Ninth-annual National LGBT History Month Project celebrates record success

The birth of the modern LGBT-rights movement is largely thought to have originated at New York City's Stonewall Inn in 1969. But, what few realize is that four years previously, a group of LGBT and gender-nonconforming people converged on a lunch counter at a Philadelphia diner called Dewey's - demanding fair treatment of sexual and gender minorities, in what could be one of the nation's earliest LGBT-rights demonstrations.

The Dewey's protest is just one of a dozen gems of LGBT history that the 2014 National LGBT History Month Project will explore. Begun in 2006, the project seeks to uncover the storied history of the LGBT community, to shed light on the people, places and events that formed the building blocks of the modern LGBT community.

The 2014 incarnation will see record success - with three-dozen LGBT publications and websites from across the country signing on as partners to carry the stories throughout October, in celebration of National LGBT History Month. Topics this year range from interviews with an LGBT activist who took part in the first Reminder Day picket nearly 50 years ago to an exploration of early lesbian comic Moms Mabley to an analysis of the LGBT-related conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Previous History Month coverage has featured interviews with President Barack Obama and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and in 2011 the "We Are America" special featured never-before-seen evidence suggesting that the country may have already had its first gay president, James Buchanan, and exhaustive research illustrating our country's freedom was in part attained by a gay man: Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

PGN publisher and project coordinator Mark Segal noted that the initiative is a valuable team effort by the circle of contributors and partners that will go a long way to preserve LGBT history.

"This is the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of work. I want to thank our writers and PGN editor Jen Colletta, who stepped up to the plate to make this year very special," Segal said. "This project, which started with a small number of newspapers, now unites the majority of local, quality, professional LGBT publications across the nation, allowing our community to showcase and appreciate its own history."

Since 1976, Philadelphia Gay News, the area's largest and oldest publication targeted to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, has been providing quality journalism that both explores and advocates for issues pertinent to the LGBT community.
We are guided by three core principles: Honesty. Integrity. Professionalism.