Pride Month

WTTW's 2023 Pride Month Programming

dhautzinger — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000

WTTW's 2023 Pride Month Programming

The rock legend Little Richard is the subject of a new 'American Masters' profile. Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd

dhautzinger Thu, 06/01/2023 - 07:00

June is LGBTQ Pride Month, and features the Chicago Pride Parade at the end of the month. Leading up to it, you can enjoy a diverse slate of WTTW programming of stories of identity, acceptance, struggle, and art, throughout the whole month.

American Masters – Little Richard: The King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll

Friday, June 2 at 8:00 pm on WTTW

Little Richard is a legend from the golden era of rock, a cultural lightning rod who influenced some of rock music's most distinguished icons. This portrait of the “King and Queen of Rock and Roll” explores his far-reaching influence as well as his advocacy for the rights of Black artists in the music industry.

American Masters – Keith Haring: Street Art Boy

Saturday, June 10 at 10:00 am on WTTW Prime

Explore the definitive story of international art sensation Keith Haring, who blazed a trail through the art scene of '80s New York and revolutionized the worlds of pop culture and fine art.

Watch an archival WTTW documentary about Haring and a mural he made in Chicago with hundreds of students.

POV: The Gospel of Eureka

Saturday, June 10 at 2:00 pm on WTTW Prime

Evangelical Christians and drag queens step into the spotlight to dismantle stereotypes in Arkansas.

POV: Shorts: Becoming Myself

Saturday, June 10 at 3:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Two shorts focusing on young adults center on identity and connection

American Masters: Joe Papp in Five Acts

Saturday, June 10 at 4:00 pm on WTTW Prime

Joe Papp, founder of The Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park and producer of groundbreaking plays like Hair, A Chorus Line and for colored girls, created a "theater of inclusion" based on the belief that great art is for everyone.

Independent Lens: No Straight Lines

Saturday, June 10 at 5:30 pm on WTTW Prime

From DIY underground comix scene to mainstream acceptance, meet five queer comics artists, including several with ties to Chicago, whose uncensored commentary on LGBTQ+ life left no topic untouched and explored art as a tool for social change.

Go Figure: The Randy Gardner Story

Sunday, June 11 at 10:00 am on WTTW Prime

Together with his Olympic partner Tai Babilonia, two-time Olympian Randy Gardner formed the iconic figure skating pairs team known as 'Tai and Randy.' The film shares his quest to finally come to terms with his true identity so that he can be a light to others.

True Colors: LGBTQ+ Our Stories, Our Songs

Friday, June 16 at 8:00 pm on WTTW

Celebrate Pride Month with music from Indigo Girls, Billy Gilman, Morgxn, Peppermint, Jujubee, Alexis Michelle, Trey Pearson, Breanna Sinclaire, Andre de Shields, and more, along with real-life stories of hope hosted by Jeopardy's Amy Schneider.

Unidad: Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos

Sunday, June 18 at 11:00 pm on WTTW

Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), the greater Los Angeles area's first major Queer Latin@ organization, was founded in 1981, only a dozen years after the Stonewall rebellion and only a couple of years before the HIV/AIDS pandemic began to ravage LGBTQ communities.

Prideland

Tuesday, June 20 at 8:00 pm on WTTW and Wednesday, June 21 at 8:00 am on WTTW Prime

Actor Dyllon Burnside journeys across the South to meet diverse members of the LGBTQ community.

Independent Lens: Mama Bears

Friday, June 23 at 8:00 pm on WTTW and Monday, June 26 at 12:00 pm on WTTW Prime

Although they grew up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, these moms are now willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to keep their kids safe-even if it challenges their belief systems and rips apart their worlds.

Penny: Champion of the Marginalized

Friday, June 23 at 9:30 pm on WTTW

Penny Cooper is a celebrated criminal defense attorney, art collector, supporter of female artists, and protector of the underdog who has found herself at the center of dramatic social progress for women.

American Masters: Ballerina Boys

Sunday, June 25 at 8:00 am on WTTW Prime

Discover Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks), an all-male company that for 45 years has offered audiences their passion for ballet classics mixed with exuberant comedy. With every step they poke fun at their strictly gendered art form.

