There are so many forgotten LGBTQ+ people from the past – or worse no one even knew they existed!
This brief between episodes bonus bene highlights Eve Adams.
The New York Times has created what they call Overlooked, a series about remarkable people whose obituaries where never reported in The Times for over a century!! Well thanks to journalist Emily Palmer you can read Eve Adams’ obit right here.
Ms. Adams published a book titled “Lesbian Love” in 1925 and she passed out copies of it to friends in NYC’s West Village, where she also ran Eve’s Hangout, a lesbian-friendly tearoom where she hosted salons and poetry readings.
The New Yorker also has a great article recently published titled, “Rediscovering Eve Adams, Radical Lesbian Activist”
Do you all remember “Horton Hears a Who” by, pardon my French, Dr. Suess? Horton, who has superior audio receptors, hears a voice coming from a dust speck. He rescues the dust speck and places it on a flower, only to find out there is an entire microscopic society that lives on the dust speck. Horton then finds out the hard way if you mention you hear voices on a dust speak, you might get ‘Frances Farmered’ right into a looney bin. Needless to say, drama ensues. Ultimately, one of the tiniest of Whos shouts so loud, they break the sound barrier so that everyone, in addition to Horton, can hear the Whos’ voices. And you do you know what they were saying? They are chanting over and over, “We are here! We are here! We are here!
Well, that’s been the lives of a lot of LGBTQ+ folks who are dead and gone. And some of them left a trail that has been neglected and disappeared by the overgrowth. And some of them tried to hide their trail – but whichever, we need to know they were here.
For us lesbians, you can find evidence our existence scattered all over the place. But may I point out to you a couple of places that are amazing archives of the history of lesbians?
The Lesbian Herstory Archives
Created in the 1970’s it now has a permament home in Brooklyn, New York.
The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives
The largest major archives on the west coast and is located in West Hollywood, California.
Do you know of any large or small lesbians archives or collections out there? Please help spread the word by posting the information in the comments below!