The Lexington Six: Lesbian and Gay Resistance in 1970s America

The Lexington Six: Lesbian and Gay Resistance in 1970s America (a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards) by Josephine Donovan ’62 recounts a little-known story of six LGBTQ people who refused to cooperate with FBI agents searching for two participants in the 1970 bank robbery by anti-war activists in which a Boston police officer was killed. Three suspects were quickly captured, but two escaped and landed in a lesbian collective in Kentucky. Drawing on judicial transcripts, newspaper accounts, FBI files, and interviews, Donovan recounts the trial and jailing of the five lesbian women and one gay man who refused to cooperate with investigators. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020)

Josephine Donovan is professor emerita of English at the University of Maine-Orono.