Pride Edition

I love nerding out in an archive.

With the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in our area, as well as several local libraries (some of which house archives and other records), there are plenty of opportunities. It’s easy to spend some time looking through microfilm of old newspapers, or perusing the old editions of the Lavender Prairie News, the very inspiration for the Lavender Newsletter.

We just enjoyed a fantastic Champaign-Urbana Pride Fest week (thanks Uniting Pride!) and as a part of that series of events, I went to a webinar on Oct. 16 hosted by the University of Illinois Library, in conjunction with the University of Illinois Pride Alumni Network. This webinar celebrated more than 50 years of vibrant LGBTQIA+ history in CU with a tour through some of the archival information available in our community. In this particular case, I didn’t even have to hunt through the archive! The presenters gave a fantastic overview of some of our history. 

The presenters were members of the leadership board of the Illinois Pride Alumni Network, Larry Cohen and Curtis McKay, as well as Siobhan B Somerville, associate professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies, and Ellen D. Swain, a professor and archivist for student life and culture at the University Library. 

I learned about a whole host of super cool facts about CU queer history I can’t wait to share with you. 

Did you know….

There is a famous lesbian pulp author who went to UIUC

Okay maybe everyone knows this, but I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t! And I run a queer bookstore! 

Ann Weldy, who wrote under the pen name Ann Bannon, wrote a novel inspired by her experiences at UIUC in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, called Odd Girl Out. 

In the Cleis Press edition introduction to Odd Girl Out, Ann wrote, “I started to tell the story of a college sorority friend, heavily disguised of course, whose sexuality I suspected and who had aroused feelings in me that I both feared and enjoyed. I wanted to tell her story, and by telling hers to explore my own. I had absolutely no idea that I was on the cutting edge of anything, that I was about to catch a wave, or that others beside myself were engaged in similar creative tasks. I had read just two lesbian novels in my life: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, and Vin Packer’s Spring Fire.” 

This first book became the second best selling original paperback of 1957, and sparked a whole series, known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. Millions of copies of these paperbacks have sold.

There is a rich history of local LGBTQ+ activism and community

Students created UIUC’s first queer student organization in 1971, the Gay Liberation Front. This politically-oriented group pushed for the passing of the Human Rights Ordinance, which passed in Urbana in 1975. Urbana was even the first city in Illinois to do so! 

Champaign passed a similar ordinance in 1977.

The Gay Illini became an official Registered Student Organization at the University in 1975, and hosted many events for the community. They also notably operated the gay switchboard, where people could call in for questions or support.

During his presentation, Cohen talked about an important local legal case where two university students, Terry Cosgrove and Patrick Forbes filed a complaint under that Human Rights Ordinance after being barred from dancing together at a local disco. 

Here’s how the case was described in a February 9,1983 edition of Our Paper, Your Paper, out of San Francisco, CA (wow our news reached that far away!). 

Terry Cosgrove and Patrick Forbes are two Gay men currently celebrating victory in a case resulting from their being thrown out of an Illinois disco for same- sex dancing. Acting on the strength of the college town’s Human Rights Ordinance which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual preference, the two obtained the help of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and won the precedent-setting out-of-court settlement in which the disco’s owner agreed to pay the two men $1,000 each and affirm its compliance with the law. 

Cosgrove’s comment: “It takes so much energy to be out in public — to handle the stares, the insults, the threats of violence. You have to be selective. You can’t do it 24 hours a day — at least I know I can’t. But it’s important to push against the barriers. All the human rights ordinances in the world aren’t going to mean anything until Lesbians and Gay men hold hands in public and dance together.’’ 

So much has happened over the years, it’s impossible to put all of it on paper here, and I know I’m leaving quite a bit out. But the timeline on this resource page is a really great place to start.

The University has a really cool Student Life and Culture Archive you can visit for more history stuff

Do you want to listen to some oral histories, or peek through the archives of some of our queer student organizations? 

You can visit the Student Life and Culture Archives at the University Library! 

They have “alumni and student papers (including diaries, scrapbooks, correspondence, and photographs), student organization records, administrative office records, oral histories, and student publications.” 

Somerville’s presentation talked about some of the oral history projects students have done to help us keep a tenuous hold on our queer history. 

For example, we got to listen to snippets of interviews with Sreelakshmi Suresh, founder of Forging Unity, Solidarity and Equity for QTPOC (FUSE), and with Stephanie Skora, founder of Campus Union for Trans Equality and Support (CUTES).

You don’t have to be affiliated with the university or a researcher to go and have a look. If you’re planning on visiting, they suggest you let them know ahead of time so they can prepare. 

You can send an email to Ellen Swain or Katie Nichols, or call (217) 333-7841.

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