Pride - LGBTQ History

An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago.

 Chicago house music originated in the city’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You’ll learn about house music’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar “Artek” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It’s a story about much more than music—it’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon.

Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today. 

Famous and forgotten, they’re all our fabulous ancestors.

From Charles Warren Stoddard, the first openly gay San Franciscan, to Felicia “Flames” Elizondo, the exuberant transgender rights advocate, the LGBT community is integrally woven into the fabric of the city’s history. Household names like Queen Califia, Charley Parkhurst, Elsa Gidlow, Jose Sarria and Harvey Milk are celebrated worldwide, while Bert LaRose, Mabel Edison and Clarence Lockett are now largely forgotten. Whether ’49ers, bohemians, beatniks, boomers, hippies, clones or conformists, their fascinating stories contributed to the development of a vibrant community, many simply by being themselves.

Join Dr. William Lipsky as he recounts their struggles and achievements in the City by the Bay.

Located in the middle of the nation’s heartland, Wichita, Kansas, has been a regional hub for LGBTQ persons, forming a community that extended well beyond just local residents.

In spite of the area’s restrictive laws and conservative attitudes, these people have, since the 1960s, found space among an ever-fluid bar and club scene and a larger network from community centers to rodeos to religious organizations to art and activism groups. It has a history that includes one of the nation’s earliest gay rights ordinances as well as pioneering figures in AIDS research. The community has faced discrimination and hostility and the AIDS crisis. Since then, it has celebrated milestones like the legalization of gay marriage and the losses of many of its key leaders. With a legacy that extends from homophile to gender fluid, this story provides a window into how LGBTQ persons in the center of the country have both faced challenges and lived ordinary lives.

Since 2010, The Center of Wichita has been a community resource and is proud to preserve the history of the LGBTQ community of the region. Working with a team of researchers and students from Wichita State University, The Center of Wichita hopes that this work inspires future collecting and storytelling. 

Long before Stonewall, queerness thrived in the Queen City.

From queer soldiers in 1862 to drag kings and queens who lit up saloons and concert halls, Cincinnati’s early LGBTQ+ history reaches into the forgotten corners of the city's past, introducing unlikely and extraordinary figures. Like Mary Ann Jefferson, a Black transgender woman who, in the late nineteenth century, became a fixture in the criminal underworld of Rat Row, Cincinnati’s most dangerous neighborhood. Or Julius "Junkie" Fleischmann, a gay man who, even as the U.S. government launched a purge of homosexuals from its ranks, secretly served as a covert operative for the CIA at the end of World War II.

Charting the rise of pre-Stonewall bars, brothels, and hidden sanctuaries that offered fleeting refuge amid relentless repression, historian Jacob Hogue offers a bold, long-overdue reclaiming of queer Cincinnati’s place in the American narrative.

From arrests and ostracization to public festivals and drag shows, the LGBTQ+ people of Evansville have walked a twisting path to their current existence.

In the early days of the city, local newspapers harassed and bullied members of this group, even going so far as to encourage them to commit suicide. A series of murders in the 1950s and 1960s left Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender population of Evansville without justice and validation. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s did the same. Happily, things have changed. Today, the city’s LGBTQ community is out and proud, and thousands attend the annual Pride parade down Main Street.

Looking back on more than a century of uneven progress, Kelley Coures unfolds this often tragic yet at times hopeful story.

For over a century, drag has been an unstoppable force in Milwaukee nightlife. On June 7, 1884, "The Only Leon'? brought the fine art of female impersonation to the Grand Opera Hall, launching a proud local legacy that continues today at This Is It, La Cage, Hamburger Mary's, D.I.X. and innumerable other venues.

Historians Michail Takach and BJ Daniels recognize that today's LGBTQ liberties were born from the strength, resilience, and resistance of yesterday's gender non-conforming pioneers. This is a long overdue celebration of those stories, including high-rolling hustler of the Fourth Ward "Badlands'? Frank Blunt, over-the-top dinner theater drag superstar of the 1950s Adrian Ames, and "It Kid'? Jamie Gays, first-ever Miss Gay Milwaukee and Latin community hero.

And many, many more.