June Resource Spotlight - LGBTQ+ History
People in the United States have recognized June as Pride Month since 1970. The now commonplace recognition of June as a month to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride began as a grassroots movement within LGBTQ+ communities who remembered the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York by holding a commemorative parade in Greenwich Village on the one year anniversary. Such parades were also held across the state of California, where LGBTQ+ communities had long and unique histories of culture-making, kinship, coalition building, activism, and uprising. At the CHSSP, we are celebrating this Pride Month by sharing new selections of recent scholarship and children’s books on LGBTQ+ history and experiences. We are also excited to share a list of the statewide CHSSP network’s teaching resources on LGBTQ+ History. This list is long because our colleagues have worked hard to promote bringing LGBTQ+ History into the classroom since the 2011 passage of the FAIR Act. This piece of California State Legislation amended the state education code to require California public schools to “require instruction in social sciences to include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and members of other cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.”
You can read more about different approaches to inclusion in this 2021 CHSSP blog post by historians Beth Slutsky and Wendy Rouse. For examples of resources in our archives that include, but are not centered around LGBTQ+ stories, see this 2nd grade Inquiry Set on remembering the past and this 11th grade resource from UC Irvine on Third Wave Feminism.
Teaching Resources:
This is a fifth grade level lesson plan about Charity and Sylvia, two American women in the Early Republic who lived as a married couple. Exploration of primary and secondary sources about their lives presents student with opportunities to consider how individuals challenged gender roles during the period after the American Revolution.
Charley Parkhurst and the California Gold Rush
This 4th and 8th grade lesson plan developed in response to the passage of the FAIR ACT centers the life of stagecoach driver Charley Parkhurst, who was assigned female at birth but adopted male pronouns, a male name, and traditionally male attire. The lesson considers the centers around gender expression while exploring consequences of the Gold Rush and statehood in California.
Baron von Steuben and the Continental Army
This 8th grade lesson plan explores the story of a Prussian military strategist, Baron Friedrich von Stueben who aided the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. Prior to arriving in America, von Steuben faced the threat of imprisonment in France for his known relationships with men. In this lesson which draws mostly on secondary sources, students will be invited to consider an early example of the sexuality of an individual being called into question by our country in relation to their contribution to military service.
Lavender Scare and McCarthyism
This 11th grade lesson plan -This lesson was awarded the Committee on LGBTQ History of the American Historical Association's inaugural Don Romesburg Prize for a K-12 lesson plan on LGBT History. This lesson uses primary and secondary sources to explore how the Lavender Scare served as a period of decline in rights for the LGBTQ community in the United States.
LGBTQ+ History through Primary Sources
This collection of LGBTQ+ primary source sets were researched and annotated by Professor Wendy Rouse, in collaboration with the CHSSP. Each set includes context, focus questions, further readings, and a plethora of primary sources to help teachers infuse their curriculum with LGBTQ+ voices. There are more than a dozen source sets on a variety of topics including The California Gold Rush & the Western Frontier, Immigration, and World War II.
“Out for Safe Schools Initiative,” The UCLA HGP, the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the ONE Archives Foundation
This collection of LGBTQ+ History Lesson Plans were produced by the UCLA History-Geography Project, OUT for Safe Schools at LGBT Center, and ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. There are a wide variety of lesson plans that ask students to consider questions like, How did The Ladder magazine provide lesbian women support in the 1950s? or What role did female impersonations in various soldier camp performances play in allowing soldiers to explore their identity? or Why and how did activists respond to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s?
Recent Scholarship:
Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America, Margot Canaday, January 2023
From Princeton University Press:
"Workplaces have traditionally been viewed as “straight spaces” in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Queer Career rectifies this, offering an expansive historical look at sexual minorities in the modern American workforce. Arguing that queer workers were more visible than hidden and, against the backdrop of state aggression, vulnerable to employer exploitation, Margot Canaday positions employment and fear of job loss as central to gay life in postwar America."
Love’s Next Meeting:The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture, Aaron Lecklider, May 2023
From the University of California Press:
"Well before Stonewall, a broad cross section of sexual dissidents took advantage of their space on the margins of American society to throw themselves into leftist campaigns. Sensitive already to sexual marginalization, they also saw how class inequality was exacerbated by the Great Depression, witnessing the terrible bread lines and bread riots of the era. They participated in radical labor organizing, sympathized like many with the early prewar Soviet Union, contributed to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, opposed US police and state harassment, fought racial discrimination, and aligned themselves with the dispossessed. Whether they were themselves straight, gay, or otherwise queer, they brought sexual dissidence and radicalism into conversation at the height of the Left's influence on American culture."
Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement, Wesley G. Phelps, March 2024
From the University of Austin Press:
"Before Lawrence v. Texas tells the story of the long, troubled, and ultimately hopeful road to constitutional change. Wesley G. Phelps describes the achievements, setbacks, and unlikely alliances along the way. Over the course of decades, and at great risk to themselves, gay and lesbian Texans and their supporters launched political campaigns and legal challenges, laying the groundwork for Lawrence. Phelps shares the personal experiences of the people and couples who contributed to the legal strategy that ultimately overturned the state’s discriminatory law. Even when their individual court cases were unsuccessful, justice seekers and activists collectively influenced public opinion by insisting that their voices be heard. Nine Supreme Court justices ruled, but it was grassroots politics that vindicated the ideal of equality under the law."
A Body of One’s Own: a Trans History of Argentina, Patricio Simonetto, January 2024
From the University of Texas Press:
"A trans history of Argentina, a country that banned medically assisted gender affirmation practices and punished trans lives, A Body of One’s Own places the histories of trans bodies at the core of modern Argentinian history. Patricio Simonetto documents the lives of people who crossed the boundaries of gender from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research in public and community-based archives, this book explores the mainstream medical and media portrayals of trans or travesti people, the state policing of gender embodiment, the experiences of those transgressing the boundaries of gender, and the development of homemade technologies from prosthetics to the self-injection of silicone. A Body of One's Own explores how trans activists' challenges to the exclusionary effects of Argentina’s legal, cultural, social, and political cisgender order led to the passage of the Gender Identity Law in 2012. Analyzing the decisive yet overlooked impact of gender transformation in the formation of the nation-state, gender-belonging, and citizenship, this book ultimately shows that supposedly abstract struggles to define the shifting notions of "sex," citizenship, and nationhood are embodied material experiences."
Queer Lives across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970, Andrea Rottman, May 2023
"Queer Lives across the Wall examines the everyday lives of queer Berliners between 1945 and 1970, tracing private and public queer life from the end of the Nazi regime through the gay and lesbian liberation movements of the 1970s. Andrea Rottmann explores how certain spaces – including homes, bars, streets, parks, and prisons – facilitated and restricted queer lives in the overwhelmingly conservative climate that characterized both German postwar states. With a theoretical toolkit informed by feminist, queer, and spatial theories, the book goes beyond previous histories that focus on state surveillance and the persecution of male homosexuality."
Picture Books (#KatesBookClub)
The ABCs of Queer History, by Dr. Seema Yasmin, illustrated by Lucy Kirk.
This is a book of people, of ideas, of accomplishments and events. It’s a book about Allies and Ancestors, about Belonging and Being accepted, about Hope, Knowledge, and Love. About historic moments like Stonewall, and about Trailblazers, like Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Harvey Milk, Barbara Jordan, George Takei, Elliot Page, and Sally Ride. But ultimately, it’s a book to help kids learn a different kind of ABCs—not just words like apple, ball or cat, but rather the essence of what it means to be diverse, to be equitable, to be inclusive. That no one counts unless we all count, and how we must open our eyes and ears, minds and hearts, to hear everyone’s story and understand and celebrate their experience. Includes a great timeline. Could be used at any grade level and any single subject classroom.
A Child’s Introduction to Pride: The Inspirational History and Culture of the LGBTQIA+ Community by Sarah Prager, illustrated by Caitlin O’Dwyer.
The history of the LGBTQIA+ community is filled with heroes, struggles, triumph, and joy. A Child's Introduction to Pride is full of remarkable stories of groundbreaking events and inspirational people, featuring profiles of dozens of queer icons from various time periods and walks of life. Young readers will meet members of the community who have made big contributions to politics--like Harvey Milk and Marsha P. Johnson--as well as important people from the worlds of sports, music, literature, dance, science, and more. Kids will also be introduced to key terms like "gender" and "identity" while learning about the importance of coming out and what it means to be a good ally. The book also includes a kid-friendly guide to understanding pronouns and intersectionality, as well as explorations of "gayborhoods," and a pull-out poster with a timeline of important events from ancient times to the modern era.
Molly’s Tuxedo by Vicki Johnson, illustrated by Gillian Reid.
Molly's school picture day is coming up, and she wants to have a perfect portrait taken. Her mom has picked out a nice dress for her, but Molly knows from experience that dresses are trouble. They have tight places and hard-to-reach zippers, and worst of all, no pockets! Luckily, she has the perfect thing to save picture day--her brother's old tuxedo! Can Molly find the courage to follow her heart and get her mom to realize just how awesome she'd look in a tux? Another great title for the beginning of the year, or anytime that the topic of identity arises in the classroom.
Neither by Airlie Anderson.
For the littles, this book tells the story of yellow birds and blue rabbits that live in the Land of This or That...until a green half-bird, half-rabbit hatches. Is it this, or that? It says "both." The other animals name it "Neither" and banish it from the Land of This or That. Later, Neither finds the Land of All, where all creatures are welcomed and fit right in. Bright colors, adorable creatures, and a dynamic design make this story of inclusion both useful and enjoyable. Great beginning story of gender identity.