Browsing Tag

LGBTQ history

Historians of the Queer South: Queering the Florida Panhandle with Historian Jerry Watkins

Posted on July 14, 2023
A photo of Jerry Watkins.

“My office is the gayest place on campus,” declares Professor Jerry T. Watkins III with a grin. He’s not kidding. In the background behind him, I can see through my Zoom screen, the wall sports an LGBTQ pride flag, a poster of a renowned local Virginia queer cultural figure, buttons from the AIDS activist group ACT UP, and various other colorful items testifying to the unapologetic queerness of the office’s sole resident. It’s the kind of environment intended to make a…

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PhotoMania: The Barbara Levine and Paige Ramey Photography Collection is a Glimpse into our Shared Queer History

Posted on July 9, 2021
A photo of one of the works in the Barbara Levine and Paige Ramey Photography Collection.

While fine art museums have long slept on vernacular, or “found,” photography, Houston and San Miguel de Allende–based artists and collectors Barbara Levine and Paige Ramey have not. The couple has spent over 30 years sifting through junk shops, flea markets, and online stores to build a vernacular photography collection they lovingly call “PhotoMania.” The collection comprises over 5,000 photographic objects—from postcards, to family portraits, to photographic sculpture and altered photographs. “Barb and I, when we travel, anywhere we go…

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The Gay Nineties: The Sapphic Love of Adele & Ruth

Posted on May 20, 2020
A photo of LGBTQ history couple Adele Densmore, 21, and Ruth Latham, 18.

The article describes two women, Adele Densmore, 21, and Ruth Latham, 18, the former of whom presented masculine (in her brother’s clothing). The two of them lived in nearby St. Joseph, Missouri and, per the article, were a romantic couple for all intents and purposes. There is some confusion, though. For example, the piece describes Densmore as the one who preferred to dress in men’s clothing, while the accompanying sketches label Latham as the one wearing a top hat with…

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Stories Untold: Five Black Queer Trailblazers Who Thrived in the South

Posted on February 28, 2019
A photo of Black queer hero Lucy Hicks Anderson.

Black History Month has always been about telling the stories that have gone untold—the triumphant stories of the societal impact and progress made by those who were not always accepted as members of society themselves. In school, we often learn of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington Carver, Malcolm X, and Madame CJ Walker. As the years go on, we hear these same stories over, and over, and over again. And while these stories are important to celebrate and…

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The Southern Roots of LGBTQ Religious Activism: The Curious Story of George Hyde’s Gay Ministry in 1940s Georgia

Posted on December 7, 2018
A photo of Reverend George Hyde

Over the past 50 years, as conflicts over homosexuality have wracked religious denominations across the United States, LGBTQ people have both fought for affirming inclusion within their faith communities and formed distinct groups of their own. When most folks today think about early LGBTQ religious activism, Reverend Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) spring easily to mind. Perry, a southerner by birth who grew up in northern Florida and was first licensed as a Baptist preacher there at…

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Teaching Queer Houston: Houston We Have History

Posted on December 15, 2017
A photo of the Houston We Have History Banner Project.

I first visited the Montrose Center, Houston’s main LGBTQ community center, in 2016 for a playwriting workshop. During one of our breaks, I snooped around, checking out the schedule of events. What caught my eye most, however, was the Houston We Have History Banner Project—a colorful timeline of queer Houston history that stretches down the third floor hallway. As I mentioned in the first installment of this series, during my second year of teaching Intro to LGBT Studies at the University…

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Teaching Queer Houston: Mind Mapping Montrose

Posted on November 6, 2017
An illustration of a mind map of Montrose, Houston.

When I moved to Houston in 2012, there was no question about where I would be living. As far as I was concerned, Montrose was everything. Conversation over. During my childhood visits to Houston, my dad would drive the scenic route from our Galleria-area hotel to downtown. As we rode down Westheimer Road, I’d stare out the window as we passed Dunlavy Street, Waugh Drive, Montrose Boulevard, and Taft Street, romanticizing what it would be like if dad just stopped…

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Queer Southern Staples: Where Did All The LGBTQ Bookstores Go?

Posted on October 31, 2017
A photo of LGBTQ bookstores.

For a brief time beginning in the 1970s and stretching up to the 2000s, a new species of community institution sprinkled the southern landscape—the LGBTQ bookstore. Once prolific, these stores are now endangered. While LGBTQ visibility and community participation has expanded exponentially, economic changes have forced nearly all small bookstores to either close or shift their retail focus. Yet a few determined LGBTQ and feminist bookstores—from the funky Faubourg Marigny Art and Books in New Orleans to feminist stalwarts such…

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50 States, 50 Pieces of Art: Artists Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin Excavate Queer American History

Posted on October 24, 2017
A photo of the Texas installation of 50 States by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan.

A few years ago, visual artists and married couple Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin stumbled upon some little-known 19th century queer history in William Benemann’s Men in Eden. This uncovered book charts the journey of William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish lord turned fur trader, and his male lover Antoine Clement as they led an expedition of around a hundred men from St. Louis to what is now Wyoming. Inspired by this caravan of same-sex loving men, Vaughan and Margolin crafted…

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