The Carolina Gay Association, Oral History, and Coming Out at the University of North Carolina

Founded in 1974, the Carolina Gay Association (CGA) was the first gay rights group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the first in the American South. This article traces the history of the CGA during the 1970s and early 1980s as a predominantly white organization that advocated for gay rights on campus and across the region. It also demonstrates how oral history exposes the many ways people remember their sexuality during their formative years at college. People were not simply out or not—there was a wide spectrum of outness.