VRA 2023 Keynote. Presenter: Melissa Gohlke
A historical record that focuses on white, heteronormative society and events obscures many facets of San Antonio history. Peel back the veneer of normalcy and one can find rich, diverse, and unexpected strands of the city’s past. From female impersonators of the early 1900s to queer life in derelict spaces during the 1960s and finally, gay and lesbian bar culture of the1970s and beyond, the hidden threads of San Antonio’s history reveal themselves. In this presentation, LGBTQ Historian Melissa Gohlke explores these hidden histories and stitches together an alternative interpretation of the city’s historical narrative by examining a wealth of primary sources found in archives and personal collections.
About the speaker:
Melissa Gohlke is an urban historian who specializes in San Antonio LGBTQ+ history. For over a decade, Gohlke has been researching queer history in San Antonio and South Texas and sharing her passion for this history through extensive outreach activities such as presentations, media interactions, exhibits, and written work. Gohlke is the Assistant Archivist for UTSA Libraries Special Collections.
About the VRA:
The Visual Resources Association is a multidisciplinary organization dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments.
- Esta Noche was the first and longest-running Latino gay bar in San Francisco, founded in 1979.
- It provided a safe space for gay Latino men to socialize that was free from discrimination they faced in predominantly white gay bars.
- The bar hosted drag shows, dancing, and comedy and became a community organizing hub, while celebrating Latino culture.
- However, gentrification forced it to close in 2014, representing a loss of an important LGBTQ space and history.
Lynched for Drinking from a White Man’s Well” By Thomas Laq.docxSHIVA101531
“Lynched for Drinking from a White Man’s Well”
By Thomas Laquer
October 11, 2018
London Review of Books, Vol. 40, No. 19
This April, the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law firm in Montgomery,
Alabama, opened a new museum and a memorial in the city, with the intention, as
the Montgomery Advertiser put it, of encouraging people to remember ‘the sordid history
of slavery and lynching and try to reconcile the horrors of our past’. The Legacy Museum
documents the history of slavery, while the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
commemorates the black victims of lynching in the American South between 1877 and
1950. For almost two decades the EJI and its executive director, Bryan Stevenson, have
been fighting against the racial inequities of the American criminal justice system, and
their legal trench warfare has met with considerable success in the Supreme Court. This
legal work continues. But in 2012 the organisation decided to devote resources to a new
strategy, hoping to change the cultural narratives that sustain the injustices it had been
fighting. In 2013 it published a report called Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave
Trade, followed two years later by the first of three reports under the title Lynching in
America, which between them detailed eight hundred cases that had never been
documented before.
The United States sometimes seems to be committed to amnesia, to forgetting its
great national sin of chattel slavery and the violence, repression, endless injustices and
humiliations that have sustained racial hierarchies since emancipation. Stevenson has said
that, visiting Germany, he was struck by the number of memorials to the victims of the
Holocaust: the Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’, set in the ground in their thousands to
mark the names of the murdered in the places where they once lived; the Holocaust
Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate and its subterranean museum; the thousands of
other reminders all over the country of the evils done in the name of Germany – maps,
monuments, plaques, preserved concentration camps. Similarly, the Apartheid Museum
in South Africa bears witness to the racist system that dominated that country’s history;
monuments and plaques outside the constitutional court in Johannesburg recognise those
who suffered. There is no remotely comparable memorial culture in the United States to
the legacy of slavery.
‘Only through grappling with this difficult past can our country move in a
different direction,’ the Legacy Museum’s brochure begins. But the past is not past in
Montgomery. ‘You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused,’ reads
the sign stencilled on a brick wall as you enter the museum. The first exhibit is a
2
holographic slave, about to be auctioned, who speaks to visitors from a small
underground cage. In the final exhibit holographic prisoners in orange jumpsuits sit
behind protective glass. The museum traces ...
Mexicans & Illinois Railroads - Early 20th centurySal Valadez
This document discusses the history of Mexican immigration to Illinois in the early 20th century. It summarizes that many Mexicans came to work on railroads after events like the Mexican Revolution and World War I reduced the American workforce. They often lived in boxcar communities with their families due to lack of housing. The document presents stories of individual Mexican families who immigrated to Illinois towns like Eola and Bloomington to work on railroads. It stresses the urgency of conducting oral histories to preserve the stories of these families before they are lost to time.
