Queering the Collection: Archiving LGBTQ+ History in Southwest Louisiana
Introduction
Overview and Contacts: The SWLA LGBTQ+ Archive is located at Special Collections in the Edith Garland Dupré Library AND the Guilbeau Center for Public History in HL Griffin 518. The archive is a community-university partnership with an advisory board and extensive student involvement.
To check out historical materials in the archive, reach out to Scott Jordan, Head of Special Collections, Dupré scott.jordan@louisiana.edu.
To learn more about the SWLA LGBTQ+ Archive project, check out books, contribute your own archival material, or join the Advisory Board, reach out to Marissa Petrou, marissa.petrou@louisiana.edu.
To share your oral history, reach out to Zeta McCaskill: zeta.mccaskill@louisiana.edu, or Gabby Hoffpauir-Rosatto: gabrielle.hoffpauir-rosatto1@louisiana.edu.
To share information related to Lafayette’s feminist lesbian herstory in the 1960s-1980s, reach out to Caroline Dugan: caroline.dugan@louisiana.edu.
Financial support: Seed funding for the archive was provided by an American Library Association 2022 American Rescue Plan Humanities Grant. Below are collections that have been acquired thanks to the grant, as well as collections that have been donated. The Guilbeau Charitable Trust has funded additional programming, research assistantships, books, and archival materials. In 2024, the Advance Student Research Experience at UL Lafayette awarded the archive funding to create new undergraduate research assistantships for non-History majors in the College of Liberal Arts. UL Sustainable Research Grants and an Advance Faculty Grant are currently funding the production of the podcast Black and Queer on Campus and the writing-up of our research on mapping Queer and anti-Queer spaces in Southwest Louisiana.
Current research: We are currently working on processing new additions to the collection, making book purchases available through general circulation at Dupré Library, curating exhibits, hosting history harvests and memory workshops, conducting oral histories, and making the archival collections more discoverable to researchers through keywords and expanded subject headings.
https://louisiana.libguides.com/LGBTQplus-resources/archives-project
The SWLA LGBTQ+ Archive at the Pride Acadiana Festival in June 2024
Oral Histories
We are endlessly grateful to the members of Louisiana’s queer community for sharing their stories with us. From Trans advocates to HIV+ writers, college students and allies, the oral histories in our collection represent a range of experiences and generations. If you are interested in sharing your story, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Archival Collections
Acadiana PRIDE was formed in 2014, where Louis Tolliver and Ted Richard acted as president and vice president respectively. The first festival ran for four days, with around 5000 to 6000 people in attendance. This collection contains photographs (physical and digital) of the festival, playbills of theater pieces produced through the festival, and various memorabilia. Ted A. Richard donated the collection.
Club My-O-My was a drag bar on the West End of New Orleans Opened in the 1930s, it was advertised as a “female impersonator” club, in which drag queens performed for both gay and straight audiences. This collection contains a few items from Club My-O-My. These includes programs, postcards, a matchbook, and vintage salt and pepper shakers.
This is an open-end collection containing scrapbooks, notebooks, scripts, publicity, pictures, programs and history of The Lafayette Town House-Order of the Troubadours. Also contains programs and mementos of the Krewe of Gabriel, Brigands de Lafitte, and Krewe of Attakapas. Additionally, the collection contains artifacts and materials of LGBTQ+ Mardi Gras organizations such as the Krewes of Armeinius, Petronius, and Apollo.
Richard Greenberg’s Tony Award-winning play Take Me Out premiered Off-Broadway in 2002 and on Broadway in 2003. The play covers a fictional baseball team and the different reactions when one of its members, Darren Lemming, comes out as gay. Themes of the play include homophobia, racism, class, and masculinity in sports. The role of Darren Lemming was first played by actor Daniel Sunjata, who earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This collection features an original playbill of Take Me Out from 2004, where Sunjata played the lead.
Ellen DeGeneres "Entertainment Weekly" Magazine
Ellen DeGeneres is a comedian born and raised in Metairie, Louisiana. She has had successful careers in stand-up comedy, film, and television. She starred in the 1990s sitcom Ellen, in which she played one of the first main characters to come out as lesbian, mirroring her own life. This collection includes an Entertainment Weekly issue containing an article about DeGeneres coming out as lesbian and the reactions to her character on the show. DeGeneres is featured on the cover.
Harvey Lavan “Van” Cliburn, Jr. was a world renown classical pianist who was born in Shreveport, LA and grew up in Texas. He rose to fame when at the age of 23, he won first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia. He also performed for every U.S. president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. This collection contains photographs of Cliburn, including one where he is conducting Luci Baines Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson’s youngest daughter.
Ted Richard Collection for Acadiana Cares
Acadiana Queer Collective Collection: Acadiana Queer Collective formed in 2020 and has brought back the pride festival to Lafayette! They host Pride Acadiana in June, in addition to other queer-affirming events such as Inclusive Prom.
Webinars
As part of the Queering the Collection project, we brought in speakers from archives, museums, and libraries to share their experience and advice on collecting LGBTQ+ history. The events were recorded and will be made available on our YouTube Channel.
Speakers included Kelsi Evans, Director of the GLBT Historical Society; Frank Perez, Director of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana; Ben Garcia, Executive Director of the American LGBTQ+ Museum; and Bridgett Johnson-Pride, Interim Associate Librarian of Public Services at Harvard University.
History Harvests and Memory Workshops
With your help, the archive is expanding fast! We conducted our first history harvest at Pride Acadiana in June 2023 and collected 15 oral histories. Attendees shared their stories and what Pride means to them.
Queering the Library: A History Harvest takes place on Friday 1/19 2 - 4:30pm, Saturday 1/20 10 am - 4pm, and Sunday 1/21 2 - 5pm at the Dupré’ Library. Share your stories with the LGBTQ+ Archive by recording oral histories with our team and help us create a digital archive from LGBTQ+ historical artifacts that you want to share with the southwest Louisiana community!
