Tom Beatty on local LGBTQ+ spaces like the Seahorse

South Bend's Own Words

With makeshift decor and a boom box for music, the original Seahorse was totally undistinguished, but it became a sanctuary for South Bend’s LGBTQ+ community seeking a place where they could be their whole selves. Tom Beatty was a frequent patron, and he shares his personal experiences of coming out, his family’s reactions, the challenges he lived through, and some of the other LGBTQ+ spaces that the community in the 1990s and beyond called their second home.

This episode was produced by Jon Watson from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at IU South Bend, and by George Garner from the Civil Rights Heritage Center.

Full transcript of this episode available here.

Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/.

Title music, “History Repeats,” from Josh Woodward, used via CC-BY-4.0-DEED. Visit his website at https://www.joshwoodward.com.