As the sixth female justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, takes her place on the Supreme Court, let's take a look at the first woman appointed -- Sandra Day O'Connor. For 191 years the U.S. Supreme Court was populated only by men. When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female justice in 1981, the announcement dominated the news. A pioneer who both reflected and shaped an era, in her 25 years as justice she was the swing vote in cases about some of the 20th century’s most controversial issues—including race, gender and reproductive rights. Sandra Day O'Connor: The First is a documentary about the challenges faced in nominating and seating her in an all-male court, as well as the legacy of her work there with Chief Rehnquist, in what would become known as "the queen's court."
While many media outlets sensationalize and politicize issues surrounding transgender youth, this program looks at the issue from a truly medical perspective. Along with medical experts who specialize in working with families, Jennifer and Josselynn Surridge describe what it is like to come to terms with being a transgender person, and with being a mother of a transgender child. This story will help every viewer understand the issue in a way that is rarely explored elsewhere. More segments available at Second Opinion - Transgender Health.
Juneteenth celebrates when slaves in Texas learned that they were, in actuality, free after the lifelong work of abolitionists, war heroes, presidents, and civil rights leaders. General Gordon Granger arrived in Texas to enforce Lincoln's proclamation more than two years after it was announced; that day, June 19, was remembered in slave narratives as a day when "We all walked down the road singing and shouting to beat the band," recalled one Texas freedwoman, Molly Harrell, in The Slave Narratives of Texas, a book based on a thirties-era federal oral-history project. Said another, Lou Smith: "I ran off and hid in the plum orchard and said over `n' over, `I'se free, I'se free; I ain't never going back to Miss Jo.'"
It arose from Texas. At various times in the twentieth century, notably during both world wars, organized observances of Juneteenth were intermittent but always attracted throngs. In Dallas a 1936 gala at the state fairgrounds drew 200,000 visitors. Because segregation was a long-established policy, Juneteenth was often the only day blacks could enter many attractions; in Fort Worth, for example, they could visit the botanical gardens only on June 19. White merchants, however, cheerfully capitalized on the commercial opportunities. During the thirties, Foley's offered a special sale on "silk frocks" for the big day, Mrs. Baird's claimed its bread "goes mighty fine with barbecue," and railroads offered special rates for day trips.
Over time, the movement spread past the borders of Texas. By the 1970s, politicians were making it a local and state-wide holiday in places like Atlanta and Charleston, SC. But there was more to be done. The "grandmother of the movement," Opal Lee, watched white rioters burn her home to the ground in 1939 while growing up in Marshall, Texas. When she eventually made her home in Fort Worth, she watched a new generation take up the cause of the Juneteenth celebration as a way to celebrate the freedom so dearly won. In 2016, she laced up her shoes and wrote a letter to then-President Obama: "You could save me a lot of shoe leather and a lot of wear and tear on an old body by saying how soon you can see me." Then she began a 1,400 mile trek from her home to Washington DC. Even though health concerns stopped her from completing the full journey, she continued to walk 2.5 miles -- symbolic of the 2.5 years when slaves in Texas were not told about the proclamation -- in every major city and at all major festivals. When President Biden signed the national holiday into law, the grandmother of the movement was there -- shoes laced up and all.
Today, Juneteenth is celebrated with national and regional events, including
a national music festival in Denver CO, a dynamic community event which annually attracts 50,000 people
Affrilachian poetry at the Lyric Theater and Cultural Arts Center in Lexington, guest speakers Kentucky Poets Laureate Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X. Walker
a cornbread competition in conjunction with the African American school and museum the Calfee Community Center and the Wilderness Road Museum, Pulaski, VA
On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress replaced the British symbols of George Washington's Grand Union flag with a new design featuring 13 white stars in a circle on a field of blue and 13 red and white stripes—one for each state. Although it is not certain, this flag may have been made by the Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross who was an official flagmaker for the Pennsylvania Navy. The number of stars increased as the new states entered the Union, but the number of stripes stopped at 15 and was later returned to 13.
President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that established June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, but it didn't become official until 1949. This occurred as a result of a campaign by Bernard J. Cigrand and the American Flag Day Association. It is observed across the country by displaying the American flag on homes and public buildings. Other popular ways of observing this day include flag-raising ceremonies, the singing of the national anthem, and the study of flag etiquette and the flag's origin and meaning.
Some of the library's holdings illustrate ways in which we communicate and understand each other across genders, sexualities, and biology. Happy Pride Month.
28 June 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising - the most significant event in the gay liberation movement and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of firsthand accounts, diaries, periodic literature and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly, this anthology shines a light on forgotten figures who were pivotal in the movement, such as Lee Brewster, head of the Queens Liberation Front and Ernestine Eckstine, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s.
This collection, the first of its kind, gathers original and previously published fiction and poetry from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors from Appalachia. Like much Appalachian literature, these works are pervaded with an attachment to family and the mountain landscape, yet balancing queer and Appalachian identities is an undertaking fraught with conflict. This collection confronts the problematic and complex intersections of place, family, sexuality, gender, and religion with which LGBTQ Appalachians often grapple. With works by established writers such as Dorothy Allison, Silas House, Ann Pancake, Fenton Johnson, and Nickole Brown and emerging writers such as Savannah Sipple, Rahul Mehta, Mesha Maren, and Jonathan Corcoran, this collection celebrates a literary canon made up of writers who give voice to what it means to be Appalachian and LGBTQ.
