The Lavender Names Project is collecting stories of government persecution against LGBTQ+ San Diegans.
Submitted photos will show after each performance of “Fellow Travelers” at the San Diego Opera next year. The gay love story is set against the Lavender Scare — the interrogation and mass firing of LGBT U.S. civil servants in the 1950s.
“One of the ironies of this time period is that it was all about keeping records on people and keeping files, but those files have never been released,” said Kevin Newbury, director of the opera.
Newbury, along with the American LGBTQ+ Museum, the Up Until Now Collective, and local librarians and archivists, took it upon himself to create a record.
“Sharing stories — I mean, in many ways, that's all we have, right?” he said.
He first directed “Fellow Travelers” for its premiere in 2016 in Cincinnati.
“In the lobby after, people are crying and sharing intergenerational stories and saying, ‘You know, this happened to me,’ or, ‘This happened to my grandfather, who never came out of the closet but he lost his job in 1953,’” he said. “We've extended this all the way through, ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ in the United States military and sadly to today, because there are many people that are losing their jobs, especially in our trans and nonbinary community, in DC and beyond,” Newbury said. “I never thought that we would be including people that were getting fired today.”
The Lambda Archives in San Diego has been culling its archives for local stories and photos to contribute: The ‘Dixon Six’ — women stationed on the USS Dixon in San Diego in the 1970s during a witch hunt to “ferret out the lesbians” from the Navy; “die-in” protests against the U.S. government’s lack of response to the AIDS crisis; more protests against San Diego police raids of gay bars in the 1970s.
Each photo represents a life and a story they hope to pass on to future generations.
“It's not a new form of persecution. And the LGBTQ+ community, you know, we're no strangers to attacks on our rights and our livelihood and who we are as people,” said, Nicole Verdés managing director of Lambda Archives.
The submissions may eventually be exhibited at the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York.
Verdés said this history can help us navigate a present when transgender people are banned from the military and others are denied pronoun changes on their passports.
“It also gives a — kind of like a hope. You know? That we've been here before, that we've fought these types of persecutions before, and we've continued to sustain and fight and move forward,” they said.
