Gay bookstore washington dc
Original Lambda Rising Location
In 1971, Deacon Maccubin opened EarthWorks, a headshop that also carried LGBTQ books and magazines, at 1724 20th Street NW. EarthWorks was the first non-bar business in the capital that specifically catered to lgbtq+ customers. By 1974, the business was doing successfully enough to found Lambda Rising as a separate bookstore business. The bookstore served as a people hub as well. In 1975, the shop hosted the first Gay Identity festival Day block party in the city, which has now evolved into Capital Pride.
Other gay, leftist, and art organizations also operated on the premises, such as the publications Off Our Backs, the Gay Blade (precursor to the Washington Blade) and the Gay Switchboard; gay youth groups; DC Switchboard; Defense Committee for the Dark Panthers; the Youth International Party; the American Community for Theatre Arts; and the Playwright's Theatre. Businesses such as Alternatives, Androgyne, Bread and Roses Harmony, and Amy Horowitz's Roadwork also operated at the site.
The bookstore moved in May 1977 to a larger location at 2012 S St NW. The bookstore moved again in 1984 to 1625 Connecticut Avenue, where it operated until its closing in 2010.
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Deacon Maccubbin opened Lamda Rising bookstore in 1974 in a 300-square-foot space on 19th Street NW. The bookstore opened at a significant time for the LGBTQ+ movement, as only one year prior to the store's opening the American Psychiatric Association had stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness. Maccubbin stated in a 2009 article for the American Booksellers Association: “We reflection if we could show that there was a request for our literature, that bookstores could be profitable selling it, we could encourage the writing and publishing of GLBT books, and sooner or later other bookstores would put those books on their control shelves." In 1977, James Bennett connected Maccubbin as a co-owner.
Lamda Rising, a reference to "lambda," a Greek letter and gay liberation symbol, relocated to S Street NW before moving to its final location at 1625 Connecticut Avenue NW in 1984. It eventually became the nation's largest gay and lesbian bookstore, selling "anything by, for, or about gays and lesbians," as stated to the Washington Post in 1984. The bookstore closed in delayed 2009.
This is a stop on the DC's LGBTQ+ HistoryTour.
For more information about DC's LGBTQ History,
D.C.’s first LGBTQ bookstore since 2009 opened last June
Last week, the D.C. Council considered removing one of the most contentious ballot initiatives in D.C. government’s history — but for now, it stays.
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Here Because We're Queer: Inside the Lgbtq+ Liberation Front of Washington, D.C., 1970-72 (Paperback)
A year after the Stonewall riots in New York, the Gay Liberation Front of Washington, D.C., held its first meeting on June 30, 1970.
GLF-DC's activities included protests, publications and communal living experiments.
Although the group faded adv, in part because of disorganization and divisiveness about goals, activities and deeds, its attendees established openly gay group organizations, including some long-lasting institutions in Washington-Capital Pride, Whitman-Walker Health, the Metropolitan Community Church and Lambda Rising bookstore.
The book is based on interviews with more than 50 participants.
The first chapter describes Washington in the Mattachine Community era, before GLF.
A chapter is loyal to GLF meetings: the heated discussions, especially the division between radical and liberal members, with radicals opposed to war, sexism, racism and homophobia as part of liberationist beliefs, while more liberal members wanted achievable goals such as public knowledge efforts and achieving civil rights; developing a legal case against D.C.'s sodomy law; pr