Remembering the ’60s
“Annie” founded the Cincinnati Homophile Organization in 1967. In 1983, Annie told Phebe Beiser what it was like.
Before the Cincinnati Gay Community, before the first march, there was the Cincinnati Homophile Organization, founded in 1967, the earliest gay group in the area that Phebe Beiser has been able to trace.
Its founder was “Annie” (Mary Ann Lederer, now deceased). In 1983, Phebe Beiser of the Ohio Lesbian Archives interviewed Annie for “Interview with an Activist,” published in Dinah, the publication of the Lesbian Activist Bureau, Inc. (pp. 23–27).
Annie talks about realizing at an early age (“When I got glasses… age 5”), coming out amid the civil rights and peace movements of the early ’60s, first loves, and discovering gay bars like the Downstairs Club in Covington.
The same 1983 issue of Dinah includes “Part of the 4%,” in which a writer called Anonymous III remembers lesbian life in Cincinnati in the 1930s and ’40s.
The scanned pages are below. Click any page to read it full size.
