Browse Items · OutHistory: It's About Time

Jen Manion: “Prison Sex and Solitary Confinement”

On the publication of Jen Manion’s book Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, October 7, 2015), OutHistory is featuring an original essay by Manion. It discusses how sex between men in early…
Almeda Sperry to Emma Goldman: 1912

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…
Marc Stein: Dewey's Sit-in, Philadelphia, April 25, 1965

In 1965 Drum magazine called it “the first sit-in of its kind in the history of the United States.” To honor the fiftieth anniversary of this major act of LGBT resistance, historian Marc Stein presents contemporary reports of the sit-in at Dewey’s…
Raised Voices among Pretty Manners: Profiles of Ten LGBT Activists for Social Justice

Profiles of LGBT social justice activists with artifacts from the collection of Richard Wilson.
Bleeding Blue, White, and Rainbow in State College, PA

LGBTQ life at Penn State.
Colonial America: The Age of Sodomitical Sin

The years from 1607 to 1783 constitute the founding era of what became the United States. This exhibit presents or references all the original documents that Jonathan Ned Katz collected in his books Gay American History (1976) and Gay/Lesbian Almanac…
Out and Elected in the USA: 1974-2004

Out and Elected in the USA - The First 30 Years: 1974-2004 is a survey, through black and white portraits and texts, of many of the pioneering openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals elected to public office in the U.S. in those…
Queer Youth: on Campus and in the Media, 1940-2000

A look at activism on college and high school campuses, as well as representations of queer youth in the media. This feature was researched by Bryn Mawr and Haverford students for a class on the History of Sexuality in America, taught by Sharon…
Philadelphia LGBT History Project, 1945-1972

Interviews that focus on the history of relationships between lesbians and gay men in Philadelphia from the 1940s to the 1970s.