This powerpoint is a brief introduction to theLGBT movement in the US and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisextual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.
Phase One was one of the longest running lesbian bars in Washington DC, opening in 1970 during the Lavender Scare. It served as a safe haven and community center for generations of women, and was important in fostering the LGBT community. Phase One helped organize Capital Pride in 1975 and was home to the largest queer art and music festival on the East Coast, Phase Fest. The bar closed in 2015 after 45 years of providing support and space for the lesbian community in Washington DC.
This document is a research paper written by Tara L. George for Dr. Michelle Scott at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It examines forms of cultural resistance within Baltimore's African American community from 1930 to 1980, including music, theater, sports, religion, and community institutions, as responses to racial discrimination and segregation. It discusses the origins and growth of Baltimore's black population and neighborhoods like Old West Baltimore. Key figures and events discussed include Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, the Royal Theater, the Negro Baseball Leagues, and the impact of integration, suburban flight, and civil rights legislation on the community from the 1950s onward.
The Chicago Renaissance turn of 20th c.-1960s(ish)a ga.docxmamanda2
The Chicago Renaissance: turn of 20th c.-1960s(ish)
“a gathering of writers, a flowering of institutions that supported and guided them, and the outpouring of writing they produced”
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/257.html
*
Chicago in the 1890s—Setting the Stage for the Renaissance
*
Historical significance of the World's Columbian Exposition
The second half of the 19th century was an age of fairs and expositions held in London, Paris, and other great cities throughout the world. The World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was the first critically and economically successful U.S. world's fair. Conceived as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the new world, the Exposition held a near-mythological appeal for people of the time.
The Columbian Exposition showcased a city just 60 years old, a city magnificently reborn just 22 years after the Chicago Fire. It also placed before the world the genius of Chicago architects Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Louis Sullivan. In effect, the Columbian Exposition was Chicago's debut on a world stage as a locus of great architecture and burgeoning economic power.
http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/index.html
*
"The exterior of the gigantic bubble of glass and iron that rises over the central pavilion of Horticultural Hall has already been shown in these plates, and here we are admitted into the luxurious tropical garden that flourishes in the interior. Here in a great space of light and air may be seen a miniature mountain covered with strange foliage and with a little stream dashing down its sides, great tubs of palms and tree ferns, bamboos, century plants, "elk horns," a miniature Japanese garden, bridges and all, and shady, inviting nooks, in which the tourisht may find picturesque rest - much as the painter has here shown." Art & Architecture (the White City Edition)
*
The Chicago Defender, 1905
The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as "The World's Greatest Weekly." The newspaper was the nation's most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.
As a northern paper, The Defender had more freedom to denounce issues outright, and its editorial position was very militant, attacking racial inequities head-on. The Defender did not use the words "Negro" or "black" in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as "the Race" and black men and women as "Race men and Race women.“
During World War I The Chicago Defender waged its most aggressive (and successful) campaign in support of "The Great Migration" movement. This movement resulted in over one and a half million southern blacks migrating to the North between 1915-1925.
*
,
Richard Wright, born 1908
Native Son, 1940
Black Boy, 1945
*
Harriet Monroe and Poetry, 1912
The word "Imagiste" a.
The document discusses the history and origins of spoken word poetry in the Black Arts Movement from the 1960s-1970s. It provides brief biographies of influential spoken word poets from that era, including Jayne Cortez, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, and Nikki Giovanni. These poets drew from African oral traditions and used their poetry as a form of political and social commentary addressing issues like racism, poverty, and the black experience in America.
- Esta Noche was the first and longest-running Latino gay bar in San Francisco, founded in 1979.
- It provided a safe space for gay Latino men to socialize that was free from discrimination they faced in predominantly white gay bars.
- The bar hosted drag shows, dancing, and comedy and became a community organizing hub, while celebrating Latino culture.
- However, gentrification forced it to close in 2014, representing a loss of an important LGBTQ space and history.
