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Contact me if you would like to write your own personal history or conduct an oral history to be posted on this page. The 1920s The 1930s The 1940s | | Frank Burton (pseudonym; OC 49)
Oral history
I knew a guy at Oberlin who was thrown out because another guy reported him for being queer. We all thought it was a travesty… | The 1950s | | George Brenner (pseudonym; OC 50)
Oral history  (with audio clip)
I discovered a whole gay world had come out. And that was the wonderful revelation for me. And I joined them… |  | Rev. Robert Wood (Graduate School of Theology 51)
Oral history (with audio clip)
We called it the Throne Room because it was always occupied by the queens on campus… |  | David Fisher (OC 51)
Essay
A year or two later I heard that the waiter had attempted suicide, and I wondered if it was somehow related to our furtive episode… | | | Bobbi Keppel (OC 55)
Oral history (with audio clip)
These people were mostly expatriates from England, because at that time the sodomy law was twenty years in jail… |  | Bill Vance (OC 56)
Oral history
And so long as I remained religious, of course, it was something I was praying against, and agonizing over at night… |  | Allan Spear (OC 58)
Oral history (with audio clip)
Professor Artz was a classic queen who made no attempts to conceal his effeminate manners and his elegant “bachelor” lifestyle… |  | Thomas Tibbetts (OC 59)
Oral history (with audio clip)
I felt very little homophobia…and there were very notable, very well-placed homosexuals in the institution… | The 1960s  | Larry Palmer (OC 60)
Oral history (with audio clip)
We went to see the very revered head of the theory department, Robert Melcher…and just very frankly said we’ve fallen in love… |  | Tony Wells (OC 62)
Essay
We…thought we were becoming members of the same elite, glamorous fraternity as Tchaikovsky and Proust and Gide… |  | Gale Kramer (OC 63)
Essay
I was terrified! I went secretly and ashamedly to the county mental health clinic in Elyria… |  | Robert Stiefel (OC 63)
Essay
In a folder marked “Oberlin” was every letter or scrap of paper that I
had ever sent Michael, even things written on napkins. |  | François Clemmons (OC 67)
Oral history
That’s where I first heard about the Harlem Renaissance and all of the writers that ultimately turned out to be gay… |  | Roger Goodman (OC 68)
Oral history (with audio clips)
I loved being the Oberlin College scandal… | The 1970s The 1980s  | Alison Bechdel (OC 81)
“Coming Out Story” Comic
In a cruel twist of fate, I found myself fending off nerdboys, while my wildly popular, hip heterosexual roommate had discovered real live lesbians! |  | John “Martey” Young (OC 83)
Essay
He was one of the “banished” brothers from the Black community on campus because of his open homosexuality… |  | Dennis Rosenbaum (OC 84)
Essay
I would have to say that the most important lesson I learned while at Oberlin was that it was okay to be me… |  | Leslie Myers (OC 85)
Oral history (with audio clip)
This was at a time politically when there was a lot of separatism in communities of color… | The 1990s The 2000s  | Corey Dargel (OC 01)
Essay
We decided to promote the concert using something less ordinary than a standard concert poster… |  | Paul Hickman (OC 01)
Oral history (with audio clip)
If you were transgendered, you transitioned or you made a whole lot of effort to pass… |  | Alicia Eler (OC 06)
Essay
Before I went to Oberlin, I thought that I knew everything about being queer… | Participate The success of this community history website depends on your participation! Help preserve and enrich the record of Oberlin’s LGBT history by contacting me to - write a first-person essay about your Oberlin experiences.
- conduct and transcribe an oral history.
- transcribe some of the over fifty oral histories already conducted with alumni, professors, and staff.
- report typos!
Want to learn more about participating, or have a question?
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