Past events 2019

Many of our recent educational forums, programs and events have been recorded on video and are available for viewing online. Scroll down for information on these programs and links to video recordings.

December 6, 2019

The Rainbow Flag: A Children’s History

Presenters: Michelle Millar Fisher and Kat Huang

An evening of story time welcoming both adults and children that will introduce them to the rainbow flag, the most celebrated symbol of the LGBTQ community. Author Michelle Millar Fisher and illustrator Kat Kuang will read from and describe the process in creating their new children’s book The Rainbow Flag: Bright, Bold and Beautiful (Museum of Modern Art, 2019), a story about artist Gilbert Baker and a group of friends who in 1978 created the colorful flag that would come to be a worldwide emblem of love and an icon of modern design.

October 3, 2019

Remembering a Police Riot: The Castro Sweep of 1989

Panelists: Brian Bringardner, Randi Gerson, Gerard Koskovich, Lester Olmstead-Rose and Bryndis Tobin

On Friday, Oct. 6, 1989, San Francisco police responded violently to a small, peaceful ACT UP march protesting government neglect of people with AIDS. Nearly 200 San Francisco Police Department officers — half of all those on duty — invaded the Castro district for more than three hours, beating activists and passersby, systematically sweeping all pedestrians from seven city blocks and placing thousands in businesses and homes under virtual house arrest. The event came to be known as the Castro Sweep Police Riot. It resulted in three years of civic turmoil, including protests demanding accountability, lawsuits that cost the city some $250,000 in settlements and numerous disciplinary proceedings that revealed the weakness of the city’s civilian police oversight system.

August 9, 2019

Rainbow Rice: Justice for LGBTQ Asian/Pacific Islanders

Panelists: Mohammed Shaik Hussain Ali, Crystal Jang, Amy Sueyoshi, Neo Veavea and Sammie Ablaza Wills. Moderated by Michael Nguyen

Within the LGBTQ community, the experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) people are often marginalized. Queer and trans APIA people face numerous intersectional challenges, including anti-LGBTQ prejudice in their respective ethnic communities, as well as racism and xenophobia within the larger LGBTQ community.

A panel of Bay Area LGBTQ APIA community leaders and activists will consider these particular challenges and discuss their efforts to promote, defend and extend the rights of queer and trans APIA people. This program is cosponsored by the Human Rights Program at Southern Methodist University.

May 16, 2019

The Mayor of Folsom Street: The Life and Legacy of Alan Selby | Exhibition Opening

A new exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society Museum uses archival documents, photographs, artifacts, fine art and digital displays to document the life of Alan Selby, also known as Mr. S., who opened the iconic leather and kink retail store Mr. S. Leather in the SoMa district in 1979. One of San Francisco’s longest-lived and best-known queer retail establishments, Mr. S. Leather grew into a de facto community center as well as an international destination.

Curated by Jordy Jones, Jeremy Prince and Gayle Rubin, and drawing on the Alan Selby papers preserved in the society’s archives, this transdisciplinary exhibition situates Selby’s life within the context of a changing SoMa neighborhood, AIDS charities and the emergence of a distinct queer leather and kink culture.

May 9, 2019

California and the Stonewall Riots

Presented by Marc Stein

The 1969 Stonewall riots, when LGBTQ people fought back against police harassment at a New York bar, are often described as the starting point of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Author Marc Stein will discuss his new book The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History (NYU Press), which situates Stonewall in a broader perspective. After reviewing pre-Stonewall LGBTQ protests in California, Stein will explore how news about the riots reached the West Coast, how Californians viewed the uprising and how Golden State residents responded to the news from New York.

March 1, 2019

Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender

Presented by Cáel M. Keegan.

Lana and Lilly Wachowski have redefined the cinematically possible while joyfully defying audience expectations. Visionary works like Bound (1996), The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), and Sense8 (2015-18) have made them the world's most influential transgender media producers, and their coming out revealed how transgender art has existed at the very center of American culture. In Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender, Cáel M. Keegan explores the Wachowskis's films as both a historical record of transgender experience and a promise that we might learn "to sense beyond the limits of the given world.”

February 13, 2019

Judy, Oz and the Need for Shared History

Presented by Dee Michel

Author Dee Michel, author of Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love The Wizard of Oz, discusses the strong connection between the The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland, and Anglo-American gay male culture.

January 31, 2019

Two Spirit Voices: Returning to the Circle | Exhibition Opening

A new exhibition at the GLBT Historical Society Museum celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits, an organization committed to activism and service to the two-spirit and ally communities of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Curators Roger Kuhn, Amelia Vigil and Ruth Villaseñor focus on four main themes: gay and two-spirit pride, the annual BAAITS Two-Spirit Powwow, indigenous medicine and responses to HIV/AIDS, and two-spirit meaning within indigenous communities. Drawing on regalia and textiles, medicines and herbs, and photography and video on loan from community members, as well as materials recently donated to the GLBT Historical Society archives, the exhibition highlights the resiliency of two-spirit people.