Scope and Contents This project interviewed current and former residents to record details about their lives and viewpoints living in a place that, although highly stigmatized and marginalized, has been their home and that of their kin and other members of vital social networks for decades. In documenting the added tension of a community undergoing the dramatic and inexorable shifts of urban redevelopment, changes the community did not request or desire, this project endeavors to capture a disappearing way of...

Abstract

Ms. Prout discusses her experiences in grade school and living in public housing in Boston, her introduction to the gay world, moving to New York City in the 1950s and gay and transgender culture then, the influence of trans women from D.C. on the New York scene, and her decision to move to D.C. based on those relationships and its status as Chocolate City.

Scope and Content Note

The collection consists of the organizational records of Washington Inner-­City Self Help (WISH) from 1978 to 2005 and includes financial paperwork, correspondence, notes, newspaper clippings, flyers, event brochures, photographs, video, and professional documents. Most of the materials are in English with a few materials in Spanish.