Queer Newark

Histories of gay and lesbian urban life typically focus on major metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York, opportunity-filled destinations for LGBTQ migrants from across the country. Yet there are many other queer communities in economically depressed cities with majority Black and Hispanic populations that receive far less attention. Though just a few miles from New York, Newark is one of these cities, and its queer histories have been neglected—until now. 
 
Queer Newark charts a history in which working-class people of color are the central actors and in which violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire. Drawing from rare archives that range from oral histories to vice squad reports, this collection’s authors uncover the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches. Exploring the intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality, they offer fresh perspectives on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, community relations with police, Latinx immigration, and gentrification, while considering how to best tell the rich and complex stories of queer urban life. Queer Newark reveals a new side of New Jersey’s largest city while rewriting the history of LGBTQ life in America. 
 

Queer Newark charts an alternate history of LGBTQ life in America where working-class people of color are the central actors. Uncovering the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches, these essays reveal how violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire.

WHITNEY STRUB is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark, where he co-directs the Queer Newark Oral History Project. His many books include Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression. 
 

Introduction
Whitney Strub 
Chapter 1: Sodom on the Passaic: Excavating Early Queer Histories of Newark, 1870s-1940s
Peter Savastano and Timothy Stewart-Winter
Chapter 2: The View from Mulberry and Market: Revisiting Newark’s Forgotten Gay and Lesbian Nightlife
Anna Lvovsky
Oral History excerpt #1: John
Chapter 3: Toward a Queer Newark Left: Sexuality and Activism in the New Left and Black Power Eras 
Whitney Strub
Oral History excerpt #2: Yvonne Hernandez
Chapter 4: Glitter on Halsey Street: Queer and Trans World-Making in Newark, 1970s-present
Kristyn Scorsone
Oral History excerpt #3: Angela Raine
Chapter 5: Project Fire: AIDS, Erasure, and Black Queer Organizing in Newark
Jason Chernesky
Chapter 6: Ballroom Interlude
The Queer Newark Oral History Project 
Chapter 7: At Home in the Hood: Black Queer Women Resisting Narratives of Violence and Plotting Life at the G Corner
LeiLani Dowell
Oral History excerpt #4: June Dowell-Burton
Chapter 8: Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby!: Queer Newark Oral Histories, La’Raine Magazine, and the Politics of Sex in the Archive
Dominique Rocker
Chapter 9: “Temos Muitas Coisas Pra Fazer”: Market Identities and Queer Community Building in the Brazilian Ironbound and Greater Queer Newark
Yamil Avivi
Oral History excerpt #5: Alicia Heath-Toby
Chapter 10: “Newark Police Don’t Do Nothing for Me; They Don’t Protect and Serve”: Policing LGBTQ+ Communities
Danielle M. Shields and Carse Ramos
Chapter 11: “I’m Walking Here”: Reframing Queer History Through a Walking Tour 
Mary Rizzo and Christina Strasburger
Epilogue: Remembering Sakia, Remembering Ourselves
Zenzele Isoke
 
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Notes on Contributors
Index