OCTOBER 21, 2020

My interview with Randy Wicker is on the podcast today! Couldn’t be more excited. 💜

If you’ve been listening along, Randy is the young college student who advertised the Mattachine so well he got them evicted. He used the Mattachine mailing list to send out the Wicker Research Studies questionnaire. (episode 6) He went on the radio with a small group of gay men and talked very honestly. (ep. 11) He marched in the first picket for gay rights and sat at the Sip-in. (next season) He was roommates with Marsha P. Johnson and enemies — and later friends — with Sylvia Rivera. We’re talking about all of it on the podcast today! 💥

📸 Randy, Craig Rodwell, Nancy Garden, Renee Cafiero, and Jack Diether at the Whitehall Army Building picket, September 19, 1964. Photo by Jefferson Poland.
🎥 Randy and Sylvia Rivera on the pier, 1995.
📸 Randy and the men of “Live and Let Live” on WBAI, 1962.
🗞 Mattachine Review issue featuring an essay by Randy, discussed on the podcast.
📸 Young Randy protesting in Texas, May 1959.
📩 Message from Randy to the Mattachine Society headquarters about Wicker Research Studies
📸 The Mattachine Sip-in, April 21, 1966. Fred W. McDarrah.
📸 Randy in his lamp store

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Randy & Marsha 💕
Randy and I are talking about their friendship and time living together on the podcast in the new episode this week.

📸 photos from Randy Wicker’s personal collection
🗞 memorial zine for Marsha

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Randy Wicker in TIME Magazine, June 2019. 🌸

📸 Sasha Arutyunova

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Looking through photos with Randy,
January 2020. 🌳

OCTOBER 23, 2020

Sylvia on the piers, as discussed in my interview with Randy Wicker. 💕

Randy interviewed Sylvia on the piers in 1995, where she described how the city and the gay community overlooked homeless queer people living with AIDS.

📸 by Valerie Shaff, c. 2000
🎥 Randy and Sylvia Rivera on the pier, 1995.

OCTOBER 24, 2020

Randy Wicker was thrown into a fountain by a group of boys while he was leading a protest against rising tuition prices at the University of Texas in 1959. We talk about it in our interview on the podcast! ⛲️

📸 May 1959

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

Randy Wicker and his lover at the time as Batman and Robin, as discussed in our interview on the podcast! The second photo is with Jack Nichols and Lige Clark at Coney Island. We’ll hear much more about Jack & Lige next season! 🎡

📸 courtesy Randy Wicker

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

As discussed in my interview with Randy Wicker, here is THE GAY CRUSADERS, written by Kay “Tobin” Lahusen and published in 1972. Each chapter is a small biography of an activist, so of course it’s also a resource for the podcast! 📚

Randy says Kay wrote it entirely herself and he lent his name to help it get published. Also, Kay took many of the photos you’ve seen of homophile era activism. She and her girlfriend Barbara Gittings were early members of the Daughters of Bilitis, working several years on The Ladder, and later for ECHO. (We met Kay briefly on the podcast last season, and we’ll hear tons more about her soon!) 📖

Patreon is a crowdfunding platform where fans of Queer Serial can support my new LGBTQ+ history projects!

Join for research dives, bonus episodes, & rewards!

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more Season 2 Bonus episodes

"A Murder in Midtown"
A 1930s true queer murder mystery
in New York City.

“Midtown” images

Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to listen to this bonus episode from spin-off podcast Forgotten Fairy Tales—and many more from Mattachine Meeting, Randy Wicker Radio, Infamous Crimes: White Night Riot Interviews, and more!

“Live and Let Live:
6 Decades Later”
Interview w/ Randy Wicke‪r‬

Featuring Sylvia Rivera, Randy’s friend Michael, and stories about Marsha P. Johnson, the Mattachine, and radical activism.

Recorded in Hoboken, New Jersey, January 16, 2020.

Images from Interview w/ Randy Wicker

“Return to Normalcy”
•
2020 Election Day bonus‪!

The 1920 presidential election proves yet again that history repeats itself, from fear-mongering to political scandal, and even a sitting president infected by the pandemic he downplayed. Make sure you have a plan to vote!

1920 Election Day Research Dive!

“Trans-sexuals and the Police”
on KPFA,
April 10, 196‪8‬

Three transgender San Franciscans discuss police problems and their work as members of C.O.G., Conversion our Goal, with Police Community Relations Officer Elliot Blackstone of the San Francisco Police Department. Herb Kutchins of the San Francisco Bail Project moderates.

“A Step Higher”
w/ Mattachino
Wendell Sayers

Historian Eric Marcus interviews Wendell Sayers, an attorney, the first Black assistant attorney general for the state of Colorado, and one of few Black members of the Mattachine Society.

He attended the 6th annual Mattachine convention in 1959, a dramatic event featured in S2 E8.