A collection of biographies to celebrate Black History Month, first published on OutHistory on January 23, 2014.
An introduction to more than 1000 LGBT direct action demonstrations and protests in the United States from 1965 to 1975, with an overview report, annotations, bibliographic references, and tags. Published originally by OutHistory and Queer Pasts in March 2023. Updated in October 2024.
A project produced by thirty-three students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of their requirements for the advanced undergraduate seminar U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Histories. The project was developed with the intent to enrich popular understandings of modern American LGBTQ histories through the lens of a state underrepresented in this area of scholarship. Entries are grouped topically. For more information about the collection, the course, or individual entries, contact the course instructor David Palmer at palm@email.unc.edu. Published originally on OutHistory in 2012.
This exhibit features LGBTQ America, a theme study that the National Park Foundation and National Park Service (NPS) published in 2016; the NPS deleted the report from its website in 2025. The exhibit also includes The Pride Guide, an associated workbook published by the NPS in 2019, and a statement by LGBTQ historians who have done work with the NPS.
Excerpts of a forthcoming memoir, Airing the Dirty Laundry: Queer in the Academy, by a former faculty member at the University of Iowa. Published originally by OutHistory in 2023.
Timeline of the evolution of LGBTQ life in Iowa City, with photographs and documents. First published on OutHistory in 2013.
This exhibit is adapted from Staley, Kathryn. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life at Appalachian State University.” Master’s Thesis, Appalachian State University, 2009.
This essay responds to new efforts to censor, distort, erase, and falsify LGBTQ+ (and especially trans and queer) history in 2025.
First published on OutHistory in 2020.
President John F. Kennedy was famous for his vivid, and some might say almost compulsive, heterosexuality. But straight men can have a gay side, and JFK’s life was filled with prominent gay men. First published on OutHistory in 2013.
An exhibit on the queer intersectionality of African American writer Lorraine Hansberry, focusing on a 2013-2014 museum exhibit, an overview of Hansberry's life and work, and copies of Hansberry's correspondence with The Ladder.
An interview with a documentary filmmaker who received a National Endowement for the Humanities grant in support of the first full-length documentary feature on Lorraine Hansberry. The interview was conducted by a consulting humanities scholar on the Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project team.
An introduction to Junius Lucien Price, whose series of novels, All Souls, make him a pioneering homosexual author and resistor. Born in Kent, Ohio, Price attended Harvard University, worked as a journalist in Greater Boston, and began writing gay-themed novels in 1919.
An introduction to Gertrude "Ma" Rainey's resistance anthem. First published by OutHistory in 2014.
Man-i-fest follows the letters of Lou Sullivan to David, highlighting the topics and mentors that shaped the FTM community in San Francisco from 1976 to 2009. The central items in the exhibit appeared in Gateway: the newsletter of Golden Gate Girls/Guys, and FTM, supplemented by Lou Sullivan’s photographs of his transition. The exhibit was curated by Megan M. Rohrer in partnership with the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
This proud moment in civil rights activism is also a moment to reflect on how LGBT civil rights strategies have overlapped with, drawn strength from, and patterned themselves on a century and a half of anti-racist struggle in the United States.
In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Luisitania on May 7, 1915, OutHistory presented an original research report on one of its fascinating women passengers. First published on OutHistory on May 4, 2015.
The Stone Wall, the autobiography of Ruth Fuller Field, was published under the name "Mary Casal" in Chicago in 1930. The text presents the extraordinarily frank sexual and affectional life history of an American lesbian. OutHistory presents an introduction to the memoir, a long excerpt from it, a bibliography of sources about Field, and a chronology of her life by Francisco Araujo da Costa. Last Edit November 23, 2020.
DEMONSTRATION PROTOTYPE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
meant to serve as an inspiration for future OutHistory content creators
by Jonathan Ned Katz
An interview with the author of Matchmaking in the Archive: 19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts (2023). Published originally on OutHistory in January 2025.