Tonda Anne Taylor oral history interview 3, 2015 September 15
Description
In this third of four interviews, Tonda Taylor, long-time activist for LGBTQ rights and founder of Time Out Youth in Charlotte, North Carolina, recalls her fraught relationship with her parents, her time spent living in New York City, and the tragic circumstances of her eventual move back to Charlotte. Ms. Taylor reflects on how a Gestalt therapy group she attended in New York City for over a decade helped her to cope with her feelings of isolation as a lesbian. She describes the tragic impact of HIV/AIDS on her family, detailing how her brother (Sam Taylor) and then her father (Dr. Andrew D. Taylor) both contracted the disease as the result of medical procedures, and how these sad circumstances led to her return to Charlotte to support her family in the mid-1980s. Ms. Taylor reflects on the bravery of her brother, who joined a panel of people with HIV/AIDS established by Dr. Bob Barret to educate people locally about the disease, and she describes her father's suicide in 1989, just seven months before Sam's death. Ms. Taylor concludes with reflections on the deeply closeted gay and lesbian community in Charlotte in the mid-1980s, and the beginnings of change in the early 1990s.
