A collection of love letters to Emma Goldman, the anarchist leader, vividly conveys the emotions and varied life experience of Almeda Sperry, their complex author. The letters detail and evoke Sperry's tender-brutal relationship with her husband Fred; her bitter-funny cash relationship with Carnegie Steel Company boss "Newt"; her loving relationship with Florence, a graphically described woman friend; her own poor working-class childhood, and her passionate, would-be affair of the heart with Emma Goldman. Adapted from Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (1976) by Jonathan Ned Katz. Republished on OutHistory April 29, 2015.

Barbara Gittings interviewed by Jonathan Ned Katz in 1974 about her development as a Lesbian, and about the founding and early history of the New York Daughters of Bilitis.

The years from 1607 to 1783 constitute the founding era of what became the United States. In the early years of this era, in these American colonies, the penalty for sodomy was death, and a number of executions are documented. Sodomy was usually conceived of then as anal intercourse between men. But why was sodomy thought of as treason against the state and punished so harshly? And what do we know of sexual and intimate relationships between women in these years, and the laws and responses to such intimacies? This feature presents or references the original documents that Jonathan Ned Katz collected in his books Gay American History (1976) and Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983), along with evidence that others subsequently discovered. Published originally on OutHistory in 2012.