It's a Match

Sunday, June 25 at 3:00 pm on WTTW and 7:00 am on WTTW Prime

After meeting on a dating website, Alana learns that Lori is a candidate to give her a kidney.

For the Love of Friends

Sunday, June 25 at 4:00 pm on WTTW

As a lead-up to a play based on the same story, this documentary shows the life and activism of Brent Nicholson Earle, who in 1986 embarked on a 10,000-mile run around the perimeter of the United States to draw attention to the plight of AIDS patients.

American Experience: Casa Susanna

Tuesday, June 27 at 8:00 pm on WTTW

In the 1950s and 60s, when failure to wear gender-appropriate clothing was illegal across most of the country, a community of cross-dressing men found refuge at a modest house in the Catskills region of New York. Named after its matriarch, Casa Susanna provided community and validation for its guests.

Pride Month

LGBTQ

Highlights

A Summertime Lychee Martini from the James Beard-Nominated Chicago Bar Nobody's Darling

mfrancis — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 12:00:00 +0000

A Summertime Lychee Martini from the James Beard-Nominated Chicago Bar Nobody's Darling

Nobody's Darling co-owners Angela Barnes and Renauda Riddle say their lychee martini is great spring or summer cocktail—but maybe just stick to two

mfrancis Thu, 06/02/2022 - 07:00

When Angela Barnes and Renauda Riddle were creating the menu for their cocktail bar, Nobody’s Darling, they had two people in mind.

“Our first menu was all the drinks that Angela and Renauda like to drink,” Barnes says, laughing.

Now, just a little over a year after they opened, their Andersonville bar already has a James Beard Award nomination for Outstanding Bar Program.

Barnes and Riddle, who have been friends for years, originally bonded over golf and their shared love of a good cocktail. Riddle says it was during a golf outing that she first suggested opening a bar together. She kept bringing it up to Barnes, “And she finally said yes,” Riddle says.

“We definitely envisioned Nobody's Darling being some place where the community could gather and certainly where the community would feel comfortable,” Barnes says.

Many of the cocktails at Nobody’s Darling include alcohol from Black-owned, women-owned, and queer-owned businesses, including the recipe below. The bar is also queer-friendly, but Barnes like to phrase it another way.

“We like ‘straight-friendly,’ because we are definitely women-centered and LGBTQ-friendly, but we want everyone to feel welcome,” Barnes says.

Barnes and Riddle were still struggling to come up with a name even as the renovation of their space was wrapping up before opening. Barnes finally found inspiration in a book of poetry, when she stumbled across an Alice Walker poem that begins, “Be nobody’s darling; / Be an outcast.”.

“When I read it, I thought, this is it, right?” Barnes says. “This is what we are trying to do in terms of … forging our own path and being unapologetic for it.” Riddle was ecstatic about the idea.

Before even reaching the one-year anniversary of their business, Barnes and Riddle found out about their James Beard Award nomination, which amounts to being chosen as one of the best bars in the country. A few words went through Riddle’s mind: “Exciting, but overwhelming. Humbling.”

“I'm thinking, isn’t that culinary? What are you talking about? I did not even know that there was a bar program category,” Barnes says. “I loved that Renauda said ‘humbling’ because we didn't set out to win awards. We set out to do something on a very local level.”

Riddle says the nomination means a lot because, although their bar may have been created with a particular community in mind, its broader success means they’re doing something right.

“When others come in, and you may not be creating the space particularly for them, but they say ‘I’ve heard all the hype. Let’s check you guys out for a cocktail.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, you guys are living up to the hype’ – it was just very humbling,” Riddle says.

It’s their cocktails that earned them the hype. Their current menu features “elevated” classics with names like “Eartha Kitty” or the “Kahlo Margarita,” and it also includes zero-proof cocktails.

The Southside Lychee cocktail, which is named in honor of Barnes’ South Side roots, uses PlayPen Vodka, a local Black-owned brand.

