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Tune into Out-FM on Tuesday July 12 from 8:00-9:00pm, on 99.5FM WBAI/NY & listen at https://www.wbai.org/listen-live/
If you miss the live show, the sound file for the whole show will be posted by Wednesday evening on https://outfm.org/liberation/ .
The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
Just outside of Jefferson Market Library, the castle-looking structure on 6th Avenue in Manhattan’s West Village sits a community garden of the same name where a women’s penitentiary of great historical significance once stood. This was the site where dynamics of patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia created a disturbingly cruel institution and led to organized resistance and mobilization within and beyond the prison for queer liberation, racial justice, and abolitionism. This rich history has been meticulously researched and woven together by writer, teacher, author, historian Hugh Ryan in his new book Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison.
Women's House of Detention - NYC
In this interview, Out-FM’s Stahimili Mapp and Peter Jonas discuss with author Hugh Ryan the process of acquiring stories that have been erased, what makes it a queer story, the criminalization of not being a "proper woman" and how the prison affected Black lesbian activist Mabel Hampton, the abuses and insurrections, the role the facility played in the culture of the West Village and the gay rights movement, the intersection of gay liberation and Black Power at the prison in the late '60s, the organizing Black liberation activists Angela Davis, Afeni Shakur, and Joan Bird during their incarceration in that period, the failures of prison reform, and the push for prison abolitionism.
Plus short excerpts from Angela Davis's audiobook version of her newly updated Autobiography featuring her comments about her time at the Women's House of Detention.
About Out-FM
Out-FM is a weekly progressive queer show on listener-sponsored, noncommercial WBAI/Pacifica Radio. It airs at 99.5 and wbai.org, generally on Tuesdays from 8-9 PM. Please support us by donating to WBAI. Become a member for $25 or a BAI Buddy (sustainer) for $10/month or more. Go to give2wbai.org or call 212-209-2950 and let WBAI management know you listen to Out-FM by supporting the station with a donation. Be sure and mention us when you donate.