The Next Keepers of Southern History: Student Archival Work on Southern LGBTQ History

In 1997, queer historian John Howard wrote, “the keepers of Southern history, the archivists, have sometimes actively worked to thwart us, to exclude us from the fold.” As many historians and queer scholars collected, researched, and published on LGBTQ history in the Northeast and West, LGBTQ history in the Southern United States remained mostly hidden and oppressed despite the vibrant queer communities in urban and rural spaces throughout the region. As a means of reclaiming this history through archival work, Josh Buford and Maigen Sullivan out of the University of Alabama began the Invisible Histories Project (iHP) in 2015. Their goal was to preserve the history of LGBTQ people in the Southeast, and since the project’s inception, iHP has expanded to include three southern states - Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.

With grant funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of West Georgia has been the host institution for iHP’s Georgia site since February 2020 under the direction of Dr. Stephanie Chalifoux. The iHP work at the University of West Georgia has been primarily student-led, with each of Chalifoux’s undergraduate and graduate classes on queer southern history having an archival component. As with many archival and history projects around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the progress of iHP’s work in Georgia. At the University of West Georgia, students involved in this project have had to work creatively in overcoming COVID-19 restrictions to engage with these archival collections.

This poster draws on our year-long project with iHP on preserving and archiving the history of LGBTQ life in rural Georgia. It reflects our successes in acquiring and processing significant collections as well as our work to overcome the limitations of a student and community archival project during a global pandemic. We hope to present our efforts in documenting LGBTQ history to engage in a conversation with other institutions, especially those located in the South, on preserving and documenting intersectional LGBTQ histories despite various challenges.