“The vodka itself just pairs very well with cocktails,” Riddle says. “It really holds all the ingredients that you put in the cocktail.”

The tropical lychee fruit adds some, but not too much, sweetness, says Barnes. She adds that it’s a great cocktail to enjoy in the spring or summer. For Riddle, it’s good on a Friday night after a long week. But they offer a word of advice.

“I would say, don't drink more than two,” Barnes says, “or your night might not end up the way you want it to.”

Southside Lychee Martini

Ingredients

2 oz PlayPen vodka
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1 oz lychee syrup (the liquid from a can of lychees, or bottled lychee syrup)
1-2 canned lychees, for garnish

Directions

Shake ingredients vigorously with ice and serve in chilled martini glass. Garnish with 1 to 2 lychees.

The Great American Recipe

Celebrate Pride Month with WTTW's Programming in 2022

dhautzinger — Tue, 31 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000

Celebrate Pride Month with WTTW's Programming in 2022

André de Shields in 'True Colors: LGBTQ+ Our Stories, Our Songs.' Photo: Kevin Parisi

dhautzinger Tue, 05/31/2022 - 07:00

June is LGBTQ+ or Pride Month, and as always WTTW has plenty of programming to celebrate these too-often unheard or repressed stories. Some highlights include a music special, a look at the queer community of high-tech Silicon Valley, a touching tale of human generosity via organ donation, and a documentary about Olympic figure skater Randy Gardner.

We'll Meet Again: Coming Out

Saturday, June 4 at 11:00 am on WTTW Prime

Join Ann Curry as those whose lives were changed by the early days of the gay rights movement reunite. Tom wants to find the childhood friend who urged him to come out, while Paul seeks a fellow student who inspired him to stand up for his beliefs.

Lavender Scare

Saturday, June 4 at 12:00 pm on WTTW Prime

Learn the untold story of how tens of thousands of homosexual federal workers were either fired or denied employment in the 1950s, stirring outrage in the gay community and starting an LGBTQ rights movement with an unlikely hero at the forefront.

Don Quixote in Newark

Sunday, June 5 at 10:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Dr. James Oleske, a pioneering pediatrician who first discovered HIV/AIDS in children, is profiled. His scientific breakthrough, the outcome of dedicated work in an underfunded community hospital, changed the profile of AIDS forever and was instrumental in the discovery of the HIV virus.

True Colors: LGBTQ+ Our Stories, Our Song

Wednesday, June 8 at 9:30 pm on WTTW

Queer Silicon Valley

Sunday, June 12 at 10:30 pm on WTTW Prime and Thursday, June 16 at 10:00 pm on WTTW

From its early beginnings in a 1970s vibrant bar scene through the challenges posed by AIDS and the religious right, the fight for political representation and marriage equality, to what it was like to come out in the high tech industry, Queer Silicon Valley casts a fresh lens on a not well known but significant history.

Penny: Champion of the Marginalized

Sunday, June 12 at 11:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Penny is a multi-dimensional portrait of Penny Cooper, a celebrated criminal defense attorney, art collector, supporter of female artists, and protector of the underdog. Cooper's life brims with stories mirroring the profound changes in our country from the 1940s to the present.

POV Shorts: Dreaming Life

Tuesday, June 14 at 10:30 pm on WTTW and Sunday, June 26 at 11:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Two stories of self acceptance and finding joy: as the AIDS epidemic took hold in the early 1980s, self-help guru Louise Hay created a space for healing called the Hayride; plus meet 19-year-old Hunter 'Pixel' Jimenez, a nonbinary trans boy caught between the expectations of his Guatemalan immigrant family and his dreams of living happily ever after.

It's a Match

Thursday, June 23 at 10:00 pm on WTTW

Alana and Lori were two LGBT 20-somethings looking for love online when a casual right swipe made a match that would bind them together forever: Alana is a candidate to donate a kidney to Lori, who has been waiting for one for years.

Out in Rural America

Saturday, June 25 at 10:00 am on WTTW Prime and Sunday, June 26 at 3:30 pm on WTTW

Following five stories from the LGBTQ+ community over six years, the film explores the issues of self-doubt, discrimination, acceptance, and small-town and Midwestern LGBTQ+ life from a cultural, social, familial, and religious perspective.

