On Friday, May 15, the Museum of Durham History opened our most recent exhibit To Love and Live Free: The 1986 Mayoral Recall and the Origins of Durham Pride. With over 150 people in attendance it was one of the Museum’s largest opening events! Speakers included former Durham Mayor Wib Gulley, activist and scholar Mab Segrest, activist and Pride organizer Meredith Emmett, activist Mandy Carter, exhibit curator Andrew Nurkin, and a performance by the Common Woman Chorus.

Food for the evening was kindly provided by E.O’s Athletic Club, with drinks provided by Ponysaurus Brewing, and Honeygirl Meadery.

 

To Love and Live Free (showing May 15- October 11, 2026) commemorates the 40th anniversary of the “Out Today, Out To Stay” Pride march and the failed attempt to recall Mayor Wib Gulley in 1986 for his support of LGBTQ+ rights. It tells how Durham found itself at a crossroads between tolerance and bigotry, showing how today’s inclusive Durham emerged through organizing, protest, and moral courage from citizens, faith leaders, business owners, and activists who united for equal rights—and won.

The exhibit uses archival materials from the North Carolina Collection at the Durham County Library, including eighteen new oral histories recorded for this exhibit. We invite you to explore this history through the voices of those who worked together to make it happen—and consider their lasting impact on Durham.

A Note on Language:

Though what we now think of as the LGBTQ+ movement includes a broad spectrum of identities and experiences, in the mid-1980s public discourse referred primarily to the “lesbian and gay rights movement” or often just “gay rights.” This exhibit uses these terms to illustrate how people self-identified and talked about these issues at the time. For clarity, the exhibit uses “LGBTQ+” to refer to contemporary understandings of sexual and gender identity. Archival records often use language that omits or erases transgender and other queer people; these absences do not mean such experiences were not present or active. We encourage visitors to consider both the language used and the voices that may be missing from the archives.