StoryCorps, the national oral history project, is launching a new initiative to capture the stories of LGBTQ elders born before the Stonewall Riots. Even if you don’t fit this category yourself, you can interview an LGBTQ elder and help preserve their stories for the future. The project is personal to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, who has said his own dad’s coming out and relating the story of Stonewall helped inspire StoryCorps itself.
Stonewall OutLoud will collect as wide a collection of voices as possible, with special emphasis given to rural communities, communities of color, and transgender elders. The initiative, StoryCorps explained in a statement, “seeks to connect older and younger generations through the powerful StoryCorps interview experience, preserve these stories for the future, and share the voices of the LGBTQ community with a broad general audience through educational and broadcast partnerships.” A coalition of partners is joining StoryCorps on the project, including SAGE (the national organization for LGBTQ elders), the National LGBTQ Task Force, Griot Circle, and GLSEN, among others.
Individuals and organizations can pledge here to take part in StoryCorps OutLoud, and then easily record their interviews with a smartphone and the StoryCorps App. StoryCorps offers all kinds of assistance at the link, including suggested questions, sample interviews to listen to, and more. StoryCorps, which has already collected the stories of half a million Americans across all 50 states, preserves its recordings in a special archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered, and shares select stories with the public through StoryCorps’ podcast, NPR broadcasts, animated shorts, digital platforms, and best-selling books.
Stories, in many ways, form the lifeblood of any community, reflecting its values, its history, and its aspirations. They convey something of the individuals within the community and allow them to pass on their learnings. They help teach and inspire the next generation and give those outside the community a glimpse inside. This is one of the key reasons I created Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day (now #LGBTQFamiliesDay) 14 years ago—to allow us to share our stories. I am delighted to support another effort to do the same. I’ll also suggest that contributing to the StoryCorps project and then posting about that experience on #LGBTQFamiliesDay, June 3, would be a dandy thing to do.
Since this is a parenting blog, I have to say that I especially look forward to hearing stories of LGBTQ parents and grandparents captured through Stonewall OutLoud—but those will hardly be the only ones.
Dave Isay, president and founder of StoryCorps said of the new initiative, “We’re thrilled to be working with our partners over the month of June to ask the country to honor an LGBTQ elder with an interview and preserve this part of our history about which so little information exists. In the spirit of the Shoah project, which documented the stories of every living Holocaust survivor, and Maya Angelou’s stirring words, ‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again,’ we hope that Stonewall OutLoud will be a beautiful, loving celebration of LGBTQ elders on this historic anniversary.”
Isay has previously explained that the inspiration for StoryCorps itself came from his gay dad’s sharing the story of Stonewall with him. Hear him tell this story and talk more about the power of stories below:
