College Papers and Local Newsletters
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Volume 1, number 4 of the Athens Gay/Lesbian Alliance Newsletter from April 1985. This issue includes the first of a two-part history of the gay rights movement in Athens, beginning with the establishment of the Committee on Gay Education by University of Georgia students in 1971.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, from Douglas B. Caulkins, through Cal Gough.
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February 1, 1985 issue of the Unitarian Universalist Lesbian and Gay Community Newsletter. The newsletter opens with a report from a group assessment about its purpose for members and within the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta and the community at large. The prior newsletter issue had identified a loss in momentum, but the group remained busy with educational events, rights campaigns, and AIDS benefits.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, Unitarian Universalist Lesbian and Gay Community Newsletters.
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Article "Gays Are Scapegoats" from University of Georgia newspaper The Red & Black on July 14, 1971. In the article Tom Crawford, who would go on to report on Georgia Capitol politics for over 30 years, describes being assigned to cover a Gay Liberation Front press conference only to find that colleagues and columnists who prided themselves on their liberalism responded to his assignment with homophobic remarks.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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May 7, 1985 issue of Morehouse College's The Maroon Tiger, featuring the piece "The Confession of a Homosexual." An anonymous student at the Atlanta University Center describes his fear of AIDS, his feeling that he needs to project masculinity, and his impression of the distinctions between different "types" of gay men.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.
Some smaller local news publications in Georgia, like college campus newspapers, county newspapers, and newsletters circulated within specific organizational circles, openly addressed LGBTQ+ topics as early as the 1950s. The Forsyth County News, for example, briefly reported in 1953 on the sudden dismissal of large numbers of state and federal government employees under the Eisenhower administration for committing acts “contrary to the best interest of national security,” a category that included homosexuals alongside suspected Communists. While much early coverage on homosexuality in these papers was relegated to opinion editorials concerning obscenity in media and trends in pornography, the burgeoning Gay Liberation movement in the 1970s demanded different conversations about LGBTQ+ topics. In 1971 the University of Georgia’s Red & Black student newspaper printed a letter to the editor charging the paper with having ignored or actively excluded content about homosexual prejudice, contributing to it through a policy of publishing only “straight” dating service ads. Within a few years, the Red & Black began printing pieces on Gay Pride Week, the Committee on Gay Education, and “Blue Jean Day” on campus, a celebratory day established at Rutgers University that invited queer students and straight allies to show community solidarity by wearing blue jeans. Newsletters created community solidarity as well, not only within activist circles, but within larger organizations like churches. Dignity Atlanta, a chapter of the Catholic LGBTQ+ ministry group DignityUSA, began publishing a local chapter newsletter in 1977. And the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta created a Lesbian and Gay Community group with an active newsletter in the early 1980s, which would facilitate important community conversations about HIV prevention and anti-gay stigma within western religious bodies. Social and professional LGBTQ+ groups have stayed connected and informed through newsletters as well: the Atlanta chapter of Prime Timers, a brotherhood of older gay and bisexual men, issues a monthly newsletter called APTitudes, and the OUT Georgia Business Alliance, established in 1994, links LGBTQ+ business owners with updates through the email newsletter IN VIEW.