James Bouknight, MD, PhD (pronouns: He/His), white psychiatrist, speaks of growing up, family life, education and his personal and professional life. Born into a "close and loving family" in rural South Carolina, he grew up on a farm worked by others, his parents being teachers, and his maternal grandparents being a very supportive presence. He always knew he "wasn't like other kids", wasn't athletic, but excelled in school, attending Bishopville High School, as it was being integrated, calling off the junior senior. Aware of a flamboyant gay youth at school, and a gay man who was available for sex in Bishopville, Bouknight did not identify with them and was glad to start dating women when he attended Wofford, the fourth generation of his family to do so. Attending graduate school at Duke University was not a positive experience so Bouknight switched to the University of South Carolina where he had his first relationship with a man and earned his PhD in economics. He considers that relationship a "bad influence" since the man was closeted and engaged to be married. Bouknight then taught at Converse College, in an era when dating between professors and students was encouraged; he married the president of the student body, and their married life began well. He moved into the private sector and eventually became Chair of the Department of Business and Economics at Columbia College and his wife began law school. With time on his hands, Bouknight, keeping fit, began attending the YMCA in Columbia, SC, discovering it had an active gay scene, and his wife, learning of an affair he had with a man, demanded a divorce. It was a difficult time, leading to depression and financial straits. Finding a niche with happy, well-adjusted gay men in Columbia was a positive experience, and Bouknight began a relationship with Bob Stutts, another professor at Columbia College. At age thirty-five, he decided to enter medical school, realizing that the poor medical care his mother had received had led to her death. He attended the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, was out, and was friends with many other gay medical students. He did his residency in psychiatry at the Department of Mental Health in Columbia, SC, founding and running an AIDS support group; he eventually worked for a hospital and had a private practice, including many LGBTQ patients. When his relationship with Bob Stutts ended, he met Ramsey Still, whom he married in Maryland in 2013. He became board certified in geriatric psychiatry, one of the first in the state, and now, semi-retired, lives with his husband in Charleston, SC. At the end of the interview, Bouknight speaks of the illness and eventual death of his medical school friend, Olin Jolley, MD, of AIDS, and how those who are ill and dying are often put in the unfair position of taking care of those who visit them.
Barbara Nicodemus (pronouns: She/Hers), white retired school teacher, discusses her life, which she describes as "pretty boring," "pretty golden," and one lived under a "miracle cloud." Growing up in a close-knit, loving and accepting Catholic family in Indianapolis, IN, she accompanied her parents to marches and rallies in Chicago as a youngster. She attended Catholic schools (where she had to get permission to take physics instead of home economics), Ball State University, and Purdue, majoring in science education and later in biochemistry, when it was unusual for women to do so. Involved with another woman academician, she helped organize and run a women's center, "really a lesbian" center, and never encountered any sort of pushback there for her views or actions. She gave up working at Eli Lilly and Company, not agreeing with their philosophy, and moved with partner to various other universities, eventually moving to Clemson, SC. Starting a new career, Nicodemus became a high school teacher and had her education loans forgiven by teaching in the rural area of Walhalla, South Carolina. There, she was a "breath of fresh air," being out, when so many people were not. She continued to live under that "miracle cloud" of never facing any prejudice against her for being a lesbian, which she attributes to her personally being "passable" in her looks, and due to the Southern pattern of behavior of not being confrontational. After a year-and-a-half of attempts at artificial insemination, she gave birth to twin girls, whom she and her partner raised. While their relationship ended, the women remained close both emotionally and geographically. Nicodemus started and ran the "Upstate Women's Community" for lesbians for about ten years, putting on events to raise funds to help publish a newsletter. Teaching school, she was a role model for some students and staff and she expressed her disapproval once when an older friend dated a student. Retiring, she moved to Charleston with her wife, where she is involved with the Charleston Social Club, has joined book clubs (one specifically for lesbians), and volunteers to work with senior dementia patients. In speaking on LGBTQ topics, she notes her belief that gay men, like her brother, who also has children, might face more discrimination that gay women do; she describes her long-standing attendance at a women's festival, ponders its stand as terfs, trans-exclusionary radical feminists, not opening the festival to trans women, and questions her own thoughts on the topic. Being LGBTQ has just made her human, she feels, earlier noting that LGBTQ people often work harder than their straight peers, just to prove their worth. She ends the interview suggesting that while she has lived a life "in neutral," she has occasionally, when needed, shifted into "drive."