It is available to stream now.

Prideland

Saturday, June 25 at 11:00 am on WTTW Prime and Sunday, June 26 at 4:30 pm on WTTW

Actor Dyllon Burnside journeys across the South to meet diverse members of the LGBTQ community.

You can stream Prideland now.

Go Figure: The Randy Gardner Story

Sunday, June 26 at 2:30 pm on WTTW and Sunday, June 26 at 10:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Go Figure: The Randy Gardner Story intimately documents the life and career of two-time Olympian Randy Gardner. The film shares one man's quest to finally come to terms with his true identity so that he can be a light to others.

WTTW Passport members can stream the film now.

Independent Lens: Cured

Thursday, June 30 at 10:00 pm on WTTW

When homosexuality was considered a mental illness to be "cured," renegade LGBTQ+ activists fought a powerful psychiatry establishment that had things dangerously backwards.

LGBTQ

Pride Month

The Chicago Author Who Wrote the First American Novel to Feature Gay Themes

mfrancis — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

The Chicago Author Who Wrote the First American Novel to Feature Gay Themes

Henry Blake Fuller's novel, "Bertram Cope's Year," is considered by many to be the first American novel to feature gay themes and characters.

mfrancis Wed, 06/16/2021 - 08:00

Henry Blake Fuller, an author who is now in the Chicago LBGT Hall of Fame, wrote what many consider the first American novel that explored LGBTQ themes. But his relationship with Chicago was complicated, and his writing style didn’t always paint the city in the most flattering light.

Fuller was the author of The Cliff Dwellers and Bertram Cope’s Year. The latter is considered by many to be one of the first American novels that features gay characters and themes, while his play At St. Judas’s is given a similar distinction in American theater.

Fuller was born in Chicago in 1857 and never left. He ran among some of the artistic greats in Chicago at the time, including Harriet Monroe, the founding editor of Poetry magazine; novelist Hamlin Garland; and architect Louis Sullivan. Chicago served as a source of inspiration for Fuller’s writing, but not always in a positive way. His biography in the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame says he had a “love-hate relationship” with the city.

Liesl Olson, director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library, which has a collection of Henry Blake Fuller’s papers, agrees with that assessment.

“He was also totally crabby,” Olson said. “He didn't actually have a whole lot of good to say about Chicago, but he stayed …. He was so committed to it in some ways.”

Fuller often expressed that crabbiness through a literary style often associated with Chicago called social realism.

“That's probably what is most distinctively Chicago about his style,” Olson said of social realism, a mode of writing that shows “things as they are” and paints reality in a stark, unadorned way. In Fuller’s writing, that involved depicting materialism in the city, exploitation of workers, and the role of commerce and industry in Chicago.

“A character in one of his novels says, ‘It's the only great city in the world to which all its citizens have come for the one common avowed object of making money,’" Olson says. Fuller’s writing often reflected that cynicism.

Olson considers The Cliff Dwellers to be the best example of Fuller’s work and style. The novel, which was published in 1893, takes place in a Chicago skyscraper and offers an unflattering (and at times, misogynistic) portrait of money-centric businessmen and their wives.

“Then, Hamlin Garland goes on to create an all-men’s literary club called Cliff Dwellers, which still exists,” Olson says. “Henry Fuller refuses to join. It's just funny. He was just such a curmudgeon in that way.”

Though The Cliff Dwellers might be the best example of Fuller’s realism, it is Bertram Cope’s Year that is considered groundbreaking in hindsight for its inclusion of gay characters. The novel, published in 1919, when Fuller was 62 years old, takes place at a university modeled after Northwestern University and follows a young English teacher who becomes the love interest of both male and female characters.

But Fuller’s thinking behind that novel — as well as his own sexual identity — aren’t clear.

“A lot of the correspondence around that book and letters from Henry Fuller were burned before his papers arrived at [Newberry Library],” Olson said. “So a lot of the documentation about how that novel was made, we just don't have partly because of ‘homosexual themes,’ as they called it.”

