LGBTQ+ History Resources at the Center for Brooklyn History

October is LGBTQ+ History Month. In the weeks leading up to this month celebrating the history and achievements of LGBTQ+ communities, a question that is asked by researchers is: What resources do the Center for Brooklyn History have on queer people? The answer? A lot! This Brooklynology blog post will highlight several CBH LGBTQ+ history resources that can be referenced in October and all year-round.

LGBTQ+ represenation can be found in the Brooklyn Public Library photograph collections, specifically the Ann Rosen photograph collection. Rosen, who has a studio in Park Slope, took group and family portraits at the annual Brooklyn Pride street fair. The photographs in the collection, taken between 2003 and 2007, include a range of gay families and friend groups, couples and individuals. Other photographic represenation includes protest signs in support of trans lives, specifically Black trans lives, that can be seen in the Bob Gore photograph collection. Gore took these photos at a June 2020 Black Lives Matter march where many marchers held protest signs that served to remind that Black Trans Lives Matter, too.

Another resource for LGBTQ+ history at the Center for Brooklyn History is the AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History project collection. It "includes oral histories collected for the AIDS/Brooklyn exhibition, undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society in the early 1990s. The project attempted to document the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Brooklyn communities." While this collection includes 17 oral histories, it also contains several physical, archival objects in the Art & Artifacts collection, from T-shirts and membership cards to pendants and buttons. Many of the physical objects in the collection are buttons, such as ones for ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and buttons in Spanish and English advocating for condom use.

Other archival collections at the Center for Brooklyn History that feature materials on LGBTQ+ history are the Brooklyn newsletter collection, 1869-2004 (bulk, 1960-2000) (Gay Friends & Neighbors, Ltd. Brooklyn.), the Brooklyn Historical Society vertical files, 1780-2018, (Drawer: 1 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Drawer: 4 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)), the Arnie Goldwag Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) collection, 1943-2007 (Box: 16 Item : 9 Boggan, E. Carrington, Marilyn G. Haft, et al., The Rights of Gay People; Box: 18 Item : 12 Hunter, John Francis, The Gay Insider/USA), the Packer Collegiate Institute records, circa 1780 to 2016 (Box: 391 Folder : 57 Human Rights day / Esty / Caubochaino (?) gay rights / Sally Krause Lower School bake sale), and the Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection, circa 1850-2010 (Box: 32 Item: 10 Gay Life).

Brooklyn Newsstand, a "collection of digitized Brooklyn newspapers made possible through a partnership between Brooklyn Public Library and Newspapers.com," is another great place to go for LGBTQ+ history content. Brooklyn Newsstand contains over 2 million digitized pages of historic Brooklyn newspaper content that can be searched by keyword, with results that can be narrowed by date and specific newspaper. For instance, in Brooklyn Newsstand | Full Content, doing a keyword search for "lesbian" brings back over 130 matches, with the earliest mention of the L word being in the Thursday, November 3, 1870, edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in connection to the poet Sappho. A letter to the editor in the Thursday, October 18, 1962, edition of the Brooklyn Heights Press acknowleging that "Homosexuals Are 'Scapegoats,'" asked "What's all this noise about the homosexuals on the Promenade?"

LGBTQ+ history can also be found within the Film, Audio and Video Recordings made available online through the Center for Brooklyn History in partnership with the Internet Archive. There are over 300 digitized film, audio, and video recordings in this online collection that can be searched by keyword and further narrowed by media type (e.g. movies, audio), year, topics and subjects (e.g. women's history, AIDS), collection, creator, and language. Among the recordings is the community video "Not Forgotten: AIDS at the Brooklyn Historical Society Museum," an exhibition video featuring then "BHS executive director, David M. Kahn, and project director, Robert Rosenberg, discussing the rationale for the 1993 exhibit." There is also community audio from a June 1988 broadcast by the Haitian Coalition on AIDS, recorded on audio tape with Side 1 and Side 2 that can be listened to online. The broadcast is part of the Eastern Parkway Coalition records, part of the archival collections at the Center for Brooklyn History.

These are just some of the Center for Brooklyn History resources that bring LGBTQ+ history to the fore. Additional resources, including books and more oral histories centering queer voices, can be found in the online CBH research guide LGBTQ+ History. These abundant, in-depth, excellent resources are freely accessible for centering and celebrating LGBTQ+ lives in October, June (Pride Month), and beyond.