Allan Berube, a well-known American queer activist and historian, died on Dec 11.
Berube is best known for his 1990 book Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II. The book was made into a Peabody Award-winning documentary and was often cited in 1993 Senate hearings on the US military antigay policies.
He was also an occasional contributor to The Body Politic, the pioneering Toronto queer publication that was the predecessor to Xtra.
In 1996 Berube received a ?genius grant? from the MacArthur Foundation for his work. He also received a Rockefeller Residency Fellowship in the Humanities from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York for his ongoing history of queer working-class men in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union in the 1930s and ?40s.
Berube lectured on gay and lesbian history at Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He wrote stories for numerous publications, including Mother Jones, Gay Community News, The Advocate, The Washington Blade and Out/Look.
He also contributed pieces to several anthologies including White Trash for which he wrote a rare personal essay on his childhood in a trailer park in Bayonne, NJ. He also contributed to Policing Public Sex, writing a chapter detailing the history of gay bathhouses.
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