On Thursday, June 4, MSNBC debuted a first-of-its-kind digital documentary series that explores pioneers in Los Angeles' 20th century LGBT movement. The series, titled "Fearless: How 10 LGBT Activists Made It Better," will run for the next teen weeks in honor of Pride Month, and was created with the help of the One Archives Foundation, an LGBT organization doing archival and educational work, and the It Gets Better Project, a non-profit organization providing hope for LGBTQ youth.
The first episode of the series premiered yesterday, and chronicles Dr. Virginia Uribe, a retired high school teacher from Los Angeles who founded Project 10, the first-ever dropout prevention program for LGBT high school students. Dr. Uribe started the project in 1984 after one of her students left school due to harassment. She created the program in an effort to provide counseling for LGBT students at-risk of dropping out due to bullying and to allow these students a space to share their sexualities.
While the project started on a grassroots level, it since has expanded by training teachers and administrators in suicide prevention methods and aiding students with the development of more inclusive school protection policies. Reflecting on Project 10, Dr. Uribe shared, "I don't feel that I was heroic. I feel that I did what had to be done at a certain point, and I see now in looking back the influence that that had, and I'm very proud of that."
Over the next ten weeks, the Fearless documentary series will profile many other notable Los Angeles LGBT activists, including Rev. Troy Perry, who founded the pro-LGBT Metropolitan Community Church in 1968; and Carolyn Weathers, an LGBT activist who helped with the creation of the Alcoholism Center for Women.
“These videos document an incredibly important part of this country’s history,” said Richard Wolffe, Vice President and Executive Editor of msnbc.com. “These documentaries offer first-hand insight into some of the LGBT movement’s most crucial activists – pioneers who are not necessarily household names, but whose stories need to be told.”
These stories definitely need to be shared. As Dr. Uribe so aptly put it: "I think in order to truly understand what has to be done in the future, I think the young people have to understand what has gone on in the past and the struggles that lead the community to be where it is today."