Guest Episode: Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows: Mourning in America

Guest Episode: Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows: Mourning in America

Author: Eric Marcus February 15, 2024 Duration: 36:38
Valerie Reyes-Jimenez called it “The Monster.” That’s how some people described HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. Valerie thinks as many as 75 people from her block on New York City’s Lower East Side died. They were succumbing to an illness that was not recognized as the same virus that was killing young, white, gay men just across town in the West Village. At the same time, in Washington, D.C., Gil Gerald, a Black LGBTQ+ activist, saw his own friends and colleagues begin to disappear, dying out of sight and largely ignored by the wider world. In this guest episode from WNYC Studios’ new Blindspot series, hear how HIV and AIDS was misunderstood from the start—and how this would shape the reactions of governments, the medical establishment, and numerous communities for years to come.  Listen and subscribe to the rest of the series here. ——— To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Marcus brings voices out of the past and into the present with Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive. This isn't a dry historical lecture; it's a collection of intimate conversations, built from rare archival recordings that many thought were lost. Each episode feels like sitting down with someone who was there, offering a personal window into the pivotal moments and everyday struggles that have shaped the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from towering figures of the movement alongside people whose names you might not know-ordinary individuals who displayed extraordinary courage. These are the witnesses, the champions, and the quiet heroes whose stories form the bedrock of this history. Listening, you get the raw, unvarnished emotion in their own words, from the fear and defiance of early activism to the hard-won joys of living authentically. The podcast moves across decades, connecting personal diaries, long-shelved interviews, and firsthand accounts into a powerful, human tapestry. It’s about more than just events; it’s about the lived experience, the culture, and the personal health-both mental and physical-of a community fighting for its place. Through these oral histories, the archive becomes a living, breathing conversation, ensuring that this vital history is remembered not as abstract facts, but as the deeply personal stories it truly is.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive
Podcast Episodes
Season 6: Preview [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:00
Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ history. In this previ…
Bonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Craig Rodwell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 15:56
This was the moment Craig Rodwell had been waiting for. He’d been bumping up against the limits of how far the Mattachine Society was willing to challenge the status quo. And when the Stonewall uprising blew things wide…
Bonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:37
Stonewall turned the page on the homophile movement. Pre-Stonewall activists like Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen were dinosaurs in the eyes of some of the gay liberationists, and they found themselves fighting for a pl…
Bonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Morty Manford [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 13:22
Nineteen-year-old Columbia University student Morty Manford thought it was just another night at the Stonewall Inn, but then the police swept in and the raid was on. Morty shared his memories of that night with Eric Marc…
Bonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Marsha P. Johnson & Randy Wicker [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:08
A rebroadcast of Eric’s 1989 interview with Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker. Hear conflicting perspectives on Stonewall from this pair of unlikely roommates. Marsha co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolution…
Stonewall 50: Episode 4:  Live from Stonewall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:31
What made Stonewall different? How can we carry the lessons of the uprising with us today? Eric is joined by one archivist and four activists to answer those questions in an intergenerational conversation recorded at the…
Stonewall 50: Episode 3: "Say it Loud! Gay and Proud!" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:59
Like so many other acts of queer resistance, the 1969 Stonewall riots could have become a footnote in history. But the protests and organizing that followed launched a new phase in the fight for LGBTQ rights. Hear how qu…
Stonewall 50: Episode 1: Prelude to a Riot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:52
Conflict has context. In the first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall 50 season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to hear voices from the turbulent 1960s and…

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