Oral History Training Tuesday, July 23 | 6 pm DC Center for the LGBT Community | 2000 14th St NW #105 Are you interested in helping collect the history of D.C.’s LGBT community? Oral histories are a vital component of our collections, providing students and researchers with rich and nuanced accounts of […]
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(Screenshot of “What Happened to DC’s Lesbian Spaces?” [external link]) The Washingtonian (external link) recently featured Rainbow History board member Dr. Bonnie Morris in Harrison Smith’s article “What Happened to DC’s Lesbian Spaces?” (external link). In this terrific interview-style article, Dr. Morris discusses the swift disappearance of cultural spaces for lesbians […]
Board Member Bonnie Morris in the Washingtonian

(Screenshot of article “Gay Rugby Teams And Transvestite Dancing Queens At Capital Pride.” [external link].) Rainbow History board member Jeff Donahoe was quoted in Linda Pentz’s recent article, “Gay Rugby Teams And Transvestite Dancing Queens At Capital Pride” (external link). Published in the Florida newspaper Agenda (external link), the article highlights the […]
Rainbow History in the Florida Agenda

Listen to the panel. Couldn’t make it to our June 16 panel Lost Lesbian Spaces? You can now find the full audio recording and accompanying images on our online archives. The Rainbow History Project partnered with LC-GLOBE to present the lunchtime panel “Lost Lesbian Spaces” at the Library Congress. The panel […]
Item: Lost Lesbian Spaces Panel

Enter the online exhibit. The GLF-DC was founded by individuals who helped fight for civil rights and international peace in the 1960s, but found their sexuality at odds with the radical left at the time. As Michael Ferri, a founding member of Washington DC’s Gay Liberation Front recalls: “We […]
Online Exhibit: Gay Liberation Front
(Listen here.) In celebration of this morning’s Supreme Court ruling, which recognized same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, we invite you to listen to Madeline Davis’s 1971 gay liberation song, “Stonewall Nation,” as recorded on the local gay radio program Friends. 44 years ago, Davis first proclaimed through this song that “the […]
Item Spotlight: Davis Singing Stonewall Nation

Earlier this week, Yahoo News released a 30-minute online documentary entitled “Uniquely Nasty: The U.S. Government’s War on Gays.” Based on research by the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C., the film explores the federal persecution of gays and lesbians since the Cold War. Its three chapters tell the stories of […]
Documentary: “Uniquely Nasty”

Looking for a crash course in the history of local gay and lesbian organizing? We invite you to explore our new online exhibit “‘Gay is Good’: Gay and Lesbian Organizing in DC, 1961-1975”: “Gay is Good”: DC-based gay rights activist Dr. Franklin Kameny coined this slogan in the 1960s to […]
Online Exhibit: Gay is Good

(Find this document and other artifacts at our online archives.) In this undated manuscript, perhaps from the early ‘70s, lesbian activist Eva Freund reflects on the turbulent experience of lesbians in the Women’s Movement. As the Movement came to be associated with lesbianism in the 1960s, its leadership balked. “Those inside the Movement,” Freund explains, […]
Item Spotlight: “Nothing But a Bunch of Dykes!”

(Dr. Bonnie Morris shares a photo of herself and her students at the Hung Jury, one of the “lost lesbian spaces” discussed in the panel. Photo by Sarah Welz Geselowitz.) On Tuesday, June 16, the Rainbow History Project partnered with LC-GLOBE to present the lunchtime panel “Lost Lesbian Spaces,” which […]