Saving Houston’s LGBTQ history through thousands of hours of radio archives
1984 Houston Pride Parade 📷 JD Doyle
For years, hundreds of fragile cassette tapes sat quietly aging in a storage locker in Houston, Texas. Each plastic case contained hours of radio shows, made for and by LGBTQ people. The first shows aired in the mid-1970s. They continued, off and on, for more than 30 years -- a period that included the AIDS crisis, the women’s liberation movement and the rise of LGBT civil rights. A pair of archivists, Emily Vinson and Bethany Scott, have been working on preserving the programs, thousands of hours of them, online. … The shows aired on KPFT (90.1), Houston’s Pacifica station. One of them, Wilde ‘n’ Stein (named for Oscar Wilde and Gertrude Stein) started in 1975 and ran through the early 1990s. A late night show, After Hours, ran from 1987 until the early 2000s. … Over the years, the producers and hosts of these radio shows brought their listeners live street coverage of Pride parades, music that celebrated LGBTQ experiences and interviews with city council members, activists, local arts luminaries, and public health officials. Because it was on the radio, often late at night, closeted people could listen quietly and discreetly, without the fear of discovery that printed material might bring. Carl Han, a young Vietnamese-American, listened to the station’s LGBT programming at the lowest possible volume, as he told the radio show After Hours in 1992. “That’s how I discovered the Montrose [LGBT] community,” he said. “At the age of 15, I hit upon KPFT one night and turned it down real low so no one can hear.” He would go on to be a leading local activist, who at the time of the broadcast was the secretary of Asians and Friends, a community group serving Houston’s LGBTQ Asian Americans. Such content came as a revelation to 20-year-old Andrea Hoang. As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, one of her campus jobs was to help digitize and transcribe the shows. Hoang, who identifies as queer, was thrilled to discover the voices of Asian-American activists, including Han and After Hours host Vivian Lee, in broadcasts from before she was born. “They had so many people of color coming onto this show and spearheading these local movements,” she marvels, adding that she also loved learning about the vibrant LGBT music played on the programs so much, she made this Spotify playlist honoring it. The digitization of this audio history, says Vinson, would not be possible without three Houstonians who safeguarded the cassettes for so many years. Judy Reeves co-founded the Gulf Coast Archive and Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender History. JD Doyle maintains an extensive website documenting local LGBT history. Jimmy Carper was a longtime host and producer of After Hours. …
Neda Ulaby | NPR | June 4, 2024
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Listen to Andrea Hoang's archive-inspired Spotify Playlist
