"Help fund OUTSpoken: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers! Pitch in if you can and help preserve the voices of those whose shoulders we stand on. . . . Can't overstate how valuable these testimonies are."

 

Dustin Lance Black

Activist

Academy Award winning screenwriter, Milk, 2008

 

 

"OUTSpoken provides a treasure trove of beautifully-produced interviews. This is our glorious history, told by those who were there to make it. What a fine project!"

     

Lillian Faderman

A scholar whose books on lesbian relationships and romantic friendship in history have earned critical praise and awards.

 

 

"There has been enormous care and attention put into this project, as well as heart and soul."

 

Bill Cohen

Publisher

Harrington Park Press

 

Mission Statement

 

Telling their stories . . . saving our history

 

The goal of OUTSpoken: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers is to preserve essential history through collecting, archiving, and making widely available first-hand oral histories of LGBTQ pioneers. The activist pioneers who gave birth to the modern LGBTQ movement in the years immediately following New York’s 1969 Stonewall Rebellion are vanishing yearly, so it is with a sense of urgency that this project proceeds. Once many hundreds strong, the courageous women and men of the Stonewall generation seized the moment to create an altogether new type of radical LGBTQ political activism that was sharply distinct from the homophile movement that preceded it. It is our belief that stories of those active during this germinal period will be of particular interest to historians, students and LGBTQ people for years to come.

 

It's the unwavering intent of the founders of OUTSpoken to seek oral histories—as the title of the project states—from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. The objective of OUTSpoken is to be multiracial, across classes, and with global diversity. OUTLoud will attempt to collect a representative sampling of the scope-and-breadth of formative LGBTQ history, but we can't represent all the multivarious points-of-view that distinguish our community. Therefore, the interviews and portraits on this website do not constitute a completed project. This is a work-in-progress. OUTSpoken encourages the discovery and self-identification of LGBTQ pioneers, and this website provides a "Contact" page for this purpose.

 

OUTSpoken  doesn't represent any particular organization.

 

OUTSpoken doesn't endorse any of the narratives, either opinions or and memories, expressed in any of the recorded interviews.

 

OUTSpoken: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers is a registered nonprofit corporation.

 

No person associated with this project receives a salary or any financial remuneration of any kind. The products for sale on this website, e.g., DVDs of interviewees or still-portraits, are sold at cost plus S+H. All donations toward this project will be used, only, to further the mission of this project, as stated above.