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Object Description
Interview no. | W-0007 |
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 | 7 July 2014 |
Interviewee | Rutherford, Carlton D. M. |
Interviewee occupation | Social workers |
Interviewee DOB | Unknown |
Interviewee ethnicity | African Americans |
Interviewer | Lovett, Aaron. |
Abstract | Carlton D.M. Rutherford is a clinical social worker at Duke University Hospital’s Sickle Cell Clinic and Pastor of Congregational Care at St. John’s Metropolitan Community Church in Raleigh, a congregation catering to LGBTQ people of faith and their allies. This interview is concerned with Rutherford’s role as an LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS advocate through his work as a clergy member and clinical social worker. He discusses his childhood and early exposure to Christianity, and how his mother’s job as a teacher and the social movements of the 1960s and ‘70s influenced his decision to become a social worker. He discusses his experiences as a clinical social worker helping people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and how stigma negatively affected many people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Rutherford offers his insights on being Christian and LGBTQ, and the dynamic between religion and the LGBTQ community. He acknowledges that his mother was relatively accepting of his sexuality, and remembers that she allowed him and his romantic partner in college to go on a trip together. He also mentions his experience as one of only two openly gay men at his all-black undergraduate university. He discusses the prevalence of homophobia in the South, particularly among religious and black communities. Rutherford gives a description of St. John’s Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) and his helping Wanda Floyd found Imani MCC in Durham. Rutherford recollects being involved with the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Health Project, meant to support people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, which ceased operation in the 1990s. Moreover, he discusses the issues of representing racial diversity in the LGBTQ community, and the dynamics of varying levels of social privilege within the community. He explains that white gay men have historically had more social power than lesbian women and gay men of color, which has led to LGBTQ people of color being generally worse-off than white gay men. In closing, he offers his insights on the place of LGBTQ people in American history. 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 Carlton Rutherford by Aaron Lovett, 7 July 2014 W-0007, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Description
Interview no. | W0007_Audio_1 |