From the 1960s through the 1990s, hundreds of young lesbian women migrated to Eugene, which was known as “Lesbian Mecca.” They worked in businesses traditionally considered to be for men, led community service agencies and held government positions. In addition, these women created a unique culture of music, theater and arts in Eugene. However, much of this lesbian history wasn’t recorded — two UO faculty members decided to change that.
During the summers of 2018 and 2019, Professor Judith Raiskin of the UO Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Linda Long, Curator of Manuscripts in the UO Libraries, set out to record this history. The Eugene Lesbian History Project was born. Raiskin and Long have known each other for decades and both coincidentally ended up in Eugene.
“When I arrived [in 1987], it was clear to me that Eugene was a lesbian town,” Raiskin said at UO’s Queer Film Festival, “Constellations.” “There were so many businesses and collectives and restaurants and political work. In fact, most of the social service agencies in Eugene were run by lesbians.”
Long also noticed Eugene’s rich lesbian history. As she worked on projects over the years, she said she always had the idea in her mind to preserve this history and shared that desire with Raiskin.
“Because of who [Eugene’s lesbians] were and how they wanted to live their lives, they were counterculture to begin with,” Long said. “They didn’t really fit into the mainstream.”
Long and Raiskin interviewed 83 lesbians who lived in Eugene between the 1960s and 1990s. The women talked about their personal lives and their lives in Eugene, social issues of the time and the communities they were a part of. These oral histories are preserved on video, audio and transcripts through UO Libraries, which Long says was very supportive of the project.
At first, Raiskin was concerned about inviting the interviewees to UO because of the group’s suspicion around big institutions. Despite their expectations, they found that around a hundred women had signed up, eager to tell their stories.
“It was so clear to me that they knew that the history that they had lived and the institutions and community that they had created was important,” Raiskin said.
The women who were ultimately part of the project brought in artifacts, papers, records, t-shirts and buttons that captured the late-1900s cultural and political era in Eugene. Long says that she and Raiskin were met with enthusiasm from the participants.
“We’re telling them, ‘your history is important. It has value for people in the future who want to do research on these topics,’” Long said. “You could just see these waves of relief and excitement.”
Raiskin and Long cite two important components of the project. First, preservation was vital for their work, since much of queer history is suppressed, miscatalogued in various archives or isn’t even recorded in the first place.
As a curator, Long preserved the audio transcripts on acid-free archival paper, binding and storing them in a temperature and humidity controlled area. She said it’s possible that the digital record won’t survive future technological advances. The physical copies will guarantee that the information survives hundreds of years into the future.
The second component is accessibility. Written transcripts are provided along with the video interviews to give everyone access to the information. In addition, Raiskin is working with Portland State University Professor Courtney Hermann on a documentary that will be released this year.
“I want regular people, not just academics, to have access to this,” Raiskin said. “I want young people to be able to look at their history.”
Long said that she’s proud of saving an important piece of queer history because she feels a responsibility as a curator to preserve this period of time.
“If we only move forward with saving the mainstream White man history, everything else falls by the wayside,” Long said. “We have to think more like an activist and save things that are just as valid and historically important.”