Tony Williams (pronouns: He/Him/His), white director and CEO of Charleston Pride, was born in Charleston, SC, grew up in Goose Creek, and after a childhood of moving to a variety of places on the east coast, he returned to the area in 1999. A College of Charleston graduate, Williams now works in software at Blackbaud. The interview begins with Williams discussing his earliest childhood memories, his relationships with his sister, parents and extended family and how he came out to them after coming to terms with his sexuality as a gay man. He describes the "transition" from identifying as bisexual in high school to fully accepting that he was gay in college, and the importance of LGBTQ gathering places in the greater Charleston area. These gathering places, primarily LGBTQ bars like Patrick's, Dudley's, Pantheon, The Chart, and D?j? Vu, as well as the mentorship of College of Charleston professor Tom_Chorlton helped him to find community in Charleston. Williams discusses his concerns regarding the current popularity and primacy of identity politics and labeling, and he notes a growing "isolation" within society, due possibly to the increasing dependency on apps and technology, and the impact it has had within LGBTQ communities. William then recounts the histories of local groups such as the Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA) and We are Family; and discusses the developments of Charleston Pride. He started as a volunteer with the event when it was in North Charleston, founded by Lynn Dugan and describes its move to downtown Charleston where it has greater visibility. He also speaks to the event's growth from just a single day event, "a parade, a festival, and an after-party", into a weeklong series of events celebrating LGBTQ life and culture. He ends his interview mentioning his involvement in the early planning of the development of a LGBTQ center in Charleston, modeled after similar centers in other cities._
George Thomas Lamme (Pronouns: He/Him/His), discusses his early years in Nebraska, moving to New York City and Chicago, and then settling in Charleston, SC where he became involved in many LGBTQ related projects and businesses. Growing up gay and Catholic in Beemer, Nebraska, Lamme always knew he was different; engaging in cowboy and Indian games, he always played Big Ruby, "a bar girl". Attending a Lutheran college, he intended to be a priest, but eventually became a teacher in a Catholic school in his hometown instead. Pursuing some legal action against the school, he was threatened with being outed by the administration if he did not quit; it was recommended he move to New York City. There, he pursued his interest in theatre, working with H.M. Koutoukas and La Mama's avant gard theatre, among other things. Moving to Chicago, where he had worked in the box office of the Academy Festival Theatre, he met David Cardwell and Jeff Miller, who moved to Charleston, SC. In 1978, Lamme came to visit and never left. He was instrumental in finding backers for their bar Les Jardins, soon working there, writing, staging, and directing various musical spoofs and tributes. He also was befriended by Richard (Dick) Robison, whose Garden and Gun Club Lamme later joined as staff. He describes the small "quiet? beautiful" town Charleston was, its social structure and its class of closeted gay men. "Everybody knew that there were important people in the city? who had boyfriends," he notes. "But Charleston was such a polite city, you don't bring up that subject because? [t]hat person is a good person?." As a bartender and a door man, he was involved with selecting or rejecting those applying for membership, and got to know drag queens, society women, bar owners, other bars and bar patrons, many of which he describes. He also became active in the founding and running of Helping Hands dedicated to raising awareness of HIV and AIDS and raising funds for people with AIDS. He reflects on some of the earlier aspects of gay life in the city, speaks of attending local and national LGBTQ parades, describes the devastation of Hurricane Hugo, his work in hotel banqueting, as a guide at the Calhoun (now Williams) Mansion, and in the tourism office of the City of Charleston. He ends by affirming how satisfying it is to see LGBTQ people out in the community, describing how children and others realize he is gay, and how he loves "the fact that not a single person makes any trouble for anyone walking hand in hand in Charleston right now."
Jensen Cowan (pronouns: They/Them) was born July 4, 1997 in Brandon, Florida, and discusses growing up in Socastee, adjacent to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in an emotionally and verbally abusive home. They discuss chosen family and close friends, their relationship with their mother and four sisters in a blended family and what it meant to leave home to start a new life at the College of Charleston, with mentions of being in the Bonner Leadership Program there. Cowan describes the struggles of separating from their family financially and finding a method to pay for school. Working with We Are Family and attending functions of Alliance for Full Acceptance (AFFA), Cowan felt “discrepancies in maturities” in various groups, eventually finding supportive friends and neighbors to help with personal issues and the need for food. Cowan discusses identifying as queer, nonbinary, and trans, mentions a fundraiser they started to help pay for surgery and speaks of their capstone project to map all the gender-neutral bathrooms on the College of Charleston campus. Cowan notes a lack of response from College administrators on this and other LGBTQ oriented issues, describes the inconveniences and disruptions caused to their college studies by this lack of facilities and speaks to the insensitivity of some faculty and friends in using offensive vocabularies and inappropriate pronouns. Cowan and the interviewer discuss the lack of diversity within Charleston Pride, and the larger LGBTQ movement as a whole, while praising classes and faculty, such as Dr. Kristi Bryan, within the College’s Women’s & Gender Studies program and the positive effect it has had on them and others. The interview closes with a discussion of Cowan’s plans for the future after graduating in May 2019, having earlier mentioned a disinclination to return to working as an educator/camp counselor at Kids On Point (formerly Chucktown Squash), due to the fact that the students there would have known them under a different name.
