This post was contributed by Sophie Archambault, a rising junior at the University of Connecticut. In Summer 2021, Sophie interned with Michael Rodriguez, Collections Strategist, and Rebecca Parmer, Head of Archives & Special Collections, to help increase the visibility and accessibility of UConn Library’s archival collections by adding content, references, and media to Wikipedia. 

All through school, I’ve been taught that Wikipedia is a risky resource. Anyone can edit or contribute, and the sources used to build the articles aren’t always reliable. Additionally, though editors are anonymous, the topics covered on Wikipedia are overwhelmingly white male centric. When topics outside of this realm are introduced they are often shut down by fellow editors who claim a lack of adherence to protocol. Recently, however, efforts have been made to diversify Wikipedia editors and content, so that marginalized groups are given more attention. This is what my project with the UConn Archives focused on. I was to find topics covered by archives collections that could use increased visibility on Wikipedia. I generated a list of possible topics and ended up working on four Wikipedia pages, all of them female authors.

After completing a few training modules, I began this project with Grace Lin. I remember reading her books in middle school, so she was a familiar name. Her page was also in a good place for me to jump in as someone very new to editing Wikipedia. The page was already pretty clearly established, but there was obvious room for improvement. After investigating the already cited sources and doing some research of my own, I ended up adding information to the biography section and creating an awards section. Something I had not expected to encounter was references that could not be accessed. A few of the sources for Grace Lin linked to pages that were no longer active. Did that mean I had to remove those sources completely? Find the information that had supposedly come from those sites in different places? I brought the issue up to Rebecca and Michael, who suggested I use the Wayback Machine (yes, that’s what it’s actually called). Using the Wayback Machine site, I could put in a dead link and have access to all previous versions of the page. I could then insert a link to an archived version of the page in the resources section of Wikipedia. Nothing ever really disappears on the internet.

Lin’s page took me a couple of weeks to complete, but it was a good chance to get used to navigating Wikipedia. After Grace Lin, I tackled Magdalena Gómez, a playwright, poet, and social activist based in Springfield, MA; Eleanor Estes, a late children’s book author known for The Hundred Dresses and The Moffats; and Rosemary Wells, whose picture books of animal characters—Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora—my parents read to me. It got easier to edit the pages. I got into a routine of reading what was there, making note of what needed to be changed or added, investigating the already cited sources, and finding more sources if necessary.

One of the main goals of this project was to hopefully increase web traffic to the UConn archives. On every page I completed, I added that so-and-so’s papers were held at the University of Connecticut, and I provided an external link to the specific finding aid. Unfortunately, as it was summer and covid, I was not able to go to the archives and take a deeper look into each of these women’s collections. However, I hope that my small contribution to the vast world of Wikipedia will bring more people to the archives’ site and encourage them to find out more in person. I was inspired by each of the authors I researched and it made me feel good to increase their visibility on a widely accessed site. Hopefully, with edit-a-thons and projects like this one, those who have been deemed irrelevant or unestablished by editors will get the attention and space they rightfully deserve.

To our community of scholars, donors, and supporters,

I’m reaching out to provide an update on the status of Archives & Special Collections. In accordance with the University of Connecticut’s response to the COVID-19 situation, Archives & Special Collections remains closed to the public. Although our facilities are currently closed, we remain committed to providing the highest level of care and support for our collections.

In preparing for the shutdown, our staff made all necessary provisions to secure the collections and ensure their safety. We have onsite security staff monitoring our collections, research, and exhibition spaces, and receive daily briefings on the status of our facilities. We also maintain an up-to-the-minute environmental monitoring system, which includes the ability to check on the temperature and humidity of our spaces remotely.

Although some of our services are limited at this time, we are working hard to ensure that you can continue to engage with our collections throughout this closure, from providing virtual instruction sessions to developing online exhibitions from our rich digital collections.

We recently launched a new online search portal, where you can access guides to our collections remotely, and have made more than 750,000 digital objects from our collections available for research and use through the Connecticut Digital Archive. We are active on social media – I encourage you to check out our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram regularly for new content, programming, and collection highlights.

Our staff are teleworking and remain accessible by email and phone – please feel free to contact us at any time with questions or concerns: archives@uconn.edu or 860-486-2524. We will keep you informed about service and facility updates via the UConn Library’s COVID-19 response webpage and our social media outlets.

We appreciate your continued support as we work together to ensure the safety and well-being of our communities, and look forward to seeing you again in the near future.

~ Rebecca Parmer, Head of Archives & Special Collections

Page from the transcript of an interview with two members of the gay liberation movement at UConn (undated)

- Front cover of pamphlet for CWEALF conference on Legal Rights of Lesbians & Gay Men (April 1986)

Storrs Gay Coalition Flyer (undated)

Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights

Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights

Connecticut Gay Task Force

- UConn Gay Alliance, First General Meeting Flyer (September 1973)

- UConn Gay Alliance, Come Together Flyer (September 1973)

For many, the gay liberation movement began on June 28, 1969. At the Stonewall Inn, a bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a violent police raid in the early morning hours. The crowd’s fierce resistance against law enforcement quickly grew into an uprising that lasted six days and signaled the arrival of a militant and confrontational movement for the liberation of LGBTQ+ people.

