LGBT Hampton Roads (Images of Modern America)

Virginia's Hampton Roads region has long attracted diverse and mobile people, some of whom embraced same-sex love or fluid gender identities long before lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities identified as such. By the mid-1900s, Hampton Roads would lead the state in its development of LGBT institutions and infrastructure. Our Own Press would chronicle the extraordinary burst of creativity and activism that seemed to place LGBT developments in the region on a national stage. In the late 1980s and 1990s, however, military crackdowns and the HIV/AIDS epidemic devastated the leadership of local LGBT communities. Only in the new century would there be a renaissance of networking and engagement to bring the annual Pride Festival to center stage at Town Point Park in Norfolk.

Dr. Charles H. Ford is professor and coordinator of history at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. Dr. Jeffrey L. Littlejohn is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Ford and Littlejohn have coauthored a number of important works in 20th-century Virginian history and were recipients of the Virginia Historical Society's Rachal Award.