Northampton and Valley LGBTQ+ History Timeline

Timeline Notes

The timeline begins in the mid-19th century and continues through 1979. The years after 1979 are under development.

The language used in this timeline and its sources reflects the language used by and about LGBTQ+ people of their eras. Change in language continued over the decades as new generations and new subcultures emerged, found each other, and invented themselves.

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This timeline is a digitization of work by Kaymarion Raymond, local activist and “herstorian.” She began to develop a chronology of the Valley Women’s Movement of second-wave feminism in 1978. Over the next several decades she expanded the range of chronicling until, in 2003, she compiled her notes into a Valley-wide LGBTQ+ timeline. In 2014, Kaymarion Raymond began to tell some of the Northampton stories noted there through her blog From Wicked to Wedded. Jump to the timeline.

View Kaymarion Raymond’s essay and original handwritten timeline.

Northampton has been a center of lesbian life, culture, community, and organizing since the 1970s. In the 1990s, the town was dubbed “Lesbianville, USA” by outsiders, but many community members have embraced the nickname with pride. In this timeline, you will see covert and isolated lesbian, gay, and gender non-conforming life in the early 20th century, the beginnings of a feminist revolution in pre-Stonewall 1960s, and an explosion of lesbian organizing and society in the 1970s.

The remainder of the timeline, covering the 1980s to the 2004 legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, is under development.

View Additional Resources below the timeline.