Lynched for Drinking from a White Man’s Well” By Thomas Laq.docxSHIVA101531
“Lynched for Drinking from a White Man’s Well”
By Thomas Laquer
October 11, 2018
London Review of Books, Vol. 40, No. 19
This April, the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law firm in Montgomery,
Alabama, opened a new museum and a memorial in the city, with the intention, as
the Montgomery Advertiser put it, of encouraging people to remember ‘the sordid history
of slavery and lynching and try to reconcile the horrors of our past’. The Legacy Museum
documents the history of slavery, while the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
commemorates the black victims of lynching in the American South between 1877 and
1950. For almost two decades the EJI and its executive director, Bryan Stevenson, have
been fighting against the racial inequities of the American criminal justice system, and
their legal trench warfare has met with considerable success in the Supreme Court. This
legal work continues. But in 2012 the organisation decided to devote resources to a new
strategy, hoping to change the cultural narratives that sustain the injustices it had been
fighting. In 2013 it published a report called Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave
Trade, followed two years later by the first of three reports under the title Lynching in
America, which between them detailed eight hundred cases that had never been
documented before.
The United States sometimes seems to be committed to amnesia, to forgetting its
great national sin of chattel slavery and the violence, repression, endless injustices and
humiliations that have sustained racial hierarchies since emancipation. Stevenson has said
that, visiting Germany, he was struck by the number of memorials to the victims of the
Holocaust: the Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’, set in the ground in their thousands to
mark the names of the murdered in the places where they once lived; the Holocaust
Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate and its subterranean museum; the thousands of
other reminders all over the country of the evils done in the name of Germany – maps,
monuments, plaques, preserved concentration camps. Similarly, the Apartheid Museum
in South Africa bears witness to the racist system that dominated that country’s history;
monuments and plaques outside the constitutional court in Johannesburg recognise those
who suffered. There is no remotely comparable memorial culture in the United States to
the legacy of slavery.
‘Only through grappling with this difficult past can our country move in a
different direction,’ the Legacy Museum’s brochure begins. But the past is not past in
Montgomery. ‘You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused,’ reads
the sign stencilled on a brick wall as you enter the museum. The first exhibit is a
2
holographic slave, about to be auctioned, who speaks to visitors from a small
underground cage. In the final exhibit holographic prisoners in orange jumpsuits sit
behind protective glass. The museum traces ...
Mexicans & Illinois Railroads - Early 20th centurySal Valadez
This document discusses the history of Mexican immigration to Illinois in the early 20th century. It summarizes that many Mexicans came to work on railroads after events like the Mexican Revolution and World War I reduced the American workforce. They often lived in boxcar communities with their families due to lack of housing. The document presents stories of individual Mexican families who immigrated to Illinois towns like Eola and Bloomington to work on railroads. It stresses the urgency of conducting oral histories to preserve the stories of these families before they are lost to time.
This powerpoint is a brief introduction to theLGBT movement in the US and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisextual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.
Phase One was one of the longest running lesbian bars in Washington DC, opening in 1970 during the Lavender Scare. It served as a safe haven and community center for generations of women, and was important in fostering the LGBT community. Phase One helped organize Capital Pride in 1975 and was home to the largest queer art and music festival on the East Coast, Phase Fest. The bar closed in 2015 after 45 years of providing support and space for the lesbian community in Washington DC.
This document is a research paper written by Tara L. George for Dr. Michelle Scott at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It examines forms of cultural resistance within Baltimore's African American community from 1930 to 1980, including music, theater, sports, religion, and community institutions, as responses to racial discrimination and segregation. It discusses the origins and growth of Baltimore's black population and neighborhoods like Old West Baltimore. Key figures and events discussed include Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, the Royal Theater, the Negro Baseball Leagues, and the impact of integration, suburban flight, and civil rights legislation on the community from the 1950s onward.
The Chicago Renaissance turn of 20th c.-1960s(ish)a ga.docxmamanda2
The Chicago Renaissance: turn of 20th c.-1960s(ish)
“a gathering of writers, a flowering of institutions that supported and guided them, and the outpouring of writing they produced”
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/257.html
*
Chicago in the 1890s—Setting the Stage for the Renaissance
*
Historical significance of the World's Columbian Exposition
The second half of the 19th century was an age of fairs and expositions held in London, Paris, and other great cities throughout the world. The World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, was the first critically and economically successful U.S. world's fair. Conceived as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the new world, the Exposition held a near-mythological appeal for people of the time.
