Tamara Turner

Tamara A. Turner was born March 27, 1940, and raised by a single mother in Seattle, Washington.[2][3][4] Though she described knowing she was gay at age 14, she kept her sexuality a secret due to a society which was hostile to homosexual people.[5]

She earned a bachelor's degree in history and a masters in library science from the University of Washington.[6] She was forced into counseling at the University of Washington because she was a lesbian, which was seen at the time as a mental illness.[7]

Turner was inspired by activists fighting for gay rights in the late 1960s, describing the drag queens of color who led the Stonewall riots as "jump-[starting] the whole gay liberation movement".[5] Turner found her "political home base" in 1972 after being invited to a Radical Women meeting; she was the first open lesbian to join the group.[4][5][7] Turner's work with Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party centered on not "[selling] out the needs of those on the bottom," working towards building a "broad, radical leadership".[5] Working with those groups, she helped add both sexual orientation and political ideology to the non-discrimination clause in Seattle's Fair Employment Practices Ordinance in 1973.[5]

In the mid-1970s Turner worked for the Pierce County Library System and was elected to be a part of the union's contract bargaining team.[7] The landmark contract that resulted from negotiation included a raise in wages and benefits, a model grievance procedure, and a broad nondiscrimination clause.[7] Turner worked as a librarian in a number of organizations in western Washington, including the Rainier School in Buckley, Northwest Biotherapeutics, and the Pacific Northwest Cancer Foundation.[8] She served as the Director of Medical Library Services at Seattle Children's Hospital from 1977 to 1994.[8]

Turner helped produce the Freedom Socialist newspaper for many years, including writing a satirical column under the byline Ms. Tami.[4][7] Turner coauthored Gay resistance: the hidden history, originally written as an eight-part series published in the Freedom Socialist from 1978 to 1980; the book highlights the radical roots of gay liberation.[1]

In 1992 she performed in and toured with Hidden History: True Stories from Seattle's Gay and Lesbian Elders, a play based on oral histories of the lives of LGBT people prior to the gay liberation movement.[4][8]

After falling ill with leukemia, Turner died in Seattle on March 22, 2017.[6]