In a New Century: Essays on Queer History, Politics, and Community Life

9. Finding History, Creating Community

121 k 9 Find­ ing His­ tory, Creat­ ing Com­ mu­ nity When the writ­ ing of gay and les­ bian his­ tory ­ started in the 1970s, it oc­ curred al­ most en­ tirely out­ side the boun­ dar­ ies of the uni­ ver­ sity. In­ de­ pen­ dent schol­ ars, often ­ rooted in a world of ac­ ti­ vism, began doing re­ search and, in many ­ places in the 1970s and 1980s, they ­ created ­ community-based his­ tory pro­ jects to sup­ port this work and make it ac­ cess­ ible. In Chi­ cago, the Ger­ ber/Hart Li­ brary and ­ Archives was one such or­ gan­ iza­ tion. As a board mem­ ber of Ger­ ber/Hart, I spoke at its an­ nual din­ ner in 2004 and af­ firmed the im­ por­ tance of his­ tory as a re­ source for com­ mu­ nities strug­ gling to de­ fine them­ selves and to stake out a place for them­ selves in the ­ larger cul­ ture. k I ­ taught my first col­ lege his­ tory ­ course more than ­ thirty years ago. Oc­ ca­ sion­ ally I have had a real lemon of a class where noth­ ing ­ seemed to go right and I would wake up in the morn­ ing with dread in my stom­ ach. Oc­ ca­ sion­ ally I have ­ thought, “If I ever have to give an­ other lec­ ture on the or­ i­ gins of the Cold War I will kill my­ self !” But, most of the time, I have loved teach­ ing his­ tory. It has been a great priv­ i­ lege, and it has ­ proven end­ lessly new and ex­ cit­ ing. It may be true that we can­ not ­ change the past, but I have ­ plenty of ev­ i­ dence, from what has hap­ pened in my class­ room, that the past can­ change us. I have a ­ wealth of good mem­ o­ ries: of ­ classes that spar­ kled, of Part II: Doing History 122 dis­ cus­ sions that were ­ filled with bril­ liant stu­ dent com­ ments, of mo­ ments when I could see the light bulbs flash­ ing in­ side the heads of my stu­ dents. Of all these mo­ ments, here is one of my fa­ vor­ ites. The set­ ting is the Uni­ ver­ sity of North Car­ o­ lina in Greens­ boro in the mid-1980s, where I was teach­ ing a his­ tory of sex­ u­ al­ ity ­ course. At that time and place, it was not your typ­ i­ cal his­ tory class. Also, I was of­ fer­ ing the ­ course in the eve­ ning, be­ cause eve­ ning ­ classes at­ tracted a much ­ broader and there­ fore more inter­ est­ ing range of stu­ dents. One of them, Linda, was a ­ middle-aged woman with two sons who were old ­ enough that she was now re­ turn­ ing to ­ school to get cer­ tified as a high ­ school ­ teacher. In this par­ tic­ u­ lar meet­ ing, I had just fin­ ished lec­ tur­ ing on the early ca­ reer of Mar­ ga­ ret ­ Sanger, an ­ American rad­ i­ cal who made the fight for birth con­ trol her ­ life’s mis­ sion. ­ Sanger’s work in this pe­ riod is a won­ der­ fully dra­ matic story of out­ ra­ geous dar­ ing and de­ ter­ mi­ na­ tion. She was a woman who broke free of the con­ straints on ­ women’s lives and went on to ­ change the world. I think I may even have ­ started the lec­ ture by say­ ing that, in a list of the most in­ fluen­ tial ­ Americans of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury, ­ Sanger could be ­ ranked in the top five! The lec­ ture was now over. A dis­ cus­ sion was going on. Every­ thing­ seemed fine. And then, all of a sud­ den, I ­ caught a ­ glimpse of Linda out of the cor­ ner of my eye. Some­ thing was hap­ pen­ ing in her, be­ cause she was vis­ ibly shak­ ing in her seat. I ­ looked at her and said, “Linda?” She al­ most­ raised her­ self out of her chair—she was a big woman—and in a boom­ ing voice that I can­ not pre­ tend to im­ i­ tate she ­ screamed: “HOW could I have­ reached the age of FORTY and NO ONE has EVER told me about Mar­ ga­ ret­ SANGER be­ fore? WHY has...