The Columbian Exposition showcased a city just 60 years old, a city magnificently reborn just 22 years after the Chicago Fire. It also placed before the world the genius of Chicago architects Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Louis Sullivan. In effect, the Columbian Exposition was Chicago's debut on a world stage as a locus of great architecture and burgeoning economic power.
http://columbus.gl.iit.edu/index.html
*
"The exterior of the gigantic bubble of glass and iron that rises over the central pavilion of Horticultural Hall has already been shown in these plates, and here we are admitted into the luxurious tropical garden that flourishes in the interior. Here in a great space of light and air may be seen a miniature mountain covered with strange foliage and with a little stream dashing down its sides, great tubs of palms and tree ferns, bamboos, century plants, "elk horns," a miniature Japanese garden, bridges and all, and shady, inviting nooks, in which the tourisht may find picturesque rest - much as the painter has here shown." Art & Architecture (the White City Edition)
*
The Chicago Defender, 1905
The Chicago Defender, which was founded by Robert S. Abbott on May 5, 1905, once heralded itself as "The World's Greatest Weekly." The newspaper was the nation's most influential black weekly newspaper by the advent of World War I, with more than two thirds of its readership base located outside of Chicago.
As a northern paper, The Defender had more freedom to denounce issues outright, and its editorial position was very militant, attacking racial inequities head-on. The Defender did not use the words "Negro" or "black" in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as "the Race" and black men and women as "Race men and Race women.“
During World War I The Chicago Defender waged its most aggressive (and successful) campaign in support of "The Great Migration" movement. This movement resulted in over one and a half million southern blacks migrating to the North between 1915-1925.
*
,
Richard Wright, born 1908
Native Son, 1940
Black Boy, 1945
*
Harriet Monroe and Poetry, 1912
The word "Imagiste" a.
The document discusses the history and origins of spoken word poetry in the Black Arts Movement from the 1960s-1970s. It provides brief biographies of influential spoken word poets from that era, including Jayne Cortez, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, and Nikki Giovanni. These poets drew from African oral traditions and used their poetry as a form of political and social commentary addressing issues like racism, poverty, and the black experience in America.
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) recognized these projects as 2013 Leadership in History award winners for their efforts to preserve and engage people with local history.
We at The History List compiled these slides to make it easier to learn from the hard work of the individuals and organizations recognized by the AASLH this year.
The History List brings people face to face with history through its free, easy-to-use resource for listing history-related events and organizations. Hundreds of organizations participate. There is no cost. More information on why other organizations participate, the advantages, and how you can get started is at www.TheHistoryList.com/getting-started.
At the Crossroads of Freedom and EqualityAmanda Carter
A presentation for Black History Month 2013 that will be on display on the first floor of Franklin Library, Fisk University throughout the month of February. This file was updated on February 21, 2013. As seen by the sources on the last page of the presentation, there are a selection of songs and speech excerpts that play along with this but could not be uploaded here. I apologize for the inconvenience.
This document summarizes a research paper about the struggle between urban development and preserving pioneer cemeteries in Los Angeles County. It discusses two pioneer cemeteries, Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights and El Monte Cemetery Pioneer Cemetery in Rosemead, that have faced encroachment from development. The document argues that pioneer cemeteries provide important cultural, social, and historic value as repositories of local history. They preserve the stories of ordinary citizens who contributed to the development of Los Angeles but have been excluded from the historical record. The document asserts that urban planning should strive to balance development with preserving these cultural landscapes and the histories they represent.
Clubs and Pubs have been historically places where lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and trans* people have gone to meet and to socialize. This presentations presents some of the bittersweet history.
