27 Addenda Eric Marcus: Hi. I’m Eric Marcus from Making Gay History and this is the Give Voice to History Project. In the late 1980s, I recorded a hundred interviews for a book I was writing about the LGBTQ civil rights move- ment, which we called the gay rights movement back then. After I finished the book, the cassette tapes sat in stor- age for almost 30 years… But then I dug them out, the New York Public Li- brary digitized them, and I took a lis- ten. Suddenly, I was back with all these people again—at their dining room ta- bles, in their living rooms, sitting across from them and hearing about their lives… Now I get to share these amaz- ing stories with you. Individual stories that connect to the bigger story of American civil rights. Sylvia Rivera: Here, I’m out there being a revolutionist for everybody else. I said now it’s time to do my thing for my own people. Zandra Rolón: [He] kept giving us the, you know, the back of the bus type of thing, you know.“Well, you can sit over there. And you can sit over here and you’ll have free drinks. But you will not, you cannot sit here. You will not be served here.” Deborah Johnson: And if there’s any- thing that King had taught us, it was that we could sit anywhere in the restaurant we wanted to sit. Ellen DeGeneres: For me on the show to be able to say,“I’m gay,” was like… I mean, I cried every take we did. Every time we did that. Even in rehearsal I’d cry when I did it. Because it was such a release for me. Morty Manford: What, maybe a thou- sand people sitting in the audience. And the mayor was up at the podium talking. It was just me. What was I going to do? I did what anyone else would do. I walked onto the stage and I took the podium away from John Lindsay. Perry Watkins: Things are gonna have to change drastically in this country. People are gonna have to wake up and realize, wait a minute, I am an average American citizen. Whether I’m gay or lesbian or anything else, given that sim- ple fact alone, there is no way in hell I should have gone through what I went through in the military. Eric Marcus: Three decades ago, when I started researching and interviewing for my book, I was outraged that I’d never heard these stories before— stories of accidental activists, commit- ted revolutionaries, and happy civil rights warriors, who gave me a greater understanding of who I am and where I’m from. My hope is that by sharing these stories with you now, in a way that wasn’t possible when I was a student, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how individuals—people like you and me—can challenge laws, institutions, and assumptions and come together to make big changes. So let’s get started! Give Voice to History Project Introduction Transcript 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75