Pride Month wraps up as the summer reading season is getting underway. The American Library Association's Stonewall Book Awards provide lots of possibilities to expand your reading list. And good news, many of the books are available through your public library!

Barbara Gittings Literature Award
Barbara Gittings POETRY Award
Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award
Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award
Stonewall Honor Books Literature
Stonewall Honor Books in Non-Fiction
Stonewall Honor Books in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Have LGBTQ+ individuals always been welcomed in outdoor spaces? This week meet some activists who have worked to ensure that everyone is welcome and some who have found other ways to support a healthy planet for everyone.

Meet Environmentalist Drag Queen Pattie Gonia
Why Joy Is a Serious Way to Take Action | Pattie Gonia | TED
Forces of Good: So a Drag Queen Walks into a Mountain Town… - Outside Online
Perry Cohen, Founder of The Venture Out Project - The Inquiry Series: Exploring Inclusivity
Finding queer joy and empowerment outdoors
5Talks meets Queer Brown Vegan Isaias Hernandez | Imagine5 & Time for Better
Isaias Hernandez started his organization "Queer Brown Vegan" with a mission to fight climate change
Living on Earth: Queer Brown Vegan
My Story - Isaias Hernandez | Environmentalist & Storyteller
Brooklyn's bike-powered compost service - YouTube
Episode 2: Community, Compost, and Climate – Climate Check
Finding Your Way as an Environmentalist in Rural America — Even if You’re LGBT • The Revelator
Although climate change affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally, hitting marginalized communities much harder. This week learn about how climate change affects the LGBTQ+ community.

Youth Climate Activist Jamie Margolin on the intersection of the climate justice and LGBTQ movements
How climate change and LGBTQ rights intersect | The Common
How climate change affects the LGBTQ+ Community - Earth Day
4 Ways the Climate Crisis Impacts LGBTQI+ People | Earth.Org
LGBTQ+ people are more at risk of adverse effects of climate change - LGBTQ Nation
Wearing clothing not in accordance with the gender assigned at birth is not a new phenomenon, dating back millennia. In the mid 1800s some US cities began criminalizing crossdressing or masquerading or using other catchall crimes such as vagrancy to police what people wore. Learn more about this topic in this week's resources.

Why Was Crossdressing Illegal?
Bills targeting drag have a long history in the U.S., says historian : NPR
A formerly enslaved man as the first drag queen and gay activist? As unlikely as that combination might seem, learn about William Dorsey Swann in this week's resources.

The First Queen of Drag - Civics & Coffee (podcast) | Listen Notes
William Dorsey Swann, the First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen, Was a Formerly Enslaved Man
Historian Henry Louis Gates has said that the Harlem Renaissance "was surely as gay as it was black." In the last week of Women's History Month, learn about some women who today would be part of the LGBTQ community.

The writings and activism of Black, bisexual feminist Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Renaissance Women: Nella Larsen • Womanica
Renaissance Women: Edna Lewis Thomas
The Great Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke All the Rules | Smithsonian
Pride is celebrated in June mainly because it is the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York. But there were gay activists long before that, including a short-lived organization founded in Chicago in 1924. Add the names of its founder, Henry Gerber, and first President, John Graves, as well as another Chicagoan, lesbian lawyer Pearl Hart to the list of people who helped lay the foundation for the Gay Rights movement.

Watch
SIP OF HISTORY: HENRY GERBER (youtube.com)
John T. Graves: 1920s Clergyman and Gay Rights Activist - YouTube
Listen
https://www.listennotes.com/top-podcasts/henry-gerber/#episodes
Read
Meet Henry and Pearl… – Gerber/Hart Library and Archives (gerberhart.org)
Pearl M. Hart: Defender of the Oppressed and Vulnerable - Chicago History Museum
Pearl Hart's Life and Work · Pearl M. Hart · GH Exhibits (gerberhart.org)
LGBTQ Activism: The Henry Gerber House, Chicago, IL (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Henry Gerber - Governors Island National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Are you still gathering your summer reading list? The American Library Association's Stonewall Book Awards provide possibilities for all ages. Find the list in this week's resources along with information about the trailblazers for whom some of the awards are named.

The Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016 has the unfortunate distinction of being the largest mass crime directed at LGBTQ+ individuals. Fifty-one years ago the largely unknown Upstairs Lounge fire, which killed 32 people in New Orleans, occurred. Learn more about this tragedy in this week's resources. Note that there are disturbing descriptions and images.

After UpStairs Lounge Fire At New Orleans Gay Bar, An Unwavering Resolve: 'We Never Ran Away' : NPR
The image that has been cultivated of World War II soldiers rarely encompasses the thousands of gays and lesbians who served. This week learn more about the efforts to keep LGBTQ individuals out of service, to discharge those who were subsequently identified, acceptance by their peers, and Army sponsored drag shows.

What It Was Like to Be Gay During WWII Smithsonian Magazine
WW2 and the Progress of the LGBTQ Culture (youtube.com)
Coming Out Under Fire: Trailer (youtube.com)
WWII & NYC: Staging Soldier Shows from Burma to Broadway (youtube.com)
The Role of Drag Performances in Boosting Morale During WWII (youtube.com)
“Gee!! I Wish I Were A Man”: Queer Americans in World War II (wwiimemorialfriends.org)
When the Military Expelled LGBTQ Soldiers With 'Blue Discharges' | HISTORY
Performing Soldiers: Drag as a Safe Space for Men in the American Military (mjhnyc.org)
You may have heard the term "two spirit" associated with Native Americans. Is it the same as LGBTQ+? This week learn about the traditional acknowledgement and acceptance in indigenous cultures of people who reflected gender nonconformity (from the European perspective), including a Zuni "princess" who was a guest at the White House in the 1880s.
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Unbeknownst to many people there was a significant LGBTQ culture in the District of Columbia and other cities long before the Gay Pride movement. This week's resources offer information about the nightlife here and elsewhere, mostly during the 1920s and 1930s.

An era in American history that many people have not heard of became known as the "Lavender Scare." During this decades-long period, thousands of Government workers were fired for being gay because of the supposed security risk. Learn more about this and how ultimately it led to the movement for LGBTQ+ civil rights.

Last week we learned about the Lavender Scare which purged gay people from employment. This week's topic is the Lavender Menace, originally a derisive term to exclude lesbians from the women's rights movement.

For the first week of Pride Month we introduce Arlington resident Lilli Vincenz, lesbian activist beginning in the 1960s. She has been a filmmaker, writer, and ultimately plaintiff in a civil rights case whose issues are still being debated today.

June 2017 - LGBTQA Pride - Lilli Vincenz by Center for Local History, Arlington Public Library