In the Bible Belt, it's common to see bumper stickers that claim One Man + One Woman = Marriage, church billboards that command one to "Get right with Jesus," letters to the editor comparing gay marriage to marrying one's dog, and nightly news about homophobic attacks from the Family Foundation. Barton argues that conventions of small town life, rules which govern Southern manners, and the power wielded by Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in the Bible Belt. She explores how conservative Christian ideology reproduces homophobic attitudes and shares how Bible Belt gays negotiate these attitudes in their daily lives. Drawing on the remarkable stories of Bible Belt gays, Barton brings to the fore their thoughts, experiences and hard-won insights to explore the front lines of our national culture war over marriage, family, hate crimes, and equal rights. Pray the Gay Away illuminates their lives as both foot soldiers and casualties in the battle for gay rights.
East Kentuckian Lige Clarke had a prominent role in early gay and lesbian journalism. Born in Knott County, he was a religious youth beloved by his family. Always known by his family and friends as creative and a “free spirit” who as a child was theatrical, collected dolls, and created “fashions” that included skirts, Clarke was popular growing up in Hindman. The youngest of three and easily recognizable with long, nearly-white blond hair, he spent his early years dividing his time between a little white house on Cave Branch and a residence above his grandfather’s store at “the forks of Troublesome Creek,” as his older sister has recalled. After he joined the army, he returned to visit frequently. In 1964, while holding high security clearances as part of his job at the Pentagon in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clarke saw men get caught kissing in a closet only to be summarily dismissed. Clarke nevertheless remained undetected and unscathed by the military’s homosexual witch hunts. And he knew why—“he was simply another Kentuckian. Homosexuals in the mountains of Kentucky, [the Pentagon] must have reasoned, are as rare as truffles.” A small band of Washington D.C. Mattachine Society activists staged the first openly gay picket outside the Pentagon, including Clarke's own hand-lettered signs "Gay is Good." During the late 1960s, a heterosexual psychotherapist, George Weinberg, coined the term “homophobia” to refer to individual anti-gay behaviors and attitudes. Herek, in an article titled “The Psychology of Sexual Prejudice,” maintained that Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke first used the term in print in their column on gay issues in the May 23, 1969, issue of Screw Magazine. Their column "The Homosexual Citizen" was the first regular LGBT-interest column printed in a non-LGBT publication. One month later in New York City, a police raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn ignited an extended protest against the harassment of gay people and is celebrated around the world as the touchstone of the modern gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement. Lige Clarke and his companion Jack Nichols were at the forefront, not only coining homophobia as an idea but also later publishing the first newspaper, Gay, targeted to gay men. In a remarkable story, Clarke outed the idea of Fire Island. The small islet was a jealously guarded secret of homosexual New Yorkers when, in 1969, Clarke published an account of his sexy weekend along its beachfront. Lige Clarke, the island’s seasonal habitués complained, “blew their cover." Years later Jack Nichols would publish a book about the island, proudly putting Clarke on the cover. Clarke worked with Nichols on books such as I Have More Fun with You Than Anybody and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male-Male Relationships, before Clarke's untimely death in 1975, murdered mysteriously in Mexico.
The Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969. The next year defiant protestors marched the streets of New York City in honor of those killed or wouded, and in that span, the American Pride movement was born. Pride is celebrated each June in honor of the original protest movements. In 1978 what is perhaps the most-recognized symbol of Gay Pride made its debut at the San Francisco event: the rainbow flag. The flag, with its eight colours (sexuality symbolized by hot pink, life by red, healing by orange, the Sun by yellow, nature by green, art by blue, harmony by indigo, and spirit by violet), was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker and has been adopted worldwide. The following year a six-colour flag, which is in common use today, appeared (with red, orange, yellow, green, blue [harmony replaced art as symbolized by blue in the flag], and purple/violet), partially because of the unavailability of some of the fabric colours. Although the flag's colors have been used in tacky, commercial ways--to decorate key chains and license plates, for example--its power has endured. Its popularity arises from the need for an oppressed people to have a unifying symbol of their own. In the words of Ann Northrop, a long-time activist: "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."
"As Long As You Can” offers a bright, colorful new picture of what queer in Appalachia really means. This documentary offers expansive interviews covering the lives of 6 LGBTQ+ folks -- all Appalachian, all “successful” in their own ways. When faced with the choice of leaving or staying, “As Long As You Can” hopes to answer young LGBTQ+ Appalachians who are faced with this decision every day. Produced by Nikole Lee and Ellie Mullins, 2021, Appalachian Media Institute
Robyn Williams
It arose from Texas. At various times in the twentieth century, notably during both world wars, 
But there was more to be done. The "grandmother of the movement," Opal Lee, watched white rioters burn her home to the ground in 1939 while growing up in Marshall, Texas. When she eventually made her home in Fort Worth, she watched a new generation take up the cause of the Juneteenth celebration as a way to celebrate the freedom so dearly won. In 2016, she laced up her shoes and wrote a letter to then-President Obama: "
Today, Juneteenth is celebrated with national and regional events, including
East Kentuckian Lige Clarke had a prominent role in early gay and lesbian journalism.