"Cincinnati Before Stonewall" – A Book by Jacob Hogue About the Hidden Queer History of the American City

In May 2026, History Press published “Cincinnati Before Stonewall: The Untold Queer History of the Queen City” in English. Its author is public historian Jacob Hogue, who specializes in LGBT history, is the founder of the educational project Queen City Queer History, and serves as the History and Legacies Chair for the non-profit organization Cincinnati Pride.

The book is an extensive study of the history of LGBT people in Cincinnati (known as the “Queen City”) from the early 19th century until the Stonewall riots of 1969. Drawing on archival documents, court records, old newspapers, and personal accounts, the author demonstrates that homosexuality and gender nonconformity were not a modern phenomenon, but were actively present in city life long before the emergence of the modern LGBT rights movement.

In the pages of this publication, Jacob Hogue tells the stories of specific individuals whose lives were often marginalized or erased from official records. Among them are LGBT soldiers who fought in the Civil War, as well as Mary Ann Jefferson, a Black transgender woman who became a prominent figure in the criminal underworld of Cincinnati’s most dangerous neighborhood in the late 19th century. The book also mentions Julius “Junkie” Fleischmann – a gay man who secretly worked as a CIA agent at the end of World War II, despite the US government’s active purge of homosexuals from its ranks.

An important part of the book is the description of pre-Stonewall infrastructure: bars, brothels, and hidden sanctuaries that offered LGBT people fleeting refuge amid relentless repression. The research does not simply document historical facts, but gives a human face back to the people of the past whom society tried to erase from history, challenging established narratives about the American past.