This Pride Month, we’d like to honor the contribution the LGBTQ+ community has made to literature and to FSU Libraries. We had the opportunity to interview Haley McGuyre, a Graduate Assistant with Special Collections, and discuss their experience working on the LGBTQ+ Oral Histories Project at FSU Libraries. The full interview can be found below.
Continue reading Celebrating Pride Month with FSU LibrariesTag: Pride Month
POP LIT Picks for PRIDE Month
June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month, a time to recognize and highlight the LGBTQ community as well as reflect on the history of the movement. One way to do that is to read books about and written by LGBTQ voices. This month’s pop lit picks will highlight several such fiction and nonfiction books in FSU Libraries’ Pop Lit Collection which include everything from memoirs to romance to science fiction/fantasy. Enjoy these LGBTQ titles this June and all year round!
Continue reading POP LIT Picks for PRIDE MonthThe Pride Student Union Records, 1964-2015
By: Hannah Wiatt Davis
We are excited to announce our most recently processed collection, the Pride Student Union Records, 1964-2015. Now a major fixture in the Student Government Association, the collection documents Pride’s predecessor organizations and their steps towards becoming an official agency, introducing non-discrimination policies on campus, and empowering FSU’s LGBTQ+ population.
In 1969, gay and lesbians in Tallahassee organized the People’s Coalition for Gay Rights, which later became the Alliance for Gay Awareness, as a response to the Stonewall Riots. The group was primarily a political organization active in the gay rights movement of the 1970s. In 1973, staff of the University Mental Health Center (now the Student Counseling Center) formed Gay Peer Counseling to provide support and counseling for gays and lesbian students. It became the most active LGBTQ+ group on campus in the early 1970s. In 1978, the group evolved into the Gay Peer Volunteers (GPV), which provided students opportunities for services in the community outside of the counseling environment. To include all students directly served by this student organization, the Gay Peer Volunteers changed its name to the Gay/Lesbian Student Union (GLSU) in 1989, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Student Union (LGBSU) in 1994, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Student Union (LGBTSU) in 1998, and finally Pride Student Union in 2005.
The collection contains administrative records, promotional materials, artwork and banners, newspapers, and journal and magazine clippings produced and collected by the organization since the late 1960s. Spanning from meeting minutes to posters for drag shows, protest banners and queer literature, the Pride Student Union Records provide a varied look at the voices of the LGBTQ+ community in Tallahassee.
To see more photographs, ephemera, and artifacts related to the history of Florida State, check out the FSU Heritage Protocol Digital Collections or like the Heritage Protocol Facebook page.