This month, The History Project is featuring two events celebrating the LGBTQ community of Cambridge. On Thursday, October 3rd, we honored Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons with the 2019 HistoryMaker Award. Read more about this event here.

Throughout October, Cambridge City Hall will be hosting an exhibit prepared by The History Project that features key events in the city's LGBTQ history including first same-sex marriage in the United States and some of the organizations that have advocated for LGBTQ rights over the past several decades. We hope the exhibit will travel to other places. Stay tuned.

To honor these two events, this Bulletin highlights the great explosion of women owned businesses in Cambridge in the 1970s. There were restaurants, a credit union, and bookstores in the area between Central and Inman Squares. Perhaps the most well known legacy of this era of talent is the book Our Bodies, Our Selves that was published by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective.

The photo above is an advertisement for Amaranth Restaurant. Nearby, the Bread and Roses Restaurant featured book readings by authors such as Alice Walker, Kate Millet, and Audre Lorde.