Description
Celebrate LGBTQ History Month with Cambridge Public Library and Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission. We'll be joined by local historian and author Sarah Boyer for a presentation and Q&A about Cambridge's own LGBTQ+ history.
In 2015, Lois Johnson, former president of the Boston Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), invited oral historian Sarah Boyer to help interview former DOB members. Together they interviewed 21 lesbians who were part of the emerging gay liberation movement. Johnson, who died in 2020, wanted a book on the history of Boston-Cambridge DOB. Coming Out, Becoming Ourselves: Lesbian Stories from the Boston Daughters of Bilitis, 1969-1999, ensures that these stories of courage and love for other women become part of the historical record in the struggle of all queer people to live their lives without fear.
Sarah Boyer served as oral historian at the Cambridge (MA) Historical Commission from 1997 to 2015. She authored four books on Cambridge neighborhoods and one on World War II and the Home Front in Cambridge. Most recently, Boyer authored Coming Out, Becoming Ourselves: Lesbian Stories from the Boston Daughters of Bilitis, 1969-1999 about Boston-Cambridge's chapter of the Lesbian activist group Daughters of Bilitis. Refreshments will be provided.