Traces of african american culture in toni morrison`s paradiseSara Vahabi
This document discusses Toni Morrison's novel "Paradise" and how it explores African-American history and culture. The novel is inspired by two towns in Oklahoma - Boley, which was founded by African Americans seeking freedom, and Langston, which was settled by blacks after the Civil War. "Paradise" tells the story of the fictional town of Ruby, Oklahoma and how its residents deal with pressures and destructive forces. The novel examines how religion affects people and how love of religion can influence behavior. Morrison wrote it as an exploration of these themes rather than a linear narrative.
The article discusses Black History Month and how residents in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area honor influential black figures who fought for civil rights. It profiles local residents and their reflections on prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Owens, and Harriet Tubman. The article also highlights ongoing efforts to recognize lesser-known local activists and ensure black history is commemorated beyond just February.
PRIDE is commemorated every June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, when patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn staged an uprising to resist the police harassment and persecution to which LGBTQ+ Americans were commonly subjected. This uprising marked the beginning of a movement to outlaw discriminatory laws and practices against LGBTQ+ Americans.
This year, I am celebrating PRIDE by sharing bits of our rich history. Every day this month, I will post a series of profiles highlighting LGBTQ+ icons who have made significant contributions to society. Take a moment to learn about these scientists, artists, athletes, activists, business and political leaders whose stories inspire me to live authentically and to continue the fight for equity and justice, every day.
Happy PRIDE 2020!
Max VanBalgooy, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change" - Power of Great StoriesWilliam Hosley
From History News, 2013 "making historical thinking visible" "Through carefully crafted histories, the past can be a compelling and enthralling experience" "adopt an aspirational vision for improving society" "What impact
do you want to have on your community?"
Instead of a "program" for a wedding I planned and hosted for two couples who recently visited NYC to be married, I created a newsletter-type update to explain the day's activities, which included parading around the neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan to toast and celebrate Marriage Equality. Original design and concept by Alexandro Pacheco
The document provides a summary of Professor Grace Chee's lecture on the consolidation of slavery in the South between 1790-1850. It discusses how slavery expanded and became entrenched, driven by the growth of cotton and the invention of the cotton gin. The internal slave trade transported over 800,000 slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South. Slaves resisted through escape, rebellion, and embracing religion. The pro-slavery movement argued it was a positive good. Strict laws were passed to control free blacks and suppress abolitionists. Slavery shaped Southern society, economics, and gender roles.
The document discusses the history of women depicted on US coins, from allegorical figures like Lady Liberty to real historical women. It outlines programs that placed women on coins, such as the American Women Quarters Program launched in 2022 to honor influential American women. The program issues quarters each year from 2022-2025 featuring women like Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, and Anna May Wong. Prior to these programs, few circulating coins depicted real women.
The document discusses a 1983 project that interviewed 17 Mexican and Chicana women about their experiences with sexuality, pleasure, and discussing sex. It covered tensions in talking about sex, contradictions between acquiescence and contesting social norms, and the language and body language used. The project also discussed how Mexican culture was critiqued by feminists for repressing women's sexuality through concepts like the Virgin-Mary dichotomy and the Catholic Church's role in marriage. It provided interesting facts from the interviews like differences in age of first intercourse, views of sexuality education, and sanctions for sexual experimentation. The document aims to make connections between these topics and themes in the movie "Like Water for Chocolate."
The Great Migration represented the movement of over 6 million black Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities between 1916-1970. Fleeing the oppression of Jim Crow laws, black southerners sought economic opportunities in growing Northern industries. While the North was imagined as free of racism, migrants still faced discrimination and segregation. Artists like Jacob Lawrence documented the harsh realities of this mass internal migration through works like his Migration Series paintings.
The Great Migration was the movement of over 6 million black Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities between 1916-1970. They sought to escape the oppression of Jim Crow laws and seize new economic opportunities. While the North offered higher wages, black migrants still faced racism and segregation, living in overcrowded neighborhoods with poor housing conditions. Publications like the Chicago Defender encouraged and helped black southerners make the journey North.
From Enslavement to Freedom: Resources for Teaching the African American Expe...Heidi Bamford
This Powerpoint contains many active links and images that can be used to present a general or specific perspective on the African American experience, focusing particularly on New York. While local history resources are identified, there are many national and regional resources included to make this adaptable for any classroom.