Olson acknowledges the difficulty in examining the internal life of authors like Fuller.

“When you're looking back at figures from the past who were not openly out — for so many political reasons, safety reasons, legal reasons — this is a common ethical quandary for historians and literary scholars. Who are you to out them when the record isn't there?”

So why isn’t Fuller a bigger name in literature? Olson offers some theories. For starters, many of his novels are out of print and were never reissued. Fuller also “wasn’t a stylist in the same way that his peers were,” Olson said, so some of his novels weren’t as successful. Additionally, the "homosexual themes" in Bertram Cope’s Year and the anti-gay sentiment at the time the novel was released might have influenced Fuller’s reception as an author.

“In the decades after his death, there may have been a disinterest in writers who were queer, in a sense that people didn't want to touch those things,” Olson says.

But now, many who know Fuller’s name know him as the first American writer to tell a story about gay characters. Olson also thinks he contributed something important to the literary world, particularly in Chicago.

“I think Henry Fuller is the city's first social realist, and social realism becomes a mode of critique that is distinctive to Chicago writers all the way into the twenty and twenty-first century. So if you want to trace that literary history of social realism, Fuller is where you start.”

LGBTQ History

Pride Month

Literature

Preserving and Sharing the Midwest's LGBTQ History

dhautzinger — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 07:00:00 +0000

Preserving and Sharing the Midwest's LGBTQ History

An oversized mouth sticking its tongue out used to hang in the legendary gay bar Carol's Speakeasy, and is now kept in the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. Photo: Daniel Hautzinger/WTTW

dhautzinger Wed, 06/09/2021 - 02:00

Explore LGBTQ stories in Midwestern and rural America in Out in Rural America, which airs on WTTW and at wttw.com/live Thursday, June 24 at 9:30 pm. Plus, stream Out & Proud in Chicago, a history of Chicago’s LGBTQ communities.

You don’t expect to see an outrageously sized fabric tongue greet you from between sparkly plastic lips when you enter the staid shelves of an archive. Nor do you expect to hear the director of a library and archive explain that he once cleaned accumulated smoke and dirt off said tongue, “somewhat ironically with a toothbrush and soapy water. It’s sort of like the Sistine Chapel, same thing.”

The insouciant mouth used to hang in Carol’s Speakeasy, a legendary Old Town gay bar opened by the “mother of all drag queens,” Mother Carol, who was known for brashly sticking out her tongue. Now it is located in the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, which collects and preserves items, papers, and books related to the culture and history of LGBTQ peoples in Chicago and the Midwest. “I don’t know how they got around the Rolling Stones trademark,” jokes Wil Brant, the director of Gerber/Hart, of the Carol’s tongue.

Located in Edgewater above a clinic of the LGBTQ-focused Howard Brown Health, Gerber/Hart contains about 160 collections in an estimated thousand linear feet of shelving, according to Brant. That’s in addition to the library, which has more than 24,000 volumes available to check out from its circulating collection. And it’s all still growing: Brant says the institution is running out of space, and will move in the next three or so years to a larger location, which will be its fifth.

All of that room is taken up by a wide range of materials, from the performance attire of a female impersonator to collections of photographs to periodicals, personal papers, posters, films of Pride Parades, women’s and gay liberation music, and much more. “We have comic books, merchandise catalogs, book catalogs, zines, pins, buttons, matchbooks, games, calendars, T-shirts,” lists Brant. Asked to name something in the collection that he finds especially fascinating, he answers, “The last neat thing I found is what is most interesting to me right now.” There’s plenty to find.

Gerber/Hart was founded 40 years ago, in 1981. It is named after two pioneering LGBTQ Chicagoans: Henry Gerber, who founded the United States’ first gay rights organization, and Pearl M. Hart, a lawyer who worked on behalf of women and gay and lesbian people while also defending immigrants and communists caught up in the Red Scare.

