The afternoon event was the first organized tour in dowtown designed to demonstrate how the Lesbian Guy Bisexual Transgender Queer [LGBTQ] community contributed to Northampton's social, cultural and economic life in the past half-century, according to Bet Power and Elizabeth Kent, who led the on-street history lesson.
Elixabeth Kent and Bet Power NORTHAMPTON - A walking tour showcased the largely untold social history of alternative life-styles in Northampton on Sunday. It was sponsored by Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation, Inc. to raise money for the organization's Sexual Minorities Archives.
The afternoon event was the first organized tour in dowtown designed to demonstrate how the Lesbian Guy Bisexual Transgender Queer LGBTQ community contributed to Northampton's social, cultural and economic life in the past half-century, according to Bet Power and Elizabeth Kent, who led the on-street history lesson.
A recent Smith College graduate, Kent, 23, produced much of the research that includes her mapping 40 significant locations -- of bookstores, retail shops, churches, cultural centers and a lesbian-only boarding house.
What was once the Green Street lesbian rooming house, and most recently Green Street Café was torn down by Smith College, the property owner, earlier this year.
“I thought it was really interesting because they had log books" that tenants living there used to discuss their lives, Kent said. “Really basic things like what bar they wanted to go to and stuff like, one of the girls was a DJ at one of the local bars.”
The logs, totaling about 76, have been preserved by Smith College and are part of the Sophia Smith collection.
Smith College Professor of Women and Gender Studies Kelly Anderson was among the 30 participating in the walking tour and said she had begun using the logs for instructional purposes.
"My interest was really piqued after the razing of the cafe," Anderson said.
"The logs are great," she said. "This was the primary way of communicating pre-email, pre-texting." The logs document ups and downs of life, of relationships falling apart.
"The current climate of inclusion of LGBTQs in Northampton didn't begin today, and it didn't come from nowhere," Power told the walkers.
"National attention began for Northampton's lesbian community in the 1980s due to the extensive underground of groups and businesses they built here in the 1970s,” Power said, adding: “Today there are scarce few lesbians, gay men, trans-people, bisexuals, and queers living in the U.S. who have never passed through Northampton or lived here at some point in time," Power said.
Mitch Boucher is on the Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation board of directors.
He said the walk is important, and others are planned for later this year.
"It shows we have a really strong history here that has not been fully articulated," he said. "We are bringing lesbian history out of the closet and onto the street."