Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 1 of 3
Sue, married with children, engages with a local feminist group and begins to re-assess the life she's lived so far.
This extract features Sue, a married woman with children, who was about to make some significant changes in her life. In 1969, at the time of the Stonewall riots in New York, Sue, living in London and married with children, attended women's liberation conferences as well as a small discussion group in Tufnell Park. She didn't feel any lesbian inclinations at that time.
However, on considering that 'the personal was political', Sue made sense of her own situation, seeing that her marriage and the children, despite loving them, were a bind. Sue says that, at the time, there was an idea that women's liberation would make relationships between men and women much better, though, on reflection, Sue admits that she was in that type of relationship with her husband already.
She also recalls that American feminist literature contained much more lesbian content, though British literature was fast catching up. Sue then developed a crush on a younger and more butch girl in her discussion group. Imagining a relationship between them, Sue found that her passion was unrequited, after which she realised that she was being irresponsible since she had children to raise - and she now views her behaviour as self-indulgent.
Born in Illinois, USA, to a Quaker family in 1941, Sue moved to London in the early 1960s after attending college in New York City. She married and had two children and worked as a dancer. She was also involved in various political groups and joined a women's 'consciousness-raising' group in 1969.
Her involvement in feminism caused her to question her marriage and her sexual identity and she began to have relationships with women. Sue worked as a teacher at Holloway Prison and would later join the Spare Rib collective.
Sue had published many books including a collection of autobiographical writings including 'I used to be nice: Reflections on Feminist and Lesbian Politics'.
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GLAM Before Stonewall: LGBT Oral History Project
This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, from individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community.
‘Before Stonewall: An Oral History of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community’ was a Heritage Lottery Funded project organised in 2003 by a Brighton-based organisation 'Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media', otherwise known as GLAM.
The project sought to record for posterity the first-hand recollections of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from across the United Kingdom and beyond, of a time before the events in New York’s Greenwich Village which culminated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This was a time which was very different, and in many respects more oppressive for homosexual and transgender people, than the one we’re familiar with today.
This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, of over one-hundred individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community. With recollections that reach back as far as the 1920s, what all of the interviews describe and reveal is the whole gamut of human experience, from the deeply tragic to the exhilaratingly joyous - all from the perspectives of a section of society that has often been considered to be ‘different from the others’.
Journalist Charlotte Cooper, who worked for the gay press at the time, co-ordinated the project’s video-recording with volunteers and conducted many of the interviews herself. Charlotte describes her time on the project as both a revelatory and profoundly moving experience.
Screen Archive South East has made available from across this collection a total of eighty four extracts from thirty individual interviews. Together they give an insightful and first-hand account of what life was like for LGBT people, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and in both the years before Stonewall and after.
75 videos in this collection
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Jenny's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Eddie's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Chris's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 1 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Peter's Interview Clip 2 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Anthea's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Geoff's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 2 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 3 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 4 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 5 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Rex's Interview Clip 6 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Roger's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 1 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 2 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 4 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jane H's Interview Clip 5 of 5
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jacky's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Jane T's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Sue's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: David's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Joe's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 1 of 2
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Before Stonewall: Michael C's Interview Clip 2 of 2
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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: John's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Michael's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 1 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 2 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 3 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 4 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 5 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Millie's Interview Clip 6 of 6
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Donald's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 1 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 2 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 3 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Sapphire's Interview Clip 4 of 4
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Before Stonewall: Peggy's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Patricia's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 1 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 2 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Dave's Interview Clip 3 of 3
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Before Stonewall: Charlie's Interview Clip 1 of 1
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