Do you feel like you don’t know enough about LGBTQ history? If so, you are not alone. Access to the rich and complex history of the lives of LGBTQ people is mostly absent from our shared history in the United States, and it remains missing from our textbooks and archives.
If you are asking yourself, what about the queer and trans South? Well, that’s an even bigger problem that lies within our very urban-centered approach to “culture” as well as a very narrow view of what life is like for queer and trans folks living in the most diverse region of the entire country.
You might be wondering why this is, and the answer isn’t simply one of old school homophobia: It’s a complex web of good and bad decisions over the last five decades. As a result – if you want to learn about your history – chances are it’s extremely challenging, if not impossible.
Invisible Histories is a nonprofit LGBTQ archives and history project that locates, collects, researches and creates community-based, educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South. Invisible Histories believes archiving is resistance to oppression and history leads to liberation. In our work, we center joy and community while never erasing the painful and complicated experiences of our folks.
This year we are partnering with Qnotes on the eve of their 40th anniversary to make certain we are saving every pieces of LGTBQ history that we can find. Invisible Histories is actively collecting in six Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and North & South Carolina) and building a repository of our lives, memories and the objects we have created together as we build community all over the South.
My particular obsession is with LGBTQ newspapers and newsletters, which is why our partnership with Qnotes is so important. Since the beginning of the movement to liberate queer and trans people, our community has found its voice in our publications and newsletters. In a culture that tries its hardest to silence us, our publications have given us an unfiltered place to speak about our experiences, share our joys and pain, and a place for us to connect. From the very first publication of the Mattachine Society in the ’50s, called One magazine, we have found ways to connect to each other as a whole community of disparate personalities and needs as well as ways to discuss the things that are unique about our lives.
The South has created some of the most incredible publications and since the ’70s we have been putting our thoughts and desires onto paper – not for the consumption of straight people, but for ourselves and our communities.
Lesbian Front, published in Water Valley Mississippi in 1972, was part poetry and part community gossip magazine, The Barb out of Atlanta (called the South’s groovy gay mag) gave us nightlife and queer businesses to support.
The desire for connection to a national queer and trans community inspired five friends in Pensacola, Fla. to start the Emma Jones society, which led to the largest Memorial Day queer event in the South.
Right here in Charlotte in the 1990s alongside Qnotes and Front Page, the newsletter All the Beautiful People was written by and for trans people and their partners.
In every instance these publications gave us a way to combat loneliness, train ourselves as activists, generate mutual aid for those in need, or in the case of Wimminsspace out of Jackson, Miss., combine all the numerous lesbian potlucks happening into one usable calendar.
There is so much for LGBTQ people in the South to be proud of, and while many times the rest of the country seems hell bent to paint us all as backwards and lacking in basic community, it is through our history that we can see the legacy and the impact our communities have had on the lives of all LGBTQ people living in the U.S.
Since we started collecting LGBTQ southern history in 2018 we have preserved over 200 collections of archival documents and materials going all the way back to 1912. Our history is connected to one another. It is progressive and radical, and it shows a region that has been fighting to make things better and building communities that are strong. The difficulty in collecting LGBTQ southern history is not that it doesn’t exist, it’s that all the individual pieces of our history are scattered among our organizations, individual people’s homes, our lived experiences of being at these events, and our collective misunderstanding of the place of queer and trans southerners in the history of this country. That’s why we need all of you to help us find these missing pieces and stories.
Invisible Histories is opening a research center and archive here in the Queen City this year and we need your help gathering even more objects and stories. Our space will open to the public this Fall and we ask you to reach out to your friends, look in your attics and basements, and help us discover that next story, that next piece of the puzzle that is missing.
Invisible Histories will be providing a space for you to scan old photos, come in and do an oral history interview, and as always you are welcome to come and browse through our collections from all over the South to learn about the folks who came before us.
Our space is your space, it is a community space. We look forward to learning even more and bringing you on this journey with us. Thank you to Qnotes for this partnership and for providing a voice to the community these last 40 years.
We can’t wait to meet you all.Visit our website at www.invisiblehistory.org, and follow us on social media.