As part of 2019 Pride Week on the College of Charleston campus, local television journalist Megan Rivers moderates and interviews four speakers at an "LGBTQ+ Justice: The Road Ahead Panel Discussion" sponsored by the Charleston American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Ryan White Wellness Center. The panelists introduce themselves sequentially and then, slightly out of order, each one answers one question posed by Rivers. Cora Webb (pronouns: she/her/they/them), Program Director of We Are Family, addresses issues facing LGBTQ+ youth such as bullying; the failure of schools to stop it; bathroom access for trans students; and the state's "No Promo Homo" law prohibiting discussion of queer identifies except in a negative light. Michael Luciano (pronouns: he/him) speaks on HIV and AIDS as a Peer Treatment Educator at Palmetto Community Care, a member of the National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project, the Southern AIDS Coalition, the Southern AIDS Strategy Coalition, the Tri-County Sexual Health Awareness Prevention and Education Initiative (SHAPE Tri-County), and other councils and committees. He mentions living with HIV for decades and focuses on SC state laws that target, criminalize. and stigmatize people living with HIV. Jerry Evans (pronouns: he/him), introducing himself as gay lawyer passionate about First Amendment issues, then discusses "religious refusal" and court cases pitting religious objections on certain topics against equal protection under the law for LGBTQ+ and other people. The last to be introduced, Kenya Cummings (pronouns: she/her/they/them), the Opportunities Organizer for Carolina Youth Action Project, speaks of her organization that serves and educates for girls, trans youth and gender non-conforming youth. She advocates for comprehensive sex education and discusses the state's over reliance on School Resource Officers (SROs), law enforcement officers who apply police tactics instead of educational approaches in difficult situations in schools, creating more problems than they solve.
John Martin Taylor (pronouns: He/His/Him) born in Baton Rouge, LA in 1949, discusses his youth, university years, his travels, various careers in art and the culinary world, his family, friends, lovers and his husband. His father was a scientist with the Manhattan Project who moved the family to Orangeburg, S.C. Taylor speaks of a happy outdoor childhood, with some African American friends in the segregated South and little awareness of gay life or issues. The family also summered at Hilton Head, S.C. before its development, giving Taylor firsthand experience with the land and its foodways. He attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga. at two different times, for undergraduate and graduate degrees. He speaks at length of the artistic circles there, including that of the musical group, The B-52s, whose first concerts he attended and with whom he remained friends, later describing their visit to the Charleston gay bar, Les Jardins. He came to Charleston, S.C. in 1975, left for the Virgin Islands, and lived in Paris, France and in Italy, pursuing a career as a visual artist and a photographer, eventually, becoming American Liaison and Food Editor of the French periodical ICI New York. Returning to Charleston, he had little to do with the local gay scene, feeling an equal attraction to men and women, or mostly to particular individuals who interested him. As his love for cooking grew, influenced by what he calls his strong “maternal instinct,” his childhood experience crabbing and fishing in the Lowcountry, his mother’s culinary skills, and his father’s interest in wines, he began to focus on a career. After learning the business in New York City, Taylor opened Hoppin’ John’s, a cookbook store in Charleston, and quickly became the recognized expert on Lowcountry and regional cooking and foodways, eventually publishing articles on the topic in local, regional and national publications. A serendipitous find of a manuscript cookbook from St. John’s Parish of Berkeley County prompted and nourished further research. After recovering from the damage done to his bookstore by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, Taylor published his first book, Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking in 1992. He has published three books since then and mentored many while enjoying the friendship and respect of leading scholars in the field. Taylor notes the changes in the local culinary and restaurant scene, lauding many chefs and proprietors for their contributions. He and Mikel Lane Harrington were married in Washington, D.C. in 2010. Through Harrington’s work with the Peace Corps, the couple, based in Savannah, Ga. and Washington, D.C. have lived in various locations across the world.