“At that time, public libraries, universities, colleges did not really carry LGBTQ books,” explains Brant. “So our primary thing was providing access to that,” through the lending library. “One reason why we’re here is because it’s important for people to connect with people who have similar stories—you can read a book about what someone else went through, you can research other organizations.”

Now, Brant says, about half of people visiting Gerber/Hart conduct research in the archive, and half take out books from the library. “Some of this you still can’t get at a public library, and we often have more stuff” than a general library, he explains. "Part of our mission statement is that knowledge is the key to dispelling prejudice."

As the collection has grown and important chapters in LGBTQ history have receded into the past, more and more scholars have begun to take advantage of the archives. There are the papers of Bill Kelley, a founder of the gay rights group Mattachine Midwest Society who was part of the first group of gay and lesbian leaders to meet at the White House. The first openly gay man to run for elected office in Illinois, Gary Nepon, is represented. Periodicals from early gay organizations offer a glimpse of early gay activism. Photos dating back to 1947 of the female impersonator Miss Tillie and her friends are visual evidence of gay life, and are featured every Tuesday on Gerber/Hart’s Instagram. (Some of Gerber/Hart’s materials are available online, with much more having been digitized during the past year of COVID-19.)

Even erotica has a place in the archives: “It does portray a certain amount of culture and body presentation,” Brant says, while some erotic magazines offer a survey of gay life throughout the country, highlighting gay bars from the past in smaller cities that are often overlooked.

Gerber/Hart also presents the histories that can be found in its archives to the public via exhibits on such topics as the activist group Queer Nation Chicago, the involvement of lesbians in the women’s liberation movement, and an upcoming exhibit on HIV and AIDS. Many of the exhibits are accompanied by events and other programming, which moved online last year due to the pandemic but will eventually be in-person again. The exhibitions themselves are also now being digitized.

“People sometimes ask us, ‘Why do we keep some of this stuff?’ " including ephemera or erotica. But Gerber/Hart preserves stories and experiences that might otherwise be forgotten.

Brant’s answer? “If we don’t, who will?”

LGBTQ

Pride Month

Gerber/Hart Library and Archives

Celebrate Pride Month with WTTW in 2021

dhautzinger — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Celebrate Pride Month with WTTW in 2021

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performing "Swan Lake." Photo: Laura Nespola, courtesy Merrywidow Films

dhautzinger Tue, 06/01/2021 - 08:00

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month, in honor of the June, 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York that was a turning point in the movement for LGBTQ rights and recognition. (You can learn more about Stonewall in an American Experience documentary WTTW is airing this month.) While Chicago's Pride Parade has been postponed this year until October, there are a few other Pride events happening in the city this month. Fill that temporary absence with programming from WTTW, online and on TV, listed below.

Find our sister station WFMT's Pride programming of LGBTQ classical music composers and artists here.

American Masters: Ballerina Boys

Friday, June 4 at 10:00 pm on WTTW and Saturday, June 12 at 3:00 pm on WTTW Prime

Out & Proud in Chicago

Sunday, June 6 at 9:30 pm on WTTW Prime and available to stream

Jane Lynch hosts this WTTW documentary about the history of Chicago's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities.

POV Shorts: Post-Colonial Queer

Sunday, June 6 at 11:30 pm and Saturday, June 12 at 11:30 am on WTTW Prime and available to stream

This short POV documentary features LGBTQ stories from around the world.

Afropop: Mama Gloria

Saturday, June 12 at 10:00 am and Sunday, June 13 at 10:30 pm on WTTW Prime and available to stream

Gloria Allen is a 75-year-old Black transgender activist who started a charm school for homeless trans youth and is now aging with joy and grace. It is the story of a mother’s love—the love that Gloria’s mother had for her and the love that Gloria has for her chosen children.

Becoming Johanna

Saturday, June 12 at 11:00 am on WTTW Prime and Friday, June 25 at 8:30 pm on WTTW

When Johanna, a 16-year-old transgender Latina, begins her transition and gets kicked out of her home and school, she finds a foster family who loves her and a supportive school principal who helps her graduate and thrive.

