Preserving our history. In the past we have been written out of history, well now more then ever we have been saving out history. Around the country, around out states, and in the colleges we have been saving our history.
I attended a number of workshops on LGBTQ+ history but they were really just L&G history when I asked a professor (with a PhD in history) giving the workshop why no trans history she replied that there wasn’t any. (Translated from LG speech to Trans speech: I never looked because I didn’t feel it important enough.) Then at Pride event in the state on the anniversary of Stonewall, that had pictures of the Stonewall heroes they didn’t trans people in the uprising! WHAT! What about Sylvia Rivera?
Then the final straw that broke the camel’s back… In 2008 ENDA had the trans inclusion yanked from the bill, Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) said the trans community hadn’t put the effort in to be included!
So I created a PowerPoint for our history that I gave each year at the True Colors and hopefull at the next conference in 2025.
Back to the archives. LGBTQ+ archives are the new “In-thing” many libraries around the world are now adding LGBTQ+ sections to their archives.
I have been donating my historic trans material to the Central Connecticut State University’s Elihu Burritt Library and last Friday I was invited to the award’s ceremony for activist friend.
For over ten years I have been doing a workshop on trans history at the old True Colors conference, and I have submitted a new workshop proposal for the new True Colors conference.Northeastern’s Digital Transgender Archive expands to the West Coast
The university’s free, publicly available archive of trans history will soon have a lab in Oakland, providing rich opportunities for faculty and student researchers to expand the DTA’s reach.
Northeastern University’s Global News
By Cody Mello-Klein
September 24, 2024Northeastern University’s Digital Transgender Archive is heading to the West Coast.
Courtesy of a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant, the DTA, a free, publicly available archive of more than 10,300 digitized historical documents telling the histories of trans people, will be opening a new lab on Northeastern’s Oakland campus.
K.J. Rawson, DTA project director and professor of English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Northeastern, says that although the archive is completely digital, the DTA has lab space in Boston where researchers, including Northeastern co-ops, work. Having a West Coast lab “opens up so many more possibilities,” Rawson says.
[…]
“As a researcher, it’s hard for me to even fathom it being possible in other institutional contexts, and the way that it can open up the project is just so exciting to me,” Rawson says.
I attended a number of workshops on LGBTQ+ history but they were really just L&G history when I asked a professor (with a PhD in history) giving the workshop why no trans history she replied that there wasn’t any. (Translated from LG speech to Trans speech: I never looked because I didn’t feel it important enough.) Then at Pride event in the state on the anniversary of Stonewall, that had pictures of the Stonewall heroes they didn’t trans people in the uprising! WHAT! What about Sylvia Rivera?
Then the final straw that broke the camel’s back… In 2008 ENDA had the trans inclusion yanked from the bill, Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) said the trans community hadn’t put the effort in to be included!
So I created a PowerPoint for our history that I gave each year at the True Colors and hopefull at the next conference in 2025.
Back to the archives. LGBTQ+ archives are the new “In-thing” many libraries around the world are now adding LGBTQ+ sections to their archives.
I have been donating my historic trans material to the Central Connecticut State University’s Elihu Burritt Library and last Friday I was invited to the award’s ceremony for activist friend.
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| A bunch of senior activists |
Our history is important! In the past we were lumped in with “Gays” and our history was lost. I urge you to donate your books and historic material to archives.
As was stated on Friday night the LGBTQI+Communities archives housed at CCSU are some of the most important archives in New England. The Canon Clinton Jones archives, to Jerimarie Liesegang, to Diana Lombardi archives are outstanding as far as TransStories are concerned. We need more. I had never heard of the Sugar and Spice Sorority in Hartford that created a safe space for “cross dressers.” I would love to find out more information about them. There must be information around. If anyone knows folks we would love to do an Oral History with anyone who was connected. There were other groups in Ct. mostly social but important. I was once told about the forming of the early rights movement that “First we had to learn to like ourselves, then we could become political.” Just living as ones true self is indeed a political act as our liberation begins first within and then we can reach out.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first became involved with the CCSU Archives in 1998 the only archives concerning our people were the Hartford Women's Center and Feminist Library. When the Canon Clinton Jones archives were added after the exhibition in 1999 that was a real coup for information on the early Trans Movement in Ct. As Diana says, give more if you have any. No contribution is too small. We need to unlock all doors. We have built a powerful testament to our people in the last 26 years. Our stories are in good hands at CCSU.
Yes, a true photo of old activists who all knew how to fight back. I can only hope that this generation will be up to the task as the problems we are facing today are no joke. I don’t think the answer today will be found in rainbow cupcakes, painted crosswalks or cop cars, Bead Night, fluff and feathers and crafty projects. Someone is not teaching our children to weather the storm if that is all there is.
🙏 🌻 ♥️
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