Houston Has US's Oldest Continuous LGBT Organization

[Reefmonkey]

Today's Houston Matters episode on KUHF, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, discussed the Diana Foundation, and organization I hadn't heard of, that started with an Oscars viewing party in someone's apartment the night of the very first televised Academy Awards in 1953. It is the oldest continuously active gay foundation in the country. They've published a book on the history of the foundation, and you can flip through the book for free online. It's an interesting snapshot of what life was like for gay and lesbian Houstonians through the years, especially for me, to see what things were like before the 80s, when I first became aware of the gay community through my mother's theatre friends, right around the time when they first started being able to be out in public.

 

https://www.dianahistorybook.com/

[Clementine]

On 6/28/2019 at 1:46 PM, Reefmonkey said:

Today's Houston Matters episode on KUHF, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, discussed the Diana Foundation, and organization I hadn't heard of, that started with an Oscars viewing party in someone's apartment the night of the very first televised Academy Awards in 1953. It is the oldest continuously active gay foundation in the country. They've published a book on the history of the foundation, and you can flip through the book for free online. It's an interesting snapshot of what life was like for gay and lesbian Houstonians through the years, especially for me, to see what things were like before the 80s, when I first became aware of the gay community through my mother's theatre friends, right around the time when they first started being able to be out in public.

 

https://www.dianahistorybook.com/

I don’t know much about it, but I do know that once Pride Month was coming around, the Eagle in Montrose put up a timeline of the LGBT rights movement in the upstairs bar that included the founding of the Diana Foundation in 1953 and stated that it’s was the oldest (still surviving) group. I’ve really wanted to look more into that since it affects me directly also.