without skipping a beat, he responded, “John, I think you need to narrow your topic a bit.” At that time I had never read any LGBTQ history and as far as I knew, there wasn’t any. John D’Emilio: One afternoon in 1974, while I was still a graduate student, I walked into the office of my faculty advisor and announced with great excitement that I had figured out what my dissertation topic would be. Author, Queer and Present Dangers: Sexuality, Masculinity, and the Sixties.LGBT Thematic Specialist, Amnesty International USA.Learning for Justice, The Role of Gay Men and Lesbians in the Civil Rights Movement.Learning for Justice, Experiment in Fairness (Bayard Rustin).Learning for Justice, Bayard Rustin: The Fight for Civil and Gay Rights.Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students, Appendix B: LGBTQ Historical Figures.
Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students, Section III: Instruction.Learning for Justice, Teaching Stonewall.