LGBT History Month is upon us, and several organizations are joining forces to make sure Central Pennsylvania’s role in the LGBT community’s evolution is remembered.
The LGBT Center of Pennsylvania’s History Project is spearheading a number of programs and exhibits throughout the month of October.
The program started in 2012, launched with a “story circle” of LGBT people in the area sharing stories and memories. The success of that effort led organizers to start an oral-history project; volunteers have amassed nearly 100 interviews of LGBT and ally current and former Central Pennsylvanians.
The group partnered with Dickinson College in Carlisle, which now houses the History Project’s growing archives of photos, papers and ephemera documenting the area’s LGBT history.
“A lot of the history that is written about is about the bigger cities,” said History Project chair Barry Loveland. “We certainly have well-documented histories in Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, places like that, but not much has been done in the small cities and the rural areas. This is an attempt to find that history and record it before it’s lost. And also to get people to realize our community’s history happened everywhere; LGBT people weren’t just living in the big cities.”
As it has collected those stories, the History Project has presented them in LGBT History Month initiatives since its inception, and is expanding this year.
Lock Haven University is a new partner that is hosting an exhibit of a selection of the History Project’s materials through Oct. 19. Loveland will give a presentation from 12:30-2 p.m. Oct. 19 at the university about the History Project.
The Lock Haven partnership came about through the History Project’s oral-history initiative, Loveland said.
“Two of our interviewees are a mother in Williamsport, who founded a PFLAG chapter in Central Pennsylvania, and her son, who’s been active in LGBT organizations and AIDS activism in Central Pennsylvania,” Loveland explained. “He’s a professor at Lock Haven and was very interested in what we were doing.”
Dickinson will host the fourth-annual “History Comes Out” exhibit at Waidner-Spahr Library, 33 W. High St., through Oct. 31. The archival material in that display was curated by a former student intern at the History Project. A reception for the exhibition will be held from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Oct. 9 on campus.
Loveland noted the importance of college students being exposed to LGBT history — especially those who grew up in rural areas.
“So many of them don’t learn about LGBT history in general and certainly not specific to their own communities and regions,” he said. “They often don’t know their own history and make assumptions or take for granted a lot of the gains that have been made in terms of LGBT civil rights. They don’t realize how much effort went into achieving all those results.”
The LGBT Center is also staging its own program.
At 6 p.m. Oct. 11, the center will screen the History Project’s footage of its interview with Jude Sharp, a longtime jewelry designer and out lesbian who lives in the area. A retrospective on Sharp’s work, “ART/history,” is running at the center, 1306 N. Third St. in Harrisburg, through Oct. 18.
Also ongoing is The State Museum of Pennsylvania’s “We’re Here: Pioneering LGBT Rights in Pennsylvania.” The exhibit, which focuses on Central Pennsylvania’s LGBT-community organizing in the 1970s, opened in the spring and runs through Oct. 30. From noon-1 p.m. Oct. 21, the exhibit curator will take part in a Q&A session and clips of oral-history interviews will be screened; the event, at 300 North St. in Harrisburg, is free to state employees.
For more information, visit www.centralpalgbtcenter.org/lgbt-history-project.