Difference between revisions of "The Midwest's "Queer Mecca": 40 Years of GLBTQ History in Bloomington, Indiana (1969-2009)"
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
LGBT people in Bloomington hadn't begun protesting their discrimination at the hands of the police or the business community, forming activist organizations, writing impassioned speeches about gay liberation, or arguing in feminist coffeehouses about the politics of lesbianism—at least not yet—but the signs of a distinctive Hoosier queerness were there waiting to be seen, like those two movies at the Towne Cinema, by those with the eyes to see them. | LGBT people in Bloomington hadn't begun protesting their discrimination at the hands of the police or the business community, forming activist organizations, writing impassioned speeches about gay liberation, or arguing in feminist coffeehouses about the politics of lesbianism—at least not yet—but the signs of a distinctive Hoosier queerness were there waiting to be seen, like those two movies at the Towne Cinema, by those with the eyes to see them. | ||
| + | |||
---- | ---- | ||
| + | |||
:[[PROJECT OVERVIEW]] | :[[PROJECT OVERVIEW]] | ||
| Line 22: | Line 24: | ||
:[[APPENDIX: ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY, 1969-2009]] | :[[APPENDIX: ANNOTATED CHRONOLOGY, 1969-2009]] | ||
| + | |||
---- | ---- | ||
| + | |||
'''Acknowledgements''' | '''Acknowledgements''' | ||
Revision as of 18:31, 29 March 2010
As late Friday night rolled over into the early morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, nothing in Bloomington, Indiana would suggest that a riot was breaking out 675 miles away in New York City.
The rioting that began in the aftermath of a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, has been commemorated ever since as the “beginning of the gay rights movement” in the United States. Turning the story of Stonewall into a paradigm, however, and assuming that LGBT culture originated in coastal cities and migrated from their into the heartland, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of local LGBT life in rural and non-metropolitan locations, both before and after Stonewall.
Drag queen weren’t rioting in downtown Bloomington in the summer of ’69, but a few short blocks off that small city’s town square, with its Capra-esque courthouse and public library, the Towne Cinema was screening The Killing of Sister George, a film about an intergenerational butch-femme lesbian relationship, as well as The Gay Deceivers, a film about two men who pretend to be gay to avoid the draft.
LGBT people in Bloomington hadn't begun protesting their discrimination at the hands of the police or the business community, forming activist organizations, writing impassioned speeches about gay liberation, or arguing in feminist coffeehouses about the politics of lesbianism—at least not yet—but the signs of a distinctive Hoosier queerness were there waiting to be seen, like those two movies at the Towne Cinema, by those with the eyes to see them.
Acknowledgements
This preliminary history of LGBT Bloomington was developed specifically for OutHistory.org’s “Since Stonewall” local LGBT history contest. It began in Fall Semester 2009 as a class project in Professor Susan Stryker’s “G206: Gay History, Queer Culture,” a regularly offered lower-division course in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University. It was completed as an independent study project in Spring Semester 2010 by Evelyn Smith and Chris Kase, two especially talented students who were particularly enthusiastic about continuing to conduct research. Prof. Stryker’s research assistant, Antonia Leotsakos, also made many valuable contributions.
Other students in G206 who contributed to the research include: James Armstrong, Valerie Biondi, Erin Brady, James Conrad, Douglas Cooper, Anna Dykema, Scott Eberhard, Erin Engledow, Miranda Ettinger, Joshua Field, Alyssa Goldman, Bryn Hannon, Jurion Jaffe, Tara Johnson, Danielle Jonas, Jessica Lajoie, Lindsay Lauver, Allyson Lodics, Jeff McInnes, Brenna Moeljadi, Sarah Pennal, Alexandra Riley, Katherine Roberson, Jordan Schmid, Benjamin Siebert, Geoffrey Sperling, Dylan Swift, Sarah Taylor, Julia Turner, and Tay’ler Wells.
Doug Bauder, Carol Fischer and Solomon Hursey of IU’s GLBT Student Support Services Office all gave generously of their time—Solomon made available many important historical documents he had scanned from the office files; Carol facilitated contact between longtime Bloomington LGBT community members and class members who wanted to conduct oral interviews with them, and Doug graciously agreed to be interviewed. Other interviewees included Robert Brookshire, Jean Capler, Helen Harrell, Victor Kinzer, Doug McKinney, Duncan Mitchell, George Pinney, Monte Simonton Jr., Katherine Brown Sterritte, Cynthia Stone, Martha Vicinus, Carolyn Marie Weithoff, and Linda Giovanna Zambanini.
Thanks as well to Dina Kellams and Carrie Lynn Schweir of Indiana University Archives, and to Shawn Wilson, Jennifer Bass, and Catherine Johnson-Rohr of the Kinsey Institute, for their knowledge of local history sources and their willingness to guide student research. Professors Colin Johnson and Mary Gray both shared their wisdom about rural queer culture. And Rachael, of Rachael’s Café, kept us all buzzing with her coffee.
