In researching visual content to illustrate some of the oral histories found on the Studs Terkel Archive for WFMT, I tapped in to some really great archives and learned a more intimate perspective of the United States' evolving history of the LGBTQ movement. Below are some of the poignant images I sourced and selected to illustrate a variety of gay experience and rights issues (each photo hyperlinks out to the archive recordings they illustrate). The first image is one I chose for the general topics category on the Studs Terkel Archive site as it both clearly illustrates a non-conforming queer person from the era in which many of these oral histories were recorded, but it also shows the very real civil rights struggle the queer community, especially drag and transgender folks, have faced for decades--such as being arrested for the act of wearing a dress in public. I also chose this image with a modern photo editing lens of inclusivity, as transgender folks' voices are not represented in this archive's recordings.
