Every year the Latin School of Chicago hosts a project week where students explore a topic in-depth and for the first time students have the choice to learn about gay history and issues.
The brainchild of history teacher David Fript, "Gay Activism: The Plague Years" will focus on mid to late 20th century gay activism with a good deal of attention being given to the AIDS epidemic. "The AIDS crisis will be brought to the fore because after Stonewall the AIDS crisis was the galvanizing event for so many gay men's lives throughout the last forty years," said Fript. "You can't look at gay history without having some focus on the AIDS crisis."
Fript noted that they have been covering aspects of LGBT history at the school since the early '90s as a part of the student's junior year U.S. History class and every October students tell their coming out stories but this is the first time a whole week will be devoted to gay history and issues.
Students have a variety of topics to choose from and for some that means staying at the school to explore a topic in-depth for the entire day and for others it means doing a service project either in and around the Chicago area or in different parts of the country. For example, this year a few students will be traveling to the Grand Canyon to work with Native Americans. Project week will take place between March 16-20 and four students ( three girls and one boy ) will be participating in Fript's seminar.
"Of course, there is an educational component and this year I chose to follow up on a thing we did on Rwanda two years ago, said Fript. "We're working with the students in order to help them become better historians by learning how to do oral history. The idea came from the U.S. Holocaust Museum working on getting as many survivor oral histories done as possible.
"Coming out of that particular idea and looking at my students who say things like 'What do you mean gay bars got raided? Gay bars never got raided. You can walk up and down Halsted Street and there are gay people coming in and out of bars. I don't understand what you're talking about?' I came to realize that we have a number of students who don't have any real history of what the gay civil rights movement was about. It just made sense for me to bring in people who've actually lived this experience of being gay from the '40s to the '80s and have them talk about their lives and what it was like to go through the AIDS crisis in the '80s. We have students who don't know who Bette Midler is or what it meant to be gay in those periods and to do it without playing on victimhood. I'm looking at focusing on each part of the LGBT community step by step and since we only have a week that's why we are focusing on gay men and their stories this year because if we tried to get everyone in during that week it would get muddled."
The week will begin with two days of delving into the Gay Rights Movement and the AIDS crisis via short readings from "And the Band Played On" and other resources as well as clips from documentaries such as How to Survive a Plague, Vito: The Life of Gay Activist Vito Russo and The Age of AIDS. Fript shared that the students will learn about Stonewall and the issues surrounding the riots and other events since then so they will know what questions to ask the interview participants. They will be analyzing what they learn from political, legal, ethical, medical and psychological perspectives.
"On Wednesday, I'm going to bring in people who will teach the students how to ask meaningful questions and great follow-up questions. I have a psychologist coming in to explain how you do these interviews," said Fript. "Art Johnson from Sidetrack is coming in to be our first guinea pig. The students will hit him with questions and as he is answering the questions he will stop them if he thinks they've asked the question incorrectly and provide feedback so the students will get the information they are seeking during these interviews."
Victor Salvo, founder and executive director of The Legacy Project, is also slated to come in sometime during the week and talk about what is was like to be an activist during those years, Fript explained.
Fript noted that on Thursday and Friday ( March 19-20 ), the students will be interviewing and recording everyday people who lived through those years. He noted that they already have five or six volunteers who will be coming in to share their stories.
There are a number of things that Fript hopes to accomplish with this project week. "I want the audio recordings stored somewhere safe so historians and the general public will have easy access to them, to turn a portion of the recordings into an eight minute short that the students can show to the rest of the school and maybe put up on Youtube and also allow for intergenerational relationships to form between older LGBT people and the students," said Fript. "Finally, I want to give students a context for what it was like to grow up gay from the '40s to the '80s, most especially those quite gay boys so they can see themselves out there in the faces of the elder gay men who will be sharing their stories."
Fript shared that he's already gotten the OK from Gerber/Hart Library and Archives to store the oral histories and he is in the discussion stages with the Chicago History Museum to store them as well.
"Along with conducting the interviews, students will be asked to write reflections and put together a multi-media presentation that communicates effectively what they have learned from their week-long investigations," said Fript.
Also, Fript said he is "looking for more men of color to share their stories with the students."
Those who are interested in participating in this project as a speaker or oral history participant should email dfript@latinschool.org .