Out in Rural America

Saturday June 12 at 12:00 pm and Sunday, June 27 at 10:30 pm on WTTW Prime and Thursday, June 24 at 9:30 pm on WTTW

Following five stories from the LGBTQ community over six years, this film explores the issues of self-doubt, discrimination, acceptance, and small-town and Midwestern LGBTQ life from a cultural, social, familial, and religious perspective.

Reel South: Outspoken

Saturday, June 12 at 1:00 pm and Sunday, June 27 at 11:30 pm on WTTW Prime

Members of the LGBTQ community fight to live free from discrimination in West Virginia.

American Experience: Stonewall Uprising

Saturday, June 12 at 1:30 pm on WTTW Prime and Sunday, June 13 at 10:00 pm on WTTW and available to stream by WTTW Passport members

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. That night the street erupted into violent protests and street demonstrations that lasted for the next three days. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Prideland

Saturday, June 12 at 4:00 pm on WTTW Prime and Sunday, June 27 at 2:00 pm on WTTW and available to stream by WTTW Passport members

Follow queer actor Dyllón Burnside on a journey to discover how LGBTQ Americans are finding ways to live authentically and with pride in the modern South.

POV: We Are the Radical Monarchs

Sunday, June 13 at 9:30 pm on WTTW Prime and available to stream by WTTW Passport members

Meet the Radical Monarchs, a group of young girls of color at the front lines of social justice. Set in Oakland, the film documents the journey of the group as they earn badges for completing units including being an LGBTQ ally, preserving the environment, and disability justice.

Man in an Orange Shirt

Tuesday, June 15 at 8:00 pm and Wednesday, June 16 at 10:00 am on WTTW Prime and available to stream by WTTW Passport members

Two love stories, 60 years apart, chart the changes and challenges in gay lives in England—from the era of jail terms to the onset of dating apps. Vanessa Redgrave stars in this drama scripted by best-selling novelist Patrick Gale.

Expect a Miracle

Sunday, June 20 at 11:00 pm on WTTW Prime and Thursday, June 24 at 10:30 pm on WTTW and available to stream

This documentary tells the story of Fraternity House, the only hospice in North San Diego County that gave AIDS patients near death a safe place to die with dignity and love. The film centers on a handful of heroes who cared for a marginalized population in a time of fear, misinformation, and rejection from families and the government.

Lavender Scare

Sunday, June 27 at 3:00 pm on WTTW and Sunday, June 27 at 9:00 pm on WTTW Prime

American Masters: Holly Near

Sunday, June 27 at 7:00 pm on WTTW Prime and available to stream by WTTW Passport members

Experience the power of song in the struggle for equality through the story of feminist singer and activist Holly Near, who for the last 40 years has worked on global social justice coalition-building in the women’s and lesbian movements.

American Masters: Terence McNally

Sunday, June 27 at 8:00 pm and Monday, June 28 at 10:00 am on WTTW Prime

Explore the late four-time Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally's six groundbreaking decades in theater. The film delves into McNally's pursuit of love and inspiration, LGBTQ activism, triumph over addiction, and the power of the arts to transform society. McNally was an early casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, dying in March of 2020.

Pride Month

LGBTQ

TV Highlights

Walking Through LGBTQ History in Boystown

mfrancis — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Walking Through LGBTQ History in Boystown

The Legacy Walk is an outdoor museum in Boystown highlighting the contributions of LGBTQ individuals. Photo: Meredith Francis

mfrancis Tue, 06/23/2020 - 07:00

On a stretch of the narrow sidewalks that line Halsted Street in Boystown, there are familiar rainbow pylons that signify the Chicago neighborhood’s roots as a gay community. But if you look closer at those pylons, you’ll notice a series of plaques honoring 40 LGBTQ artists, activists, writers, and events throughout history.

It’s called the Legacy Walk, and its goal is to acknowledge the cultural and historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

The seed for the Legacy Walk was first planted on October 11, 1987 at the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It was also the first time National Coming Out Day was officially recognized, and the first time the AIDS Memorial Quilt was on display.

