`Wisconsin Pride` film honors state`s LGBTQ+ trailblazers

The McCarthy Era, the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, the history of Indigenous people in Wisconsin — the stories told in the new PBS Wisconsin documentary, “Wisconsin Pride,” are in some ways very familiar to students of state history.

The difference is that “Wisconsin Pride” looks at the stories of LGBTQ+ people within that history who were often overlooked or deliberately hidden. Along with Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “Red Scare” came a “lavender scare” targeting gay people, including students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The civil rights and antiwar movement of the ’60s included a fight for gay rights that later would put Wisconsin at the vanguard of the nation. And those Indigenous communities have a word, “Two-Spirit,” to describe people in the tribe who “possessed both a masculine and feminine spirit.”