“[A]nd soon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time.” – Robert Penn Warren
I first became aware of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana in June of 2014 when a friend invited me to attend the organization’s first public meeting, which was held at Café Istanbul. I became a volunteer the following year, and joined the board of directors in 2016. Getting involved with both the Archives Project and NOAGE has changed my life in more ways that I could ever begin to explain. But above all, I’m most grateful for all the amazing people who have come into my life. Frank Perez, our co-founder and first executive director, was one of those people. It’s because of him that I was invited to join the board, and it’s because of him that I began writing for Ambush, and it’s because of him that I’ve met so many of the people who are now my dear friends and colleagues.
The LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana has suffered a tremendous loss with Frank’s untimely passing. All of us are in deep mourning, and doing our best to work through this heartbreaking transition. Several people have asked me, “What happens to the Archives Project now?” I’d like to take this opportunity to answer that question, but to understand what the future might be, it’s imperative to understand the organization’s past and present.
The seeds of the LGBT+ Archives Project were planted in 2012 by Stewart Butler, Otis Fennell, and Mark Gonzalez at the Faerie Playhouse. In the years leading up to the formation of the short-lived Legacy Project, each of these men had been actively involved in our community. Gonzalez co-organized the 1977 protest anti-gay crusader, Anita Bryant, and some of the first Pride events in New Orleans, and was a member of the local chapter of ACT UP. Butler was a full-time activist who, among other accomplishments, co-founded the Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus (LAGPAC), was instrumental in getting the local LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance passed in New Orleans in the early 1990s, and successfully pushed for the inclusion of transgender people in PFLAG’s mission, both locally and nationally. Fennell was involved with the creation of the NO/AIDS Task Force, and later owned and operated the Faubourg Marigny bookstore on Frenchmen Street.
After recording one oral history, the Legacy Project founders realized that the work of preserving local queer history would take a greater effort than they could accomplish alone. In 2013, a group of local activists, historians, and archivists (including Perez, Butler, and Gonzalez, among others) began meeting regularly, reaching out to libraries, archives, and museums throughout Louisiana to determine which of them held materials related to LGBTQ+ history. In the meantime, it became clear to them that much of our history was being lost. In some cases, longtime activists’ collections of materials were literally being tossed into the garbage upon their deaths by people who either didn’t understand or didn’t care about the significance of what they were throwing away. Thus, the LGBT+ Archives Project was born, with a mission to “promote and encourage the protection and preservation of materials that chronicle the culture and history of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community of Louisiana.”
Perhaps the greatest misconception about the Archives Project is the belief that it is literally an archive. It is not. We help connect people who have LGBT+ collections (historic video, photos, periodicals, posters, costumes, t-shirts, ephemera, etc.) with institutions who have the capacity and funding to preserve them. We have established relationships with various institutions across Louisiana, including The Historic New Orleans Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Amistad Research Center, the Louisiana Research Center, among many others. Through those relationships, we have learned which institutions are most interested in the various types of materials that have become available from private collections. Therefore, we can serve as a liaison between owners of collections and potential institutional recipients. But although we are not an archive, we have hosted many exhibitions of various materials, including at the exhibit space that we opened on Burgundy Street earlier this year.
In addition to preservation, the Archives Project also is available as a resource for researchers – locally, nationally, and internationally – who are working on projects related to LGBT+ history, including historians, filmmakers, playwrights, artists, and students. We have an ongoing oral history initiative, and continue to record and preserve interviews with many of the activists and community leaders who helped build our community.
We provide guided tours focused on New Orleans’ rich queer history, led by certified tour guides who have studied local LGBTQ+ history under Frank Perez.
We have hosted many events over the years: conferences, workshops, exhibitions, historic marker dedications and commemorations, panel discussions, and presentations at various events in Louisiana and beyond. Over the past several years, our flagship conferences have focused on a variety of topics of interest to the community: the UpStairs Lounge arson, the history of HIV/AIDS, lesbian and women’s history, among others.
But what about the future of the Archives Project? It is in all of our hands, yours and mine.
Like so many of you, the board of directors are in mourning for the loss of our leader and dear friend. But the difficult transition the organization is facing is already in progress. Many of Frank Perez’s papers are already at the Louisiana Research Collection, and that is where his remaining papers will be preserved. Frank transferred all other Archives Project-related files and documents to the board, working tirelessly – even as he faced his imminent death – to ensure that we can move forward with this collective work.
We need your help. Every nonprofit organization and community group working on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community is in a funding crisis caused by the current administration. Many of the funders and sponsors we relied on in the past are now too afraid of the consequences of supporting our work. Without financial support from our community and our allies, the uphill battle we are facing will become even more difficult.
Please visit our website (lgbtarchiveslouisiana.org) and become a Sustaining Member. If you can’t help financially, become a volunteer. While you’re at it, please be sure to explore our digital collections and resources. And if you or someone you know has a collection of material hiding in a closet somewhere, let’s get it out of there and into the light of day.
