Queer Life Before Stonewall: Hugh Ryan and Lisa E. Davis

Authors Hugh Ryan and Lisa E. Davis discuss their work and the rich history of underground LGBTQ life in New York City before Stonewall. 

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn. He is the Founder of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and sits on the Boards of QED: A Journal in LGBTQ Worldmaking, and the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art. He is the recipient of the NYPL's 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Fellowship for research on his forthcoming book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s to the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. 

Lisa E. Davis has lived in Greenwich Village for many yeas and loves to write about it. She is the author of the novel Under the Mink, a film noir tale of gay and lesbian entertainers in mob-owned Village nightclubs of the 1940s. The cast includes crooked cops, mobsters, hookers, politicians on the take, straight and wannabe straight characters who come down to the Village looking for a good time. She is also the author of Undercover Girl: The Lesbian Informant Who Helped the FBI Bring Down the American Communist Party , the true story of a notorious Village lesbian who worked undercover in the American Communist Party as an informant (1942-49) and testified at the first Smith Act trial (1949) of the Party leadership. Davis, who holds a PhD in Comparative Literature,  taught at SUNY and CUNY, published widely, and lectured on New World and European literary topics. 

To see the full list of Stonewall 50 programs taking place in branches, visit nypl.org/stonewall50

Major support of the Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 exhibition and related programming is provided by The New York Community Trust, Hermes Mallea and Carey Maloney, and the TD Charitable Foundation and TD Bank. Additional support is provided by Time Warner and the Magnus Hirschfeld Endowment Fund.

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos Exhibitions Fund, Jonathan Altman, and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.