The document provides background information on LGBT history, culture, and milestones. It discusses how the history of LGBT peoples dates back to ancient civilizations but has faced centuries of persecution resulting in shame and secrecy. It was not until 1994 that the US began observing LGBT History Month to pursue and interweave LGBT narratives into historical accounts. Other countries have since adopted similar commemorations.
INT-450 Cultural Anthropology Topic 4c Cultural ArtifactsS Meyer
This document discusses cultural artifacts and provides examples of different types of cultural artifacts, including myths, cultural texts, food, cultural/religious objects, and rituals/traditions. It focuses specifically on myths, providing definitions of myths, grand myths/meta-narratives, and examining the Christian worldview story as an example of a meta-narrative. It also discusses analyzing myths by looking at elements like characters, plot, themes, and how the myth shapes a culture's identity and worldview. National and religious myths are also examined. Finally, the document discusses cultural texts and provides guidance on analyzing cultural texts like literature, songs, art, and films.
Analyzing primary and secondary sources of slaverypjkelly
This document provides an overview of various aspects of slavery in America, including field work, domestic work, runaway slaves, passive resistance, religion, slave auctions, family, and children. It lists relevant primary and secondary sources for each aspect of slave life. The primary sources are first-hand accounts from slaves and eyewitnesses during the time period, while the secondary sources were written later by people not present at the events. The document serves as a reference guide for sources related to different experiences of slaves in America.
This document discusses the work of several African American artists from the 20th century and how their work reflected themes of cultural identity and liberation. It mentions Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series from the 1940s, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities. It also discusses works by Robert Colescott, John Biggers, Betye Saar, and other artists that explored African American history and themes of empowerment in the face of oppression. The document examines how these artists used their work to express aspects of cultural identity and the ongoing quest for racial equality in America.
VRA 2023 Collections Management in Fashion and Media session. Presenter: Wen Nie Ng
The goal of the paper is to enhance the metadata standard of fashion collections by expanding the controlled vocabulary and metadata elements for Costume Core, a metadata schema designed specifically for fashion artifacts. Various techniques are employed to achieve this goal, including identifying new descriptors using word embedding similarity measurements and adding new descriptive terms for precise artifact descriptions to use when re-cataloging a university fashion collection in Costume Core. The paper also provides a sneak peek of the Model Output Confirmative Helper Application, which simplifies the vocabulary review process. Additionally, a survey was conducted to collect insights into how other fashion professionals use metadata when describing dress artifacts. The survey results reveal 1) commonly used metadata standards in the historic fashion domain; 2) sample metadata respondents use; and 3) partial potential metadata that can be appended to Costume Core, which is relevant to Virginia Tech's Oris Glisson Historic Costume and Textile Collection. The expanded Costume Core resulting from the project offers a more comprehensive way of describing fashion collection holdings/artifacts. It has the potential to be adopted by the fashion collections to produce metadata that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
VRA 2023 Adventures in Critical Cataloging session. Presenters: Sara Schumacher and Millicent Fullmer
This paper will cover the results of a research study looking at visual resources professionals' perceptions of the visual canon at their institutions and their actions confronting biases in their visual collections. This research is innovative because the "visual canon" as a concept is often evoked but rarely defined, and there has not been research into perceptions and practices that span different types of cultural heritage institutions. The researchers seek to focus on the role of the visual resources professional as a potential change-maker in confronting bias and transforming the “visual canon.” In our presentation, we will discuss the analysis of our survey and interviews around three key research questions: What barriers do visual resources professionals perceive in remedying the biases in the visual canon? What authorities, past and present, do they identify in shaping the visual canon? How do they approach teaching users to identify and critically confront these issues? We will highlight trends as well as unique concerns and solutions from our research participants and engage our audience with how these issues impact their own collections, policies, and instruction.
Contenu connexe
Similaire à Cradle of Texas Gay Liberty: An Alternate History of the Alamo City
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) recognized these projects as 2013 Leadership in History award winners for their efforts to preserve and engage people with local history.
We at The History List compiled these slides to make it easier to learn from the hard work of the individuals and organizations recognized by the AASLH this year.
