As we continue to work and learn remotely, you can still visit The History Project online!

From our #QueerArchivesAtHome Project to our regular Out of the Archives events, The History Project is taking this time to create new ways for us to connect around LGBTQ history digitally.

And as of today, over 350 photographs from the Gay Community News collection are available online for research and use. These images, available on Documented, cover major events in Boston and national LGBTQ history, providing a snapshot into queer life and activism in the second half of the 20th century.

Started in 1973, Gay Community News was an important publication for informing Boston’s LGBTQ community about local happenings. While it originally began as a newsletter with a calendar of community events, it quickly expanded to cover a greater breadth of LGBTQ news in Boston and around the country. By the summer of 1978, Gay Community News had garnered national readership for its in-depth reporting of LGBTQ issues and willingness to cover controversial topics. Gay Community News ceased publication in 1999. The History Project’s collection houses a full run of the journal and it is available digitally via the Internet Archive.

In these photographs, originally taken for publication in Gay Community News, the national meets the local, and the historic meets the typical. One image from the collection features Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, San Francisco-based activists and founders of the lesbian-feminist group the Daughters of Bilitis, chatting with the Boston chapter of DOB. The next image captures a group of Boston DOB members mid-pitch, playing softball. The photographs are a visual tour of LGBTQ life in Boston in the latter decades of the 20th century, serving up vignettes of both community activism and community fun.

An array of famous figures from LGBTQ history make appearances throughout the collection, including Larry Kessler, the founder of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and feminist activist Barbara Smith. Other images in the collection feature still-enduring Boston LGBTQ organizations like the Boston Gay Men's Chorus and The Theater Offensive, as well as organizations that have since disbanded, such as BLAGMAR (Boston Lesbians and Gays Against the Right) and the Good Gay Poets Collective.

Now, through the work of volunteers who digitized and described each of the original photographs, these images and more are freely accessible. As one of our most-used collections, the Gay Community News photographs are a unique insight into Boston LGBTQ life, activism, and journalism that we’re excited to be able to share with the world.

This project is part of The History Project’s ongoing work to make more of our collections accessible digitally. As our worlds have moved increasingly online, we are working to find ways to meet this moment and create opportunities for us to come together around LGBTQ history, even while apart. We plan to continue to digitize and post additional photographs from the extensive GCN photograph collections in the archives. 

You can find the photograph collection here.

Erin Walsh is a Smith College student, Class of 2022, who completed a Praxis Internship with The History Project in Summer 2020. Erin is majoring in American Studies and doubling minoring in Korean and Archives. Her research focuses on lesbian film, and she’s also worked with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in their LGBT collections.