The LGBT Activists and Their Lives oral history project was a semester long project for a course in the Women Studies department at Eastern Michigan University during the Spring semester of 2004. The project was conducted by students from Eastern Michigan University under the supervision of Dr. Margot I. Duley. It was partially funded by a grant from the Eastern Michigan University LGBT Center, under the direction of Kathleen Russell.

The objective of the project was to simultaneously introduce students to the history of gay rights movement in Michigan, teach oral history best practices, and preserve the history of lesbian and gay activists in Michigan.

Dr. Margot I. Duley is the former Head of the History and Philosophy Department at Eastern Michigan University. She also served as the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies. In 2004, Dr. Duley joined the faculty of University of Illinois at Springfield as the Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where she remained until her retirement in 2009.

Dr. Duley received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in History from the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. In 1968 she received Master of Arts from Duke University, and in 1977 she received a Ph.D. in South Asian and British Imperial History from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University London.

A scholar and activist, Dr. Duley is the author of Where Once Our Mothers Stood We Stand: Women's Suffrage in Newfoundland 1890-1925 (Charlottetown: Gynergy, 1993), and editor of The Cross-Cultural Study Of Women: A Comprehensive Guide (New York, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1986). Dr. Duley served as Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Task Force Chair of Michigan NOW in the late 1970s and served as President of MI NOW from 1981-83. She was also a field organizer in Illinois during the final stages of the national ERA campaign.