For students attending the University of Connecticut, something like their own Stonewall moment came a few years later, in the 1971-1972 academic year. By then, the UConn Gay Alliance, founded in 1967 by Peter Aubichon and Paul Harrison, had grown from a small private group to an officially recognized student organization. As part of its activities, the organization began to hold dances at the Inner College trailer on campus.

Around 2:00 am on the night of the first dance, some fraternity members “started screaming obscenities, yelling, and throwing bottles and rocks” at the trailer and those gathered outside. But similar to Stonewall, those attending the dance fought back. “Of course we started yelling back like maybe we could start something, like crack their heads,” one of dance attendees later recounted, “It was amazing!”

The meetings, dances, and other activities organized by the UConn Gay Alliance proved that by the early 1970s, the gay liberation movement had arrived on campus. Yet the State of Connecticut and its flagship university had long been home to various forms of LGBTQ+ activism and organizing.

In the 1950s, the homophile movement took shape as LGBTQ+ people began to organize and agitate for their rights. Groups like the Mattachine Society, ONE, Inc., and the Daughters of Bilitis sought to raise awareness, unify LGBTQ+ people, and challenge widespread social stigmas. Yet unlike later struggles for gay liberation, the homophile movement adopted a more cautious and gradual approach.

In the early 1960s, Foster Gunnison, Jr., who had arrived in Hartford, Connecticut, to pursue a master’s degree at Trinity College, began to immerse himself in the homophile movement. He offered his services as a secretary to the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organizations (ECHO), an early coalition of organizations working to create a national homophile organization. Then, in 1966, he was appointed Chair of the Credentials Committee for the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO).

From 1965 to 1969, Gunnison collected the office and conference records of ECHO and NACHO, along with the records and periodicals of several LGBTQ+ organizations throughout the United States. During this period, Gunnison even founded his own organization, the Institute for Social Ethics (ISE) and in 1967 wrote the pamphlet, An Introduction to the Homophile Movement.

While Gunnison busied himself with preserving and documenting the homophile movement, students such as Daniel Campbell explored the spaces opened up by a burgeoning counterculture back on the University of Connecticut campus. Campbell attended UConn as a graduate student in 1967-68. In a poignant memoir, Campbell describes his pre-Stonewall experience on campus. “We may have been closeted to one degree or another,” he writes, “but we did not live in isolation.”

The rise of the counterculture and the hippie movement supplied a shared context. As young men faced the prospect of the military draft, and young women, the loss of their brothers and boyfriends, “they escaped into a separate reality and took liberties no generation had dared take before.” Campbell notes that LGBTQ+ people “shared in those liberties” in different ways. For Campbell and others, the popular slogan, “the personal is political,” became an everyday reality.

In the 1980s, The HIV/AIDS crisis that racked the LGBTQ+ community also generated notable forms of organizing and activism in Connecticut. The Connecticut Women’s Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF), a non-profit public interest law firm founded in 1973, originally sought to help women gain equality under the law. But along with this mission, CWEALF began to hold conferences and other events in Hartford and around Connecticut to share information about HIV/AIDS and provide the LGBTQ+ community with resources to secure their legal rights.

Much of the LGBTQ+ activism, organizing, and educational work that continued in the 1990s and the first decades of the twenty-first century also made their mark on the University of Connecticut and around the state. After several years of organizing, planning, and lobbying by students and staff, UConn opened the Rainbow Center on campus in 1999. Still operating today, the center is dedicated to serving the needs of the LGBTQ+ community on campus. Throughout this period, LGBTQ+ activists and organizations across Connecticut also helped lead the movement for marriage equality, both in the state and the nation.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of LGBTQ+ activism and organizing at the University of Connecticut and across the state, Archives & Special Collections holds a wealth of material that may interest you. Among some of our relevant collections are:

University of Connecticut, President’s Office Records The collection comprises extensive material, especially administrative files and correspondence, from the offices of UConn’s various presidents. The records of presidents Homer D. Babbidge (1962–1972) and John A. DiBiaggio (1979-1985) are particularly useful. Both contain correspondence and other material relating to LGBTQ+ issues on campus, such as the emergence and activities of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s. The finding aid for Homer Babbidge’s office records can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/789 and the finding aid for John A. DiBiaggio’s office records can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/603

Alternative Press Collection The Alternative Press Collection (APC) includes thousands of national and international newspapers, serials, books, pamphlets, ephemera and artifacts documenting activists and organizations from the 1800s to the present. Alongside the President’s Office Records, the APC files provide a bottom up look at LGBTQ+ organizing at UConn. Especially notable are materials from the Storrs Gay Coalition and the UConn Gay Alliance. The APC also contains voluminous materials from other LGBTQ+ organizations in Connecticut and throughout the United States. The APC can best be consulted using the card catalog available at Archives & Special Collections, though some digitized materials can be accessed here: https://archives.lib.uconn.edu/islandora/object/20002%3A19920001APCFiles

