Joshua Burford is a native of Alabama, but he’s plugged in to the queer south through the non-profit LGBTQ+ history organization Invisible Histories Project.
Qnotes has covered his work with the organization in years past and written about his time spent here in Charlotte.
In 2013 Bradford worked as an assistant director for Sexual and Gender Diversity at UNC Charlotte to create the city’s first LGBTQ+ archives, which was housed at the the J. Murray Atkins library on the school’s campus.
Burford eventually returned to Alabama and officially launched the Invisible History Project with co-executive director Maigen Sullivan. By September 2018 both were working on the project full time. Qnotes spoke with Burford during the last week of November and confirmed the organization would be relocating to Charlotte.
“Yes. We are moving Invisible Histories and all of our staff to Charlotte in a month or two. Since 2021, we’ve been thinking about what it might actually mean for us to open a stand-alone archive of our own. We spent about two years trying to figure out where we wanted to put it. We workshopped Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville, because we needed a large enough urban area where we could raise money, and a place that has philanthropy and an organized queer community. I have so many connections from the days I spent in Charlotte, so the final decision was made for us to move there.”
Invisible Histories has rented a space that will allow for offices, storage and display. While the exact location hasn’t been announced just yet, it is in close proximity to other LGBTQ+ organizations in Charlotte.
“It should be ready for us to move into in mid-December,” said Burford. “We will be moving the collections in late January and it will take us a while to get the space set up. We have a ton of stuff and lots to be installed, so we don’t expect to be open to the public until April or May.”
Currently invisible histories is operating out of Birmingham, Alabama. “The landscape here is not great politically for LGBT people,” Burford explained. “Charlotte and North Carolina offered a more progressive area for us to be in, and we’re collecting in six States now so it just made sense for us to be in a place where we could travel much easier.”
The six primary states Invisible Histories actively collects data, information and memorabilia from are Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. While their primary collection efforts are focused in these states, the project also engages with and provides resources for LGBTQ+ history in a total of 13 southern states.
The space the organization is moving into is 1800 square feet. Burford expects approximately half of the facility to be used for archival purposes.
Among the collection are items from throughout the 20th century, with the oldest heading back to 1912.
“It’s a diary,” Burford offered. “It’s a chat book, actually which is part poetry, part diary, from a gay guy who served in the First World War, who wrote it mostly after he came back from the war.
“We also have a beautiful diary from the Second World War from 1942. A family donated it and he wrote in it extensively while he was in Europe. He chronicles his experiences and it actually ends up being kind of a cool sex diary, with a lot about the hot male nurses he was hooking up with while he was in France,” Burford chuckled. Other items that belong to the individual were donated; and historic records and memorabilia from Camp Pleiades, a lesbian Land Community near Asheville are also part of the collection.
“We’ve got a very sizable collection and we are looking forward to making it available and partnering with other organizations in Charlotte to figure out ways we can do programming together, all of which will be free and open to the public. Once we get settled into the space we will have a grand opening.
While those dates are forthcoming more information about the Invisible Histories Project can they found the organization’s website at https://invisiblehistory.org.