UNC Story Archive recording with Michael Lee Culpepper: The Story of Us5 items
Date Deposited: 2021-02-24
Collection: UNC Story Archive (70096)
Collection Number: 70096
Finding Aid: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/70096/
During a remote recording session, Michael Culpepper (Class of 1968, J.D. class of 1974) describes how he saw the attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community change while he served active duty in the Navy between his time as an undergraduate in the 1960s and later as a law student in the 1970s. Although Culpepper “was able to have a gay life in law... Read more
During a remote recording session, Michael Culpepper (Class of 1968, J.D. class of 1974) describes how he saw the attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community change while he served active duty in the Navy between his time as an undergraduate in the 1960s and later as a law student in the 1970s. Although Culpepper “was able to have a gay life in law school”, being a Navy Reservist meant that he “was still not open about being gay [because] being gay was a reason to get discharged from the Navy”. Culpepper became “a lawyer for a number of the gay people in Chapel Hill at the time”, including a beloved man who lived at the Friendly Castle, and began to see members of the community die of the then mysterious disease called GRID, later renamed AIDS. Culpepper spent twenty-three years renovating a World War I era house on the UNC campus, where all “my roommates were gay”.Read less