Terry Cherry (pronouns: She/Her/Hers), white police officer, discusses the path of her life from birth in North Carolina, to education in California and elsewhere, to her service, in a number of capacities, as an out LGBTQ person in the Charleston, SC police force. She was born in Pinehurst, NC into a Methodist family. Her parents were both professors and very accepting and loving. Identifying as boy, she felt constricted by what society demanded of her, and went into therapy as a child to help with her anger at the situation. She attended UCLA, and when studying abroad in Australia, she reached a crisis when she nearly died from influenza. At her recovery, she decided to live as fully and honestly as possible. She came out to her parents, at first assuming she would be a disappointment and "imperfect," something her family totally rejected. At the Church of Christ-affiliated Pepperdine University, getting an MBA, she stressed LGBTQ issues and after graduating, she worked in the private sector before asking herself, "What can I do to make a memorable impact?" Turning to law enforcement, she went through the San Diego Police Academy training and in 2012 returned, hesitantly, to the Lowcountry where she has family. Expecting to find herself in a more conservative environment, she nevertheless lived openly in her daily life and work for the Charleston Police Force. She first served as a patrol officer on James and Johns Island, where she made an "investment" in learning the culture and heritage of the community, becoming a valued friend to many. She was officer of the year in 2017 and was among the first on the police force to participate in the Pride parade. Throughout the interview, Cherry speaks of the need to be oneself, to always expect the best of all situations, and others, and to ignore stereotypes, while working for social justice. She also notes that the Charleston Police Department, where she has worked as liaisons to the LGBTQ and Latinx communities, and now serves as the head of recruitment activities, has become a leader in the nation in diversity and inclusion, while not necessarily advertising the fact. She also gives a few brief vignettes of her professional life, referencing working the Emanuel AME massacre, talking a young lesbian out of suicide, and other incidents. She also discusses the city of Charleston's hate crimes ordinance.
Narrator_042 (Pronouns: He/Him/His), who requested the withholding of his name from the interview, discuses growing up in a small town in South Carolina as part of a financially "pretty well-off" blended family. At a young age, he began to notice that he was different. Realizing that he identified as gay, the narrator encountered resistance and hostility from family members. He recounts his experiences of starting to embrace his identity. In the process, he experienced "a lot of acceptance from friends," but at home, he realized "things were kind of shunned away or seen as just wrong," or even "demonic." He details his family's denial of his sexuality, their attempts to rid him of what they viewed as a "demon," and their attempts to maintain a strict home life structured around religion and scripture. This included monitoring his activity to prevent exposure to what they viewed as corrupting content on television and the internet. Despite such opposition, he periodically came out to his family, first at the age of thirteen, again at fifteen, and for a third time as a College of Charleston student. He describes in detail the reactions of the people closest to him, the actions taken by his family, and the challenges he continues to encounter with family members and how they have progressed over time. Note: At the request of the narrator, his name and other identifying details have been removed from the transcript, and the audio file of this oral history interview is not available. In lieu of a proper name, the speaker is referred to as Narrator_042, and other deletions made to the transcript are denoted in brackets.
In this interview Crystal Denise Helton (pronouns she, her, hers), a white program coordinator at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), speaks of growing up in West Virginia, her awakening to her sexual identity, her experiences with friends, family and lovers, her marriage and divorce, her conversion to Judaism, and her reflections on herself and society. An only child growing up in with parents who were divorced, but still living together, Helton had a solitary youth, taking refuge in reading, offering escape from an alcoholic father, and a sometimes-inattentive mother. Closeted in high school, she nevertheless had a girlfriend who lived nearby and she avoided the censure of disapproving peers while attending a series of different churches and denominations. Helton first realized she was lesbian when she had a crush on a Sunday school teacher, and evolved a healthy attitude to her sexuality without the guidance or advice of others. Leaving home, near Princeton, West Virginia, Helton attended Marshall University and later lived in Lexington, KY where she switched from a PhD program in history to a masters program in library science, and where she was in a relationship with the woman who eventually became her wife. While she understood prejudice against gay people, Helton never felt much of it directed at her, commenting that her conversion to Judaism, completed at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE), in Charleston, SC, has sparked more of a negative response from others than her sexuality. Her ex-wife joined her in the conversion experience and there was much resistance to this religious change in her spouse's family. The breakup and divorce (the couple had three varying marriage ceremonies, including a very positive experience at KKBE), was difficult for Helton, who did not instigate it. Calling her ex-wife the extrovert, and herself an introvert, Helton discusses her family of choice, including a long-time friend, and new ones made in a bocce league and among "murderinos", fans of the "My Favorite Murders" podcast. She speaks of learning patience in a romantic relationship, and discusses the greater ease with identity and gender fluidity she sees in people younger than she. She believes that being a member of the LGBTQ community has brought her insight into privilege, power, and prejudice in the larger society.
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