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Description
Kate Kendell oral history interview recording for the Lyon-Martin House Oral History Project. ABSTRACT: Kate Kendell is former longtime (1996-2018) Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and current Chief of Staff at the California Endowment. She met Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in 1993 or 1994 at an American Civil Liberties Union or National Center for Lesbian Rights event. Soon after she began monthly lunches with them in their home, where they would regale her with stories and history. She discusses the home, the living room with their chairs and the view, and their kitchen nook as special places in the home. She discusses parties from the 1950s and 1960s she had heard about there, including the curtains they would put up so women would feel comfortable dancing together. Kendell also underscores the importance of the outside stairs and position of the picture window from the sidewalk, where she could wave to Phyllis in her advanced age and they would blow each other a kiss. She underscores the parallel of the house’s modesty to Del and Phyllis’s modesty as “how they moved in the world.” Kendell imagines the space being used for LGBTQ and women’s political salons, community conversations, and community gardening. Located at 651 Duncan Street in San Francisco, the Lyon-Martin House is the former home of lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon (1924-2020) and Del Martin (1921-2008). In 2021, the City of San Francisco designated the Lyon-Martin House a City Landmark in recognition of its association, through Lyon and Martin, with the lesbian rights, homophile, and marriage equality movements.
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