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LGBTQIA+ History Episodes

Sept. 11, 2023

The History of Drag in New York City

RuPaul’s Drag Race first aired on TV in 2009, but the New York City drag scene that launched RuPaul started over a century earlier. From drag balls to Wigstock, New York has long been considered the capital of drag culture. …
Aug. 21, 2023

Gladys Bentley

One of the biggest stars in Prohibition Age New York was blues singer Gladys Bentley, who caused a stir in Harlem, wearing a top hat and tails, flirting with women in the audience, and singing raunchy lyrics. Despite Bentley…
Nov. 14, 2022

Gordon Merrick

In 1970, writer Gordon Merrick published The Lord Won’t Mind , advertised as “the first homosexual novel with a happy ending,” his fifth novel but first to focus on a gay romance story. The novel was a hit and stayed on the …
Guest: Joseph Ortiz
June 27, 2022

The 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riot

On a hot weekend night in August 1966 trans women fought back against police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Although the Compton’s riot didn’t spark a national movement the way…
Guest: Susan Stryker
June 20, 2022

Two-Spirit People in Native American Cultures

In the summer of 1990, at the third annual Native American/First Nations gay and lesbian conference, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the term Two Spirit was established. An English translation of the Northern Algonquin term niizh man…
June 13, 2022

The Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village

The 12-story Women’s House of Detention, situated in the heart of Greenwich Village in New York City, from 1932 to 1974, was central to the queer history of The Village. The House of D, as it was known, housed such inmates a…
Guest: Hugh Ryan
June 6, 2022

The Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement

Queer suffragists were central to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States from its earliest days. However, in a movement that placed great importance on public image in service of the goal of achieving the vote, q…
March 21, 2022

The National Women's Football League

In 1967, a Cleveland talent agent named Sid Friedman decided to capitalize on the popularity of football in the rust belt by launching a women’s football league, which he envisioned as entertainment, complete with mini-skirt…
March 14, 2022

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Born in 1911, Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias, who went by the nickname “Babe,” was a phenomenal, and confident athlete. Babe won Olympic gold in track and field, was an All American player in basketball, pitched in exhibiti…
Feb. 21, 2022

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Poet, essayist, and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson is perhaps best known as the widow of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, but she is a remarkable figure in her own right. Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who had only recently…
Guest: Tara T. Green
Jan. 3, 2022

The Suffrage Road Trip of 1915

In September 1915, four suffragists set off from the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, in a brand-new Overland 6 convertible to make the 3,000-mile drive across the country to deliver a pe…
Guest: Anne Gass
Sept. 13, 2021

African American AIDS Activism

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), in 2018, 13% of the US population was Black and African American, but 42% of new HIV diagnoses in the US were from Black and African American people. Thi…
Guest: Dan Royles
July 5, 2021

Homosexuality and the Left Before 1960

Political activism of queer people in the United States started long before the Stonewall riots in 1969. One surprising place that queer people found a home for their activism was in the Communist Party. The Communist Party …
June 28, 2021

Sophonisba Breckinridge

Sophonisba “Nisba” Preston Breckinridge, born April 1, 1866, was a woman of firsts. Breckinridge was the first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar to practice law in 1895; the first woman to earn a PhD in Political Science at…
Guest: Anya Jabour