Welcome to significant others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien and in yesterday's episode we examined

Bayard Rustin and his significant role in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

I'm now joined by one of my favorite sources, host of Making Gay History, Eric Marcus, to go a little

deeper. Eric,

thank you so much for joining us here today.

Before we begin talking about Bayard Rustin,

could you orient us a little bit about your podcast,

what it is, and the inspiration behind it?

Sure, glad to, and I'm delighted to be speaking with you today. Making gay history

was an accident, and I can't take credit for it. I can't take I can't even

take credit for the book for thinking of the book that was the reason I recorded

more than 100 interviews for two editions of a book called Making Gay History first

published in 1992.

The idea for the book came from an editor at what was then Harper and Row, a friend as well.

He called when I was working at CBS and asked if I would consider writing a proposal for an oral history of what was then called the gay and lesbian civil rights movement.

That was in 1988.

And it was just around that time that I found out that my career at CBS was not going to go where I wanted it to go because I was gay.

Oh, wow. I was behind the scenes. I was in a segment producer and I wanted to be an on-air correspondent.

In 1988 you hit that wall?

Oh yeah there was nobody out on national news either broadcast or cable.

Nobody.

It's amazing how rapidly things have changed in recent history.

...