“All I could think of was, here we are, experiencing living history,” said Victor Salvo, the creator, cofounder, and executive director of the Legacy Project, which operates the walk. Salvo, who is also in the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, was at the March.

“We’re being asked to embrace a legacy of contributions of LGBTQ people, and none of us knows what they are,” Salvo said, reflecting on his thoughts during the march. “And now there’s a plague that’s going to kill every person here – we did not know at the time that there would be survivors. Who’s going to remember who came before us when we’re gone if we don’t know ourselves?”

That got Salvo wondering how to leave behind the history of LGBTQ people for future generations.

“I started thinking about all the ways I had learned about unusual factoids from history, and it was from bronze plaques that I just stumbled upon,” he said. “It put the idea in my head that we needed an outdoor museum walk.”

Fast forward a decade. In 1997, the city of Chicago declared the Boystown neighborhood an “official gay village” – the first of its kind in the United States. A year later, the city dedicated 25-foot bronze pylons sporting the colors of the pride flag.

Around that same time, Salvo read a story about Alan Turing, a British mathematician and code-breaker during World War II. Much of his work laid the groundwork for modern computer science and artificial intelligence. But Turing’s contributions went largely unrecognized because, in 1952, he was convicted of “gross indecency” – in other words, being a gay man. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time, and Turing was forced to undergo chemical castration. He died from suicide in 1954.

After reading Turing’s story, Salvo said he spent the next ten years embarking on a “personal research project.” He wanted to “identify the types of stories that were like Turing’s,” in an effort to shed light on other people whose life story or LGBTQ identity was ignored or forgotten.

In 2010, the Legacy Project became an official organization, with the Legacy Walk opening two years later. In 2019, the Chicago City Council designated the Legacy Walk as a landmark.

Today, bronze plaques on the rainbow pylons bear the names of 40 LGBTQ individuals and their stories and contributions to the world. People like James Baldwin, Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, and Turing are honored in the walk, which spans from Melrose Street to Waveland Avenue on Halsted – the heart of Boystown.

There are also historical events, like the Stonewall Riots, the Harlem Renaissance, and a plaque for “the pink triangle” – a label that Nazis forced gay people to wear on their clothes in concentration camps.

But there are also some names that might surprise people.

“The one that probably stops most in their tracks is probably Jane Addams, and I think it’s because she’s the most famous, the most recognizable,” Salvo said of the prominent Chicago social reformer and first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her plaque sits just north of Addison Street.

“She is so lionized today, but was such a figure of scorn in her lifetime, and she endured that,” Salvo said.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the plan for the Legacy Walk was to add new names, and retire some plaques at a permanent vistor’s center on Halsted. For now, those plans are on hold, but ultimately the goal is to rotate in new plaques in order to tell more people’s stories.

For Salvo, the walk gives people who identify as LGBTQ a place in history.

“We were at war with the plague and society was rooting for the plague,” said Salvo of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. “It became imperative that if you really wanted to change the hearts and minds of people, it had to be more about our own movement. It had to be about our place in the world. The problem was, we had been denied it.”

In addition to cementing a place in history, Salvo said the plaques give kids who identify as LGBTQ someone to look up to. He said the Legacy Walk is one of the few monuments in the world where “you can go and see [the words] gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender cast in bronze.”

“Even the monument to Alan Turing in Cambridge, England, doesn’t say he was gay,” he added.

Though many of the subjects of The Legacy Walk are now of the past, the organization is looking to the future, too. In recent years, they began remote installations in different cities and a traveling wall exhibit. They’ve also expanded their digital offerings, which have become important in the age of COVID-19, as large tour groups are not possible on the narrow sidewalks of Halsted, Salvo said.

In addition to the outdoor museum walk, the Legacy Project is working on educational programs with “lesson plans, study guides, question banks, and multimedia” to provide Illinois schools with curriculum that includes prominent LGBTQ people.

“We’re not rewriting the curriculum for the entire state of Illinois. We’re simply providing tools to make the existing curriculum inclusive,” Salvo said. “There really is no aspect of history that doesn’t have an LGBTQ person attached to it.”

Pride Month

LGBTQ

Chicago History