LibGuides: Digital Primary and Secondary Sources: LGBTQ History

In the South

Celebrating Pride video project
A CofC project documenting Charleston Pride and the 90s-era Charleston gay nightclub, Treehouse. The site includes videos, photos, and interviews.
Dawn - This American Life
Writer Jack Hitt goes on a search for a mysterious neighbor from his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and stumbles onto an epic story of the Old South, the New South, gender confusion, Chihuahuas, and changing values in American journalism.
LGBTQ Life in the Lowcountry Oral Histories
These are oral histories with LGBTQ Charleston-area residents about their lives and experiences. These oral histories are hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library.
LGBTQ Life in the Lowcountry SoundCloud
Official SoundCloud of the Documenting LGBTQ Life in the Lowcountry Project. This account contains non-oral history recordings of LGBTQ-related events in Charleston.
Out TV Atlanta Video
Out TV Atlanta, a half-hour weekly news and entertainment show focused on LGBTQ life, ran from 1999-2000. This digital collection contains about 240 digitized tapes of raw footage created in the process of making the show.
Q-notes Newspaper
This link takes you to digitized copies of the Charlotte LGBTQ newspaper Q-notes from 1983-2016. The newspaper is still printing as qnotes, and they describe themselves as the largest and most trusted source of news, politics, opinion, entertainment, art, lifestyle, community events and more for LGBT North Carolinians and South Carolinians.
Rainbow Radio
Six recordings from Rainbow Radio, an LGBTQ radio program that aired in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Real Rainbow Row
A virtual walking tour of LGBTQ sites in Charleston. This project attests to a strong and vibrant queer past in Charleston and seeks to restore these individuals to their rightful place in our story.
Under False Colors: The Politics of Gender Expression in Post-Civil War Charleston
This podcast (with transcription and pictures) describes the context of an 1868 Charleston ordinance that made it illegal for a person to appear in public dressed in a manner “not becoming his or her sex.”

National Resources

Digital Transgender Archive
The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
The Lesbian Herstory Archives
The Lesbian Herstory Archives exists to gather and preserve records of Lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their lives. Check out their digital collections.
LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History
This study is a publication of the National Park Foundation and the National Park Service and was funded by the Gill Foundation. Experts in LGBTQ Studies wrote and peer-edited each chapter. It is a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind project to explore how the legacy of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals can be recognized, preserved and interpreted for future generations.
LGBTQ Publications - Houston LGBT History
A great collection of scanned LGBTQ publications, mostly from Houston, Texas, but includes several from around the country. Publications, including magazines, newspapers, and directories, date from 1965-2016.
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is the oldest active LGBTQ organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBTQ materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses over two million archival items including periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records and personal papers. A small subset of this material has been digitized and is available online.
Queer Digital History Project
The Queer Digital History Project is an ongoing effort to document pre-2010 LGBTQ digital spaces online. Current projects include a catalog of early LGBTQ online communities, an archive of transgender-related Usenet newsgroups, and interactive maps of TGNet, one of the first international transgender-specific BBS networks.
Queer Music Heritage
From January 2000 until March 2015 "Queer Music Heritage" was both a radio show and a website, and the goal of both was to preserve and share the music of queer culture. It has become the resource on the net for the history of LGBT music. Each month's page gives the playlist and additional pages of info, and you can stream or download every show; there's over 580 hours of programming available. This is a deep site, covering over 2000 pages.

Select e-Books

Recommended Databases

Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
Includes LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 Part II, and Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century.
LGBTQ+ Source This link opens in a new window
The definitive database for LGBTQ+ studies. It provides scholarly and popular LGBTQ+ publications in full text, plus historically important primary sources, including monographs, magazines and newspapers. It also includes a specialized LGBTQ+ thesaurus containing thousands of terms.
Women's Studies International This link opens in a new window
Covers the core disciplines in Womens Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research. Coverage spans from 1972 and earlier to present.
GenderWatch This link opens in a new window
Full text database of important archival material dating back to 1970. Includes the evolution of the women's movement, men's studies, the transgendered community, and the changes in gender roles over the years.

Digital Primary and Secondary Sources: LGBTQ History

LGBTQ+

In the South

National Resources

Select e-Books

Recommended Databases