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Object Description
Interview no. | W-0004 |
Restrictions | No restrictions. Open to research. |
Project | W.1. LGBTQ Life in the South: LGBTQ Activism in the North Carolina Triangle Area |
Project description | A collection of oral history interviews on the topic of local queer life, community, and activism from 1969 to the present. Aaron Lovett, an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducted these interviews as part of his independent research project in the History department in summer 2014. The study was advised by Dr. Rachel Seidman, Associate Director of the Southern Oral History Program. This study traces the development of queer activism from social organizing in the early 1970s, to the beginning of statewide lobbying and political activism in the early ‘90s, and to recent developments in North Carolina regarding pro-LGBTQ laws such as the NC School Violence Prevention Act and anti-LGBTQ legislation such as Amendment One. LGBTQ activists interviewed include feminist theorist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, HIV/AIDS advocate Carolyn McAllaster, and LGBTQ lobbyist Ian Palmquist. This study connects local and statewide LGBTQ events with regional and national trends, analyzes the nature of the Triangle area’s LGBTQ community in relation to rest of the South, and documents changes and continuities in local LGBTQ life and culture. |
Date | 14 July 2014 |
Interviewee | McAllaster, Carolyn M. |
Interviewee occupation | Professors |
Interviewee DOB | Unknown |
Interviewee ethnicity | Whites |
Interviewer | Lovett, Aaron. |
Abstract | This interview focuses on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Southeast United States, and what measures have been taken by local activists to combat the spread of the disease. Carolyn McAllaster, a Clinical Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina, has devoted significant effort and several years of her life to helping people living with HIV/AIDS in her community. In the interview, she states that though she was born and raised in a small town in Maine on the Canadian border, she chose to come to North Carolina to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) to receive her undergraduate degree. Though originally intending to pursue a nursing degree, she ultimately changed her focus to law and majored in German. She talks about her decision to attend UNC School of Law, and her work as a civil law litigator in private practice after graduating. She attributes the diagnosis of her brother with AIDS in 1985 and his death in 1993 as a powerful motivator for her work in promoting HIV/AIDS awareness and improving the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. After spending several years volunteering to help people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS by taking their legal cases pro bono, she eventually founded the Duke AIDS Legal Project in 1996 which gives free legal representation and assistance to people living with HIV/AIDS through student attorneys working under the supervision of Dr. McAllaster. McAllaster also discusses her involvement in the Southern HIV/AIDS Strategy Initiative (SASI) as director of the organization, and how it advocates for more federal funding to combat HIV/AIDS in the South due to the seriousness of the epidemic in the region. The interviewee also notes her prior involvement with the NC Aids Action Network (NCAAN), a statewide HIV/AIDs advocacy group, and analyzes the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS in both the U.S. overall and the South. At the conclusion of the interview, McAllaster states three events that she would like to see occur in the coming years to help combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in the South. This interview was conducted as part of the interviewer’s oral history research project on LGBTQ activism in the NC Triangle area since 1969. |
Citation | Interview with Carolyn McAllaster by Aaron Lovett, 14 July 2014 W-0004, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | W0004_Audio |