Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Season 1: Preview

Coming up in the first season of Making Gay History - personal stories mined from Eric Marcus's rare audio archive of interviews with LGBTQ champions, heroes, and witnesses to history.Music: "Divider" by Chris ZabriskieLicense: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Season 1: Episode 1: Sylvia Rivera — Part 1

A never before heard conversation with trans icon, self-described “drag queen,” and Stonewall uprising veteran Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia relives that June 1969 night in vivid detail and describes her struggle for recognition in the movement.Sylvia would have loved knowing that in the years since her death in 2002 she’s become an icon—a symbol of LGBTQ people fighting back against police repression and fighting for respect and equal rights.  But she’d also want you to know that she was a human being, born Ray Rivera in the Bronx in 1951.  Eleven years later the self-described effeminate child found himself homeless and hustling on 42nd Street to scratch out enough money to get by.  Sylvia was all of seventeen when she crossed paths with history at the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 28, 1969.  She died at 51, having struggled with addiction and homelessness for much of her life, even as she continued to fight for trans rights and LGBTQ equality.

Season 1: Episode 2: Wendell Sayers

We don’t know much about Wendell Sayers beyond what he shared in his original 1989 interview for the Making Gay History book and the little we found in our research.  He was born in Western Kansas on April 29, 1904, and died on March 27, 1998.  He was, as he notes in the interview, the first black attorney to be hired to work in the Colorado State Attorney General’s office.  Wendell’s specialty was in real estate.  In the late 1950’s he attended several meetings of the Denver chapter of the Mattachine Society, an early gay rights organization, and briefly attended the Mattachine Society’s sixth annual national convention, which was held in Denver in September 1959.  

Season 1: Episode 3: Edythe Eyde aka Lisa Ben

In 1947, Hollywood secretary Edythe Eyde, aka Lisa Ben, had the audacity to publish “Vice Versa,” the first ever “magazine” for lesbians. Even more audacious, she imagined a future gay utopia that has all come to pass. In the '50s, Edythe sang gay parodies of popular songs in LA gay clubs. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.

Season 1: Episode 4: Dr. Evelyn Hooker

In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s gay friend Sam From urged her to do a study challenging the commonly held belief that homosexuals were by nature mentally ill. It was work that would ultimately strip the “sickness” label from millions of gay men and women and change the course of history. Episode Notes: In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a UCLA psychologist, and her husband sat down for a nightcap at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco with her former student Sam From and his male partner. Sam told Dr. Hooker that it was her responsibility to study “normal” homosexuals to show the world what they were really like—to challenge the commonly held belief that gay people were by nature mentally ill. Dr. Hooker took up the challenge soon after, but then life intervened, derailing her research until 1953, when she secured an unlikely government grant to pursue a study comparing 30 straight men to 30 gay men. Three years later Dr. Hooker presented the results of her study, “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” at the 1956 American Psychological Association (APA) convention in Chicago (the study was published in 1957). She rocked the profession by demonstrating that gay men were just as sane as straight men. While it would be another seventeen years before the American Psychiatric Association would remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s list of mental illnesses, it was Dr. Hooker’s study that paved the way, legitimizing homosexuality as a respectable field of study. There’s so much more to this story and the study. And fortunately there are many resources, a sampling of which you’ll find below. ——— Katharine S. Milar, PhD, a professor of psychology at Earlham College, offers a concise overview of Dr. Hooker’s life and work for the American Psychological Association’s “Time Capsule,” including details about how she conducted her landmark study (which was derisively referred to as “The Fairy Project” by some federal officials). For a broad overview of Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s life, including a biographical sketch that was adapted from an article in the American Psychologist, as well as tributes and obituaries, have a look here. The American Psychological Association provides a summary of Dr. Hooker’s groundbreaking study—“The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual”—here. A copy of Dr. Hooker’s paper is available here, but access is restricted (or requires payment). In 1991, Dr. Hooker was given the APA’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest. And in 1992 the documentary Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, premiered. You can watch a clip from it here. But be warned, the archival footage about lobotomies is horrifying. You can find Dr. Hooker’s oral history in Eric Marcus’s book Making Gay History. Beginning in 2008, the APA’s “Division 44” (Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues) named an annual award in Dr. Hooker’s honor: Evelyn Hooker Award for Distinguished Contribution by an Ally. Here is an overview of the American Psychological Association’s current work concerning LGBTQ rights. Dr. Hooker’s work is cited in the opening sentence. The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University offers a treasure trove of information and research on human sexuality and gender.