Another decade of issues from The Front Page are now hosted online. This new batch covers from 1997 to 2006, and contains over two hundred new issues! The pages will join a collection that already contains over 300 issues from 1976 to 1996. The addition of this collection stretches The Front Page’s digital coverage well into the twenty first century, up until its final issue.

The Front Page was a Raleigh based newspaper that centered LGBTQ+ experiences, articles, and stories. Its pages contained advertisements for LGBTQ-friendly businesses. Its’ Opinion section collected quotes from interviews with gay and lesbian celebrities. Its Calendar section detailed gathering times for groups, drag shows, and lectures. Often included are cartoons from artists such as Alison Bechdel and Eric Orner. These issues cover a period of increasing recognition for the LGBTQ+ community, but also increasing challenges. They are an essential insight into an often underrepresented history of North Carolina.

Thank you to our partners at Duke University and UNC Charlotte for nominating and working with us for these issues to be digitized. You can read previous blog posts about the history of The Front Page and its’ sister paper, QNotes here.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, visit our North Carolina newspaper portal.