In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month and recent legislation, our fourth episode focuses on the history of LGBTQ life and activism in North Carolina. First, former SOHP field scholar Evan Faulkenberry and former SOHP intern Aaron Hayworth discuss their recently published article in the Oral History Review. We also hear excerpts from an interview with Professor Randall Kenan, whose oral history highlighted in Evan and Aaron’s paper illuminates the intersecting identities of race and sexual orientation.

Next, field scholar Carol Prince talks about what she learned conducting oral histories with Erin Karcher and Genia Smith, two small business owners in Durham whose experiences of sexuality and gender complicate dominant understandings of entrepreneurship.

Finally, we share three clips from the SOHP archive that underscore the different contours of LGBTQ identity in the South. In an interview from 2007, Mandy Carter, a black lesbian social justice activist, discusses the motivations behind founding Southerners on New Ground. Then in an interview from 2014, Dr. Terri Phoenix, director of the LGBTQ Center at UNC Chapel Hill discusses the ongoing fight for gender neutral bathrooms. Finally, Ping Nguyen, a graduate of UNC reflects on the differences (or lack thereof) between queer life in the North and the South.

In closing, former SOHP intern and new Press Record co-host Charlotte Eure and field scholar Carol Prince discuss the tensions that surface while doing queer oral history for academic purposes.