Stonewall Contest Winning Entries

Since Stonewall Contest Prize Winners and Honorable Mentions

Review committee: John D'Emilio and Leisa Meyer

The entries in OutHistory’s “Since Stonewall” community history contest are a wonderful addition to our collective knowledge about the queer past. The creators of these local histories have researched deeply and widely. They’ve found written documents and photographic and video evidence; they’ve conducted interviews with activists and community members; and they’ve put the information together in a variety of ways that invite us into these places and stories. They will inform and entertain anyone who browses through them, and they can be used by teachers to incorporate LGBT history into high school and college classrooms, as well as by scholars seeking to more fully engage these histories in their own work. We hope that the contest is just a first step in a continuing effort to create dozens and dozens of additional community histories and that all submitters will see their products as “works-in-progress” that will continue.

The OutHistory website and the local “Since Stonewall” contest that OutHistory sponsored are critically important in bringing attention to local LGBTQ history, and LGBTQ history more generally. Without recognition of LGBTQ history on local, state, national, and transnational levels our historical narratives will remain forever incomplete.

Prize Winners:

1. Man-i-fest: FTM Mentorship in San Francisco from 1976 – 2009

Man-i-fest is a substantive and focused exhibit that documents one man’s (Lou Sullivan) FTM transition over the course of thirty years with a deeply evocative historical context drawn from photos of Sullivan’s transition, letters between Sullivan and David, the young man he mentored, and video footage of interviews he did throughout this journey with the press, community, and medical professionals. Curated by Megan Rohrer, the first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran Church (in partnership with the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco), the exhibit’s attention to the less studied FTM transition and especially the critical role of mentors in these transitions is remarkable.

2. Rainbow Richmond: LGBTQ History of Richmond, VA

Rainbow Richmond provides a deeply textured story of the multiple challenges and triumphs that have constituted the queer history of this former capital of the Confederacy. Moving from a straightforward timeline of the significant moments and turning points of Richmond’s LGBTQ history this exhibit offers detailed and evocative coverage of the violence, legal battles, and activism that characterized the four decades since Stonewall and offers browsers the rare opportunity to substantively engage this vital southern LGBTQ community.

3. Gay Liberation in New York City

Documenting the history of gay liberation in New York City this exhibit provides a remarkable array of sources, from an initial picture of “gay” graffiti to vivid oral history interviews and video footage of historical moments that make us feel part of the vibrant gay liberation movement in New York City during its brief heyday and works to clarify and make more complex the legacies of Stonewall.

4. Las Vegas, Nevada OutHistory Project

The Las Vegas OutHistory exhibit documents the creation of LGBT communities in Las Vegas over the course of 30 years. Notable for providing multiple routes to delve ever deeper into this history this exhibit makes clear that while Stonewall is part of a “shared” queer history we might be better served looking to institutions like the Reno Gay Rodeo, Le Café in Las Vegas, and the fierce local struggles to maintain these and other institutions to understand the emergence of queer Nevada.

5. Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, San Francisco, California 1971-2004

Documenting the first registered LGBT democratic club in the country the Alice B. Toklas exhibit draws from the Alice Reports newsletter, interviews with longtime Alice members, and the Gay Vote Newsletters of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club to provide a fascinating textual and visual journey, complete with video footage, of this vital community organization over three decades, from the Compton Cafeteria Riots (and Stonewall) to the current struggle over marriage equality, with a richly rendered historical context as backdrop.

Honorable Mentions:

1. The Midwest's "Queer Mecca": 40 Years of GLBTQ History in Bloomington, Indiana (1969-2009)

This exhibit focuses on the array of resources for LGBTQ people available in Bloomington in the late twentieth century and the communities formed in this Midwestern crucible during those difficult years. Calling our attention especially to the importance of recognizing “queer rurality” as an important mode of conceptualizing LGBTQ lives and struggles, the authors complicate the “Stonewall” legacy by detailing LGBTQ formations distinct from those emerging in metropoles.

2. LGBT Life in Iowa City, Iowa: 1967-2010

Through a series of images accompanied by brief textual description, this exhibit offers snapshots of moments in the history of the Iowa City LGBTQ community since Stonewall. Using the broad resources available in this city the exhibit draws our attention to the various individuals and groups - lesbian, feminist, trans, gay, and queer - that have made Iowa City such an important space for LGBTQ Midwesterners through the late 20th century.