The History List brings people face to face with history through its free, easy-to-use resource for listing history-related events and organizations. Hundreds of organizations participate. There is no cost. More information on why other organizations participate, the advantages, and how you can get started is at www.TheHistoryList.com/getting-started.
At the Crossroads of Freedom and EqualityAmanda Carter
A presentation for Black History Month 2013 that will be on display on the first floor of Franklin Library, Fisk University throughout the month of February. This file was updated on February 21, 2013. As seen by the sources on the last page of the presentation, there are a selection of songs and speech excerpts that play along with this but could not be uploaded here. I apologize for the inconvenience.
This document summarizes a research paper about the struggle between urban development and preserving pioneer cemeteries in Los Angeles County. It discusses two pioneer cemeteries, Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights and El Monte Cemetery Pioneer Cemetery in Rosemead, that have faced encroachment from development. The document argues that pioneer cemeteries provide important cultural, social, and historic value as repositories of local history. They preserve the stories of ordinary citizens who contributed to the development of Los Angeles but have been excluded from the historical record. The document asserts that urban planning should strive to balance development with preserving these cultural landscapes and the histories they represent.
Clubs and Pubs have been historically places where lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and trans* people have gone to meet and to socialize. This presentations presents some of the bittersweet history.
Traces of african american culture in toni morrison`s paradiseSara Vahabi
This document discusses Toni Morrison's novel "Paradise" and how it explores African-American history and culture. The novel is inspired by two towns in Oklahoma - Boley, which was founded by African Americans seeking freedom, and Langston, which was settled by blacks after the Civil War. "Paradise" tells the story of the fictional town of Ruby, Oklahoma and how its residents deal with pressures and destructive forces. The novel examines how religion affects people and how love of religion can influence behavior. Morrison wrote it as an exploration of these themes rather than a linear narrative.
The article discusses Black History Month and how residents in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area honor influential black figures who fought for civil rights. It profiles local residents and their reflections on prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Owens, and Harriet Tubman. The article also highlights ongoing efforts to recognize lesser-known local activists and ensure black history is commemorated beyond just February.
PRIDE is commemorated every June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, when patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn staged an uprising to resist the police harassment and persecution to which LGBTQ+ Americans were commonly subjected. This uprising marked the beginning of a movement to outlaw discriminatory laws and practices against LGBTQ+ Americans.
This year, I am celebrating PRIDE by sharing bits of our rich history. Every day this month, I will post a series of profiles highlighting LGBTQ+ icons who have made significant contributions to society. Take a moment to learn about these scientists, artists, athletes, activists, business and political leaders whose stories inspire me to live authentically and to continue the fight for equity and justice, every day.
Happy PRIDE 2020!
Max VanBalgooy, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change" - Power of Great StoriesWilliam Hosley
From History News, 2013 "making historical thinking visible" "Through carefully crafted histories, the past can be a compelling and enthralling experience" "adopt an aspirational vision for improving society" "What impact
do you want to have on your community?"
Instead of a "program" for a wedding I planned and hosted for two couples who recently visited NYC to be married, I created a newsletter-type update to explain the day's activities, which included parading around the neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan to toast and celebrate Marriage Equality. Original design and concept by Alexandro Pacheco
The document provides a summary of Professor Grace Chee's lecture on the consolidation of slavery in the South between 1790-1850. It discusses how slavery expanded and became entrenched, driven by the growth of cotton and the invention of the cotton gin. The internal slave trade transported over 800,000 slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South. Slaves resisted through escape, rebellion, and embracing religion. The pro-slavery movement argued it was a positive good. Strict laws were passed to control free blacks and suppress abolitionists. Slavery shaped Southern society, economics, and gender roles.
The document discusses the history of women depicted on US coins, from allegorical figures like Lady Liberty to real historical women. It outlines programs that placed women on coins, such as the American Women Quarters Program launched in 2022 to honor influential American women. The program issues quarters each year from 2022-2025 featuring women like Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, and Anna May Wong. Prior to these programs, few circulating coins depicted real women.
The document discusses a 1983 project that interviewed 17 Mexican and Chicana women about their experiences with sexuality, pleasure, and discussing sex. It covered tensions in talking about sex, contradictions between acquiescence and contesting social norms, and the language and body language used