We’ve Been Here All Along

We're in the process of updating our website! Learn more about what that means and how you can help create history..

Wisconsin’s Early Gay History

R. Richard Wagner

This first of two groundbreaking volumes on gay history in Wisconsin provides a thorough and nuanced picture of LGBTQ history from 1895 to 1969.

448 pages, 6 x 9, 91 b&w photos
Hardcover: $28.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-912-3
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-913-0
Publication Date: 6/19/2019

BUY

-

Front cover of We’ve Been Here All Along

Description

Throughout Wisconsin's history, gay residents developed identities, created support networks, and found ways to thrive in their communities despite various forms of suppression—from the anti-vice crusades of the early twentieth century, to the post-war labeling of homosexuality as an illness, to the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. In this first of two volumes, We've Been Here All Along provides an illuminating and nuanced examination of Wisconsin's gay history from the reporting on the Oscar Wilde trials of 1895 to the landmark Stonewall Riots of 1969.

In We've Been Here All Along, R. Richard Wagner draws on historical research and materials from his own extensive archive to uncover previously hidden stories of gay Wisconsinites. This book honors their legacy and confirms that they have been fundamental to the development and evolution of the state since its earliest days.

The second volume, Coming Out, Moving Forward, covers the years 1969 to 2000 and is also available from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Author Bio

Scholar and activist R. Richard Wagner was the first openly gay member of the Dane County Board of Supervisors, where he served for fourteen years. In 1983, he co-chaired the Wisconsin Governor’s Council on Lesbian and Gay Issues—the first such council in the nation. And in 2005, he joined the board of Fair Wisconsin to fight the constitutional amendment against marriage equality.

"We’ve Been Here All Along" is an extraordinary achievement, an impressively wide-ranging narrative, a grand act of rescuing hidden histories from archival obscurity. R. Richard Wagner brings to this work a powerful blend of strengths: his own life experience as a gay man richly engaged in civic life, his intelligent and sensitive insight, and his singular savvy regarding political dynamics. Wagner’s detailed portraits of selected individuals in the early and middle twentieth century are fascinating.