Daughters of Bilitis Video Project, 1987-1993

Daughters of Bilitis Video Project, 1987-1993

This collection includes videos created as part of the Daughters of Bilitis Video Project collection. The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) was a social and activist group founded in 1955. The video project began in 1987 with the purpose of conducting interviews with the DOB founders and former members documenting their critical role in the gay and lesbian liberation and Civil Rights movement. The interviews focus on the formation and impact of the many DOB chapters around the country. Some of the issues discussed are whether the DOB was primarily a social or activist group, attitudes regarding assimilation, and the "theft" of the DOB publication The Ladder.

Individual interviewees discuss their childhoods, sexual awakenings, personal relationships as well as their first encounters with the DOB and their perspectives on the organization. 

Morgan Gwenwald suggested the project, founding DOB member Sara Yager videotaped all the interviews, and founding DOB member Manuela Soares researched and conducted all of the interviews.

The videos gathered here have been digitized from VHS tapes by students at the Pratt Institute’s Library and Information Science Program. This is a comprehensive collection of the interviews gathered for the Daughters of Bilitis Video Project. The original materials are held in off-site storage by the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

Transcriptions of many of the videotaped interviews are available, thanks to Ruth Helmich, Kelly Anderson, Trista Sordillo, Manuela Soares, and others.

Links to the the individual interviews are at the bottom of the page. 

For more on the DOB, see:

Gallo, M. (2007). Different daughters: A history of the Daughters of Bilitis and the rise of the lesbian civil rights movement. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press.

The Journal of Homosexuality, “The Purloined Ladder,” Volume 34, Numbers 3/4, 1998.