Lesbian Herstory Archives AudioVisual Collections

LHA Daughters of Bilitis Video Project: Linda Lopez, 1988

Title

LHA Daughters of Bilitis Video Project: Linda Lopez, 1988

Description

Linda was born into a military family in Paris, Texas, and moved around frequently. Despite her family being extremely politically conservative, she realized during her teens that she was gay.

While at college at Brigham Young University during the mid-1960s, she met her first partner, Carroll, whom she married, thanks to Carroll’s minister father. However, tragedy struck when Carroll took her own life following her father’s suicide. Following this heartbreak, Linda realized her desire for a child, so she married a second time, this time to a man. After her pregnancy and divorce from her husband, she moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where she was introduced to girl bars by a queen and her partner. Around the time that her son was four months old, she met her second lesbian partner, Cecelia, and began to attend the first Daughters of Bilitis-Dallas chapter meetings.

Successfully contesting and winning a custody battle with her parents over her son, she lost both her job as a certified court reporter for the State of Texas, and her partner, Cecelia, eventually having to create a fake background in order to hold a job.

However, since the early 1970s, she was an officer for DOB-Dallas as the secretary, and remained active in the DOB until the time the Dallas chapter began to dissolve, when she turned her energy towards other gay & lesbian political activist organizations in the area.

Collection Items

  • linda_lopez.jpg

    Linda Lopez is interviewed in 1988. She talks about the impact of the Dallas DOB in Dallas and beyond, how it inspired activism and other organizations. She talks about Rob [Shivers]' leadership and its role in DOB's strength. She discusses Dallas and the South in General - how lesbians were treated and how they lived. She talks about the need for job security, the roles and expectations of women.
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  • linda_lopez.jpg

    Linda Lopez is interviewed in 1988. She talks about growing up in the South and how she fared as a lesbian living in a conservative community. She discusses the Dallas DOB and how the membership consisted of a number of women who had been married, divorced and had kids (including herself). She talks about the custody battle she had with her parents over her son and how many women faced similar battles but with their spouses. She also talks about how she and a number of women lost their jobs when it was discovered that they were lesbians. She discusses the Dallas DOB's events.
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Collection Tree

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