The project was created in 1998 by Arden Eversmeyer, then a retired public school teacher and counselor and a lesbian community activist in Houston.
[1][2] Eversmeyer was inspired to gather these oral histories when she observed lesbian friends who had been born in the 1920s and 1930s passing away and became concerned that their life stories would never be shared.
OLOHP volunteers ask the interviewees about their upbringing, their families, and their adult lives.
We don't ask, but neither do we discourage it… if a woman opts to share about that aspect of her life, that is her choice.
[1] Transcripts, audio recordings, photographs, and other materials from OLOHP are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History at the Smith College Libraries in Northampton, Massachusetts.