W. Jake Newsome, Ph.D. Museum professional and author W. Jake Newsome, Ph.D., will discuss his book, “Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust,” on Tuesday, April 4, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The visit is presented by the UAB College of Arts and Sciences’ Institute for Human Rights. The one-hour discussion in UAB’s Heritage Hall will begin at 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Register in advance online to attend in person or participate virtually. The book will be available for purchase and signing both before and after the discussion.
The event is co-sponsored by UAB’s Department of History, Social Science and Justice Research and Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Invisible Histories Project, the Rita C. Kimerling Public History Endowment, and the Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
Newsome is an award-winning scholar of German and American LGBTQ+ history whose research and resources educate global audiences. Newsome’s book from Cornell University Press traces the transformation of the pink triangle from a Nazi concentration camp badge and emblem of discrimination into a global symbol of pride. The author provides an overview of the Nazis’ targeted violence against LGBTQ+ people and details survivors’ ongoing fight for acknowledgment, compensation and memorialization.
A new generation of queer activists uses the pink triangle — a reminder of Germany’s fascist past — as the visual marker of gay liberation, seeking to end the practice of second-class citizenship by asserting they had the right to express their queer identity openly, according to the author. The reclamation of the pink triangle occurred first in West Germany, but soon activists in the United States adopted it as their own.
To chart this story that spans continents and decades, Newsome has mined rare archival material in Germany and the United States and conducted nearly 30 original interviews with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences.