Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project

The Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (OLOHP) is an oral-history initiative devoted to documenting the lives, memories, and perspectives of older lesbians, particularly women born during the first half of the twentieth century. The project was established in 1998 by Arden Eversmeyer, a retired public-school teacher and counselor and a lesbian community activist in Houston, Texas. Eversmeyer began the project after seeing lesbian friends born in the 1920s and 1930s grow older and die, raising concern that their experiences would disappear without being recorded. OLOHP centers its work on interviews with lesbians aged 70 and above. Its interviewees have diverse backgrounds and geographic origins; although the United States is the principal setting, the collection also includes women from other parts of the world. Volunteers ask participants about childhood, family relationships, education, work, community, intimate relationships, and adult life. A central purpose is to understand how identifying and living as a lesbian shaped each woman's choices, opportunities, relationships, sense of self, and participation in community life. The interview approach allows participants to decide how much they wish to disclose about sexuality and intimate experience rather than treating those subjects as mandatory topics. The project is both a historical record and a community-based preservation effort. Its materials capture experiences that are often underrepresented in conventional archives, including the effects of social stigma, changing lesbian and feminist movements, family expectations, employment, aging, and community formation. By recording first-person testimony, OLOHP helps preserve personal accounts of lesbian life across changing social and political eras. Project volunteers have collected more than 750 stories from women around the world. The resulting materials include interview transcripts, audio recordings, photographs, and related archival documents. These holdings are preserved in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith College Libraries in Northampton, Massachusetts. OLOHP has also made its work available through two published collections: A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories, issued in 2009, and Without Apology: Old Lesbian Life Stories, issued in 2012. The project is therefore best understood not as a conventional commercial brand, but as a documentary, archival, and cultural-history initiative whose principal offerings are recorded testimony, published oral histories, and preserved research materials.

The Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project was founded in 1998 by Arden Eversmeyer, a retired public-school teacher and counselor and a lesbian community activist based in Houston. Its creation grew out of Eversmeyer's concern that the experiences of older lesbians were at risk of being lost. She had watched lesbian friends born in the 1920s and 1930s age and die, and recognized that many of their life stories had not been systematically recorded or made available to later generations. From its beginning, OLOHP adopted a community-centered oral-history model. The project focuses especially on interviewing lesbians aged 70 and older, while also seeking a range of social, geographic, and personal backgrounds. Most participants have been connected to the United States, but the collection includes women from other countries and regions. Volunteers invite interviewees to discuss their upbringing, families, relationships, work, communities, and adult lives. The interviews are intended not simply to establish dates and events, but to understand how lesbian identity and experience affected participants' decisions, relationships, opportunities, and interpretations of their own lives. The project's interviewing philosophy gives participants substantial control over the boundaries of their testimony. Interviewers may address sexuality and intimate life, but participants are not required to discuss sex. OLOHP's stated approach is to permit women to share those experiences if they choose while concentrating more broadly on the ways being lesbian influenced their lives. This method reflects the project's emphasis on preserving individual voices rather than forcing every interview into a uniform narrative. OLOHP's historical significance lies in its attention to people and experiences that have often been omitted from mainstream historical records. The interviews can illuminate the social conditions faced by lesbians across much of the twentieth century, including family expectations, concealment, discrimination, community building, activism, changing ideas about identity, and the experience of aging. The collection also preserves differences among interviewees rather than presenting a single account of lesbian history. Volunteers have gathered more than 750 stories from women around the world. The project has produced both archival and published outputs. Its materials include transcripts, audio recordings, photographs, and other documentation. These holdings are archived in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith College Libraries in Northampton, Massachusetts, where they can support research and historical preservation. OLOHP has also issued two books based on its oral histories. A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories was published in 2009, followed by Without Apology: Old Lesbian Life Stories in 2012. Together, these publications extend the project's work beyond the original interviews and make selected accounts accessible to readers who may not consult the full archival collection. The project is consequently best characterized as a nonprofit or community documentary initiative rather than a consumer-facing commercial brand. Its enduring contribution is the preservation and circulation of first-person histories of older lesbians.

• 2012

  Second oral-history book published

  [1]Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Projecten.wikipedia.org

  Without Apology: Old Lesbian Life Stories provided a second published collection drawn from the project's interviews.

• 2009

  First oral-history book published

  [1]Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Projecten.wikipedia.org

  A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories brought selected project interviews into book form.

• 1998

  Project founded

  [1]Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Projecten.wikipedia.org

  Arden Eversmeyer established the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project to preserve the experiences of older lesbians whose stories might otherwise be lost.

• Collection archived at Smith College

  [2]Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project archival finding aidasteria.fivecolleges.edu

  Project transcripts, audio, photographs, and related materials became part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith College Libraries.

A community-based archival and oral-history project preserving first-person accounts of older lesbian life for historical, educational, and cultural use.

• Archival oral histories · 1998

  Oral-history interviews

  Recorded interviews with lesbians, particularly those aged 70 and older, covering childhood, family, work, relationships, community, identity, and the effects of living as a lesbian. The project has collected more than 750 stories from women in the United States and elsewhere.

• Book · 2009

  A Gift of Age: Old Lesbian Life Stories

  A 2009 book presenting selected oral histories collected through the project. It extends the archive's first-person accounts into a published format for readers, educators, and researchers interested in lesbian history and aging.

• Book · 2012

  Without Apology: Old Lesbian Life Stories

  A second published collection of OLOHP oral histories, released in 2012. The volume adds further personal testimony to the project's documentary record of older lesbian lives.

• Archive

  Sophia Smith Collection archival holdings

  The preserved project holdings include interview transcripts, audio recordings, photographs, and related materials. They are housed in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith College Libraries in Northampton, Massachusetts.

1. 1Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Projecten.wikipedia.org
2. 2Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project archival finding aidasteria.fivecolleges.edu