6:00 - 7:30
An exploration of the how, why, whom and ongoing influence of the ground breaking organization that helped to birth today's LGBTQIA community and initiated the movement for our cultural and political freedoms. Using images, conversation and even a John Wayne movie excerpt, we’ll tell the story of the brave visionaries who started it all back in November of 1950. Speakers include Joey Cain, Devlyn Camp, Will Roscoe and Jim Van Buskirk.
Joey Cain is a Gay history researcher, writer and exhibit curator. His exhibits have included the SFPL’s Radically Gay: The Life of Harry Hay and the GLBT Historical Society’s Lavender Tinted Glasses: A Groovey Gay Look at the Summer of Love. He co-edits the website EdwardCarpenterCircle.com dedicated to early 20th century British Gay Liberationist, political activist and poet Edward Carpenter.
Devlyn Camp is the producer & host of the podcast Queer Serial: American LGBTQ+ History and a GLAAD Award nominee for outstanding journalism. They are a gay history tour guide in Greenwich Village, volunteer archivist at the LGBT Center National History Archive and currently directing a film about activists Randy Wicker & Marsha P. Johnson's extended gay family in New York City.
Will Roscoe, Ph.D., is the editor of Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder and a participant and organizer in the radical faerie development since 1979. His books, The Zuni-Man Woman and Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, have received Lambda Literary Awards.
Jim Van Buskirk was the founding program manager of the SFPL's James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center from 1992-2007. To coincide with the 1996 opening of the Center, he co-authored Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
Connect
Photo: "Mattachine Society Christmas Party in Los Angeles," 1952 or 1953, J. Gruber Papers (GLC 66), Hormel LGBTQIA Center, San Francisco Public Library.
LGBTQIA+ Interest
Gather, share knowledge and celebrate our unique identities at the queerest library ever.
For more resources, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center is the gateway to the Library’s broader collections documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual history and culture, with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area.