Welcome to The Gayest Generation, where we hear LGBTQ older adults speak for themselves. Every episode, we sit down with a different member of the LGBTQ community who laid the foundation for the freedoms we have today. Their stories make noise where there is silence and that silence has lived for far too long. It is time we let their voices fill the room.

Each year, more than half a million Americans are released from prison and join a population of twenty million people who live with a felony record.

Lola Jones and Carol Gibson are well-known to anyone familiar with Ann Arbor history. Over the past 30 years they have sought out and documented the history of the African American experience in Ann Arbor through a series of projects under the moniker Another Ann Arbor; it is largely through their work that the Ann Arbor African American story is a part of our shared community identity. Lola and Carol stopped by the library to talk with us one day about the work they have done over the years and where they are headed next.

Victoria Suane Milton was born in 1933 and grew up in River Rouge, Michigan. Her mother was of French creole background from New Orleans. In 1938 her father, Samuel B. Milton, founded one of Michigan’s first Black-owned hospitals, Sidney A. Sumby Memorial Hospital. He was also the first Black Wayne County coroner. After getting her BA in social work from the University of Michigan in the 1950s, Victoria returned to work at Sumby Memorial Hospital in purchasing and housekeeping.

Titus W. McClary was born in 1937 and spent his childhood in Georgetown, South Carolina. After moving to Detroit, he attended Highland Park High School and worked at his uncle’s North End restaurant. During his time in the army in the early 1960s, he picketed a segregated theater and restaurant in Killeen, Texas. In 1965 he became the third Black police officer in Highland Park. McClary ran the juvenile division and helped found a Black officers’ organization.