Surprised by Activism: The Effects of One Oral History on Its Queer Steel-Working Narrators

Historians turn to the archive to understand what happened and why it matters. They thus depend on archivists and donors for their material. Oral historians instead can identify gaps in the archive and take steps to fill them. Often this process leads to activism, since the stories of silenced, invisible populations both raise problems of social justice and demand remedies. My oral history of LGBT steelworkers led to one such change in the lives of blue-collar queers.