Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project

Open since 1974, the Underground (known in previous eras as the Hibachi Room, and Me and My Arrow) is the longest-running gay bar in local history. The bar did not receive any funding from Erie County's Small Business Grant Program, and now, the Underground is in immediate danger of closing. This is a rough time of year financially for a lot of people, and the pandemic has crunched out community even more. But if you do have the ability, please consider donating to the GoFundMe (linked in the article, and in the comments below) to keep the Underground open.

‘’As we spoke, she plucked a 40-year-old newsletter from an overflowing filing cabinet, flipped through it for a few seconds, and then passed it over for me to examine. There’s so much stuff in here, she marvelled. It’s scary how relevant it still is.’

Our youngest volunteer, but clearly one of our most talented, created this incredible stop-motion video about LGBTQ history before and after the Stonewall uprising. If you like it, give him a follow on Instagram @mistercadaverous Matt Beebe

Today, LGBTQ and feminist organizations across the country and the world have been commemorating the 28th anniversary of the death of feminist and lesbian poet, philosopher, and teacher Audre Lorde. A native of the Bronx (b. in 1934), Lorde was a child of working-class immigrants from the West Indies -- the experience she described in her mytho-memoir Zami: a New Spelling of my Name. Whereas Lorde began to publish poetry in the late 1960s, it was from the mid-70s on that her... influence as a leading voice in the struggle to dismantle the nexus of racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and white supremacy, gained international renown. Lorde visited Buffalo at least once, at the invitation of the feminist collective EMMA, who operated a local feminist bookstore with the same name throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A member of EMMA, Lisa Albrecht, created and ran a literary event series "Voices of Women Writing," which had local feminist writers read next to the likes of Lorde, Barbara Smith, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Adrienne Rich. The national network of feminist writers and small, local, independent bookstores such as EMMA, was the only way to get hold of feminist (and lesbian) texts, let alone see Audre Lorde read in person. It was the networking and sharing of local feminist projects that sustained the movement, before university presses and major publishing houses acknowledged and began to publish thinkers such as Lorde or Smith. Photo: Audre Lorde reading from her book of poetry The Black Unicorn (published in 1978). (To learn more about EMMA and the important role of local feminist bookstores, read the interview with EMMA's members by Adrienne Hill. Link in the comments.)

The Lavender Door, a two-floor dive in Black Rock neighborhood (32 Tonawanda Street), owned by a Buffalonian Deb Kohler, was so central to lesbian life in the 1990s, that when Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center brought in Dorothy Allison and Eileen Myles for readings, the respective afterparties couldn’t take place anywhere else but at the Door. While lesbians, then in their 20s, remember the Door fondly, if somewhat vaguely, older women considered it the second home. Mary Th...omas, a veteran of Buffalo’s lesbian working-class bar scene, herself in the life since the 1950s, reminisces how, in those days, folks were loyal to a bar and would help run it and take care of it. Thomas explains that the Door had rules, and if you wanted to fight or create problems, you were right out the door (interview w. Madeline Davis and Keith Gemerek, 2004). For Eileen Katz, a younger generation of gay liberation activists, the Door was a ready made social life and circle of friends, where you could go alone and not worry. Then in her 30s, Katz recalls a fabulous, free St. Pat’s Day Dinner, the patio in the back, the obligatory pool table, and even, someone’s baby shower. Kohler’s bar operated during the same period of time as the legendary MC Compton’s on Niagara Street, but when Compton’s closed, the Door remained to offer the old school bar atmosphere and a safe haven for a few more years. Photo from Hallwalls calendar for Ways in Being Gay, November 1994, courtesy of Ed Cardoni. Many thanks for the information and the memories to Ed, Ron Ehmke , Eileen Katz, Tim Santmour, Denise D. Sweet, Carol Speser, Steph Bertsch, and others. #lesbianhistory #lesbian #lesbianbar #queerrustbelt #gaybuffalo #buffalohistory #lgbtqhistory #gayhistory #haveprideinhistory

A call for help to Buffalo lesbians and friends: Could someone tell us anything about the lesbian bar The Lavender Door? A cursory search shows that it was located on 32 Tonawanda Street (an empty lot now) and it seems it was closed between the late 1990s and early aughts.

From our friends at : BEYOND BOUNDARIES: DARE TO BE DIVERSE Screening & Discussion Series presents: The Archivettes (2019) ... Please join us for this award winning documentary and post-film discussion with Lesbian Herstory Project co-founders Joan Nestle & Deborah Edel and filmmaker Megan Rossman. RSVP REQUIRED: https://forms.gle/SVtBw7PBoC17AhuQ6 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_EIZSrzyzw This special event is the rescheduled Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies 2020 Women's History program and is partially supported with a grant from the Faculty Staff Association at Buffalo State. Beyond Boundaries screenings are free and open to the public. Please RSVP here: https://forms.gle/SVtBw7PBoC17AhuQ6 Founded in the 1970s in a New York City apartment, The Lesbian Herstory Archives is now the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians. For more than 40 years, the all-volunteer organization has striven to combat lesbian invisibility by literally rescuing history from the trash. This Beyond Boundaries screening was curated by Professors Ruth Goldman and Meg Knowles and is sponsored by: The Women & Gender Studies Interdisciplinary Minor, Buffalo State’s Office of Equity and Campus Diversity, the Communication Department and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.