Daniel R. Campbell Papers The papers comprise a manuscript, a published article, and copies of photographs from Daniel R. Campbell, who attended UConn in 1967-1968 and was one of the first openly gay students on campus. The manuscript describes Campbell’s experiences at UConn and elsewhere, and offers insight and perspective on pre-Stonewall LGBTQ+ culture on campus. Campbell describes his life during this period, some discrimination he faced on campus, his interactions with students and professors, and comments on the wider culture of the late-1960s. In particular, Campbell highlights the hippie movement and the counterculture as helping to open space for living as an openly gay person during this period. The finding aid can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/284

University of Connecticut, Rainbow Center Records The collection comprises administrative records, financial records, correspondence, publications, and other materials such as newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and posters associated with the UConn Rainbow Center. The center was founded in 1999 after several years of organizing, planning, and lobbying by students and staff. The center is dedicated to supporting the needs of the LGBTQIA+ members of the campus community, and the collection documents the center’s history and activities up to the present day. The finding aid can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/962

Foster Gunnison, Jr. Papers The collection comprises personal correspondence, organizational records, conference proceedings, serial publications and periodicals, posters and fliers, buttons, newspaper clippings, and photographs relating to LGBTQ+ activism in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as other issues such as smoker’s rights and barbershop quartets. Foster Gunnison, Jr. collected a range of materials from the homophile movement in Connecticut and across the United States, and later founded his own organization, the Institute for Social Ethics (ISE). The collection provides materials on a wide range of LGTBQ+ organizations in Connecticut, many of which have been digitized. The finding aid can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/413 and digitized materials can be accessed here: http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:19960009SIIISE

Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund Records The collection comprises administrative files, committee reports, legal testimony, workshop materials, lists of contacts and referrals, records on outreach and education, as well as related materials such as flyers, handouts, surveys, etc. The Connecticut Women’s Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF), a non-profit public interest law firm, was founded in 1973. CWEALF helps women gain equality under the law and focuses on discrimination in such areas as education, employment, insurance, and health care. CWEALF is also concerned with reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ issues. In particular, relevant materials concern education and outreach on legal rights for gays and lesbians, as well as medical and legal information surrounding the HIV/AIDS crisis. The finding aid can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/334

Marriage Equality and LGBT Activism in Connecticut Oral History Collection The collection comprises eleven oral histories with leading activists in Connecticut who have been a part of the marriage equality movement and engaged in other forms of LGBTQ+ activism in the state and beyond. The interviews were conducted by Valerie Love, Curator for Human Rights and Alternative Press Collections, between July 2010 and April 2011. Six of the eleven interviews have been transcribed and are available. The finding aid can be accessed here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/925 and digitized transcripts from the collection can be accessed here: http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:201100766

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

Oliver O. Jensen was a writer, editor, self-taught historian, and railroad enthusiast born in 1914 who grew up in New London, Connecticut. He attended Philips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, matriculated to Yale University and graduated a Phi Beta Kappa student in 1936. At that point Jensen became a free-lance writer for several advertising agencies.

On June 25, 1938, Jensen submitted a patent to the U.S. Patent Office for a board game he developed, which he called The Love Game. As part of the advertising for the game he hired models and actors to enact the game “in the flesh.” He designated one of the models as Dorothy Davis, President of “Love, Inc.,” the mock company that designed the game. One of the actors was real life puppeteer Bil Baird and the photographs were taken by the now famous photographer Fritz Henle. The outdoor scenes were taken in Darien, Connecticut.

All of the captions notes were on the back of each photograph and played along with the spoof of Dorothy Davis, her twin sister Dibbie, and various players of the game.

 In 1940 Jensen landed a permanent writing position on the staff of Life Magazine. After the outbreak of World War II, he took a duration-of-the-war leave from Life to join the United States Navy with the rank of ensign. From 1942-1943 he served on the U.S.S. Babbitt, a First World War destroyer deployed on convoy duties in the North Atlantic and Icelandic waters in addition to Carribean and North African runs. After transferring to naval aviation, Jensen spent time in England among search-plane squadrons and served in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown until the end of the war. Drawing on his experiences in the Navy, Oliver penned Carrier War in 1945 and returned to Life Magazine as a writer/editor until 1950.

Following his employment with Life, Jensen co-founded the American Heritage Publishing Company along with James Parton and Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr. The non-advertising, hardcover, popular history magazine American Heritage was launched soon after in 1954. While serving as editor from 1959-1976, he also wrote numerous articles for American Heritage and its sister publication Horizon Magazine. From 1971-1974, he served as president of the Connecticut Valley Railroad Company and from 1976-1980 as chairman of the board of directors. In 1981, Jensen went on to become chief of the division of prints and photographs at the Library of Congress until 1983. He remained involved with American Heritage Magazine and a variety of clubs and organizations dealing closely with history, railroads and Connecticut, including the Connecticut Historical Society, Acorn Club, Friends of the Alice Austen House, Society of American Historians, Eastern National Park and Monument Association, Century Association, Yale Club, and American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. After spending much of his life in Connecticut, Jensen died on June 30, 2005, and is buried near his home in Norwich.

Oliver Jensen donated his papers to the UConn Archives in 2003.