By Trevor Boffone
Editor’s note: This is part three in a three-part series on teaching Houston’s queer history.
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 of Houston (UH), I set out to build a course that not only introduced students to the past, present, and future of queer history locally, but a class that immersed them in this history. The Houston We Have History Banner Project gave me just the entry point to do so.
Houston We Have History Banner Project founder Sara Fernandez (l) with Houston LGBTQ Historian J.D. Doyle. Photo courtesy HoustonLGBTHistory.org.
Houston LGBTQ advocate Sara Fernandez created the Banner Project for the Creating Change Conference that was held in Houston in 2014. The timeline gave conference-goers a snapshot into Houston’s queer history. While the original banners are 30 inches wide and 65 inches long (and are only displayed on occasion), the permanent display at the Montrose Center features smaller replicas of the banners.
To celebrate LGBTQ History Month and National Coming Out Day, the Banner Project was conveniently on display in the MD Anderson Library at UH the week of October 9 through 13, 2017. While I had originally intended to have my students visit the Montrose Center to witness the timeline in person, I was instead able to take my students on a “field trip” across campus to the library. After I gave my students a brief overview of the Banner Project, I asked them to select five banners to study more in-depth. Using their smart phones or tablets to access the project’s webpage, students read about the banners that were most intriguing to them. During the activity, one of my former students walked by and noted that my entire class was on their phones. “They’re learning!” I replied while smiling. Before leaving the library, each student had to tell me why they selected one of their banners, along with something new that they learned. While many students picked more contemporary events—such as the election of Mayor Annise Parker—to my surprise, they had just as much interest in banners reflecting events long ago, such as “1930s: Art Scene, Left Bank on the Bayou” and “1967: The Tumblebugs.”
Professor Trevor Boffone’s students research banners of their choosing at UH’s MD Anderson Library. Photo courtesy HoustonLGBTHistory.org.
During the following class, J.D. Doyle, LGBTQ historian and creator of HoustonLGBTHistory.org, attended and spoke to the students. Doyle showed my class his various digital projects and items from his personal archive of queer history, then briefly spoke about his own experiences as a member of the Montrose community.
Seeing as it was National Coming Out Day, I gave my students an open forum to share their own experiences of working through their sexual identities. Students shared happy and sad stories, tales of confusion and pray-the-gay-away camps, and some came out for the very first time. After class, Doyle told me how much he learned from my students’ coming out experiences. While I always imagined that Doyle’s visit would be beneficial to my students, I hadn’t considered how important it would be for him to hear stories of youth growing up queer in the 2000s. While there are certainly similarities to previous generations, the realities of coming-of-age queer in the 2010s are quite different. The fact that Doyle’s visit created an opportunity for intergenerational learning was a welcome added bonus.
Doyle’s visit was a highlight for many students. “J. D. Doyle’s visit to the class was a welcome and intricate look into Houston’s past,” said Hailey Taylor, a junior English major. “Equipped with flyers and other memorabilia from the days when Montrose was learning its own proud and wonderful name, Doyle answered questions and showed much of his life’s work documenting Houston’s gayborhood.” Taylor was so inspired by Doyle’s work that she decided to begin the process of launching an interview project where she herself will interview activists and social justice warriors.
In the end, having J.D. Doyle visit my class was the perfect way to make the Houston We Have History Banner Project come to life in my classroom. While the banners provide an interesting visual, the people featured on them are real people who have and continue to influence the Houston LGBTQ community. The events depicted were actual happenings that have left their mark on our city’s history. In many ways, these trailblazers and occurrences are precisely why today, my students can sit in a college classroom in Houston and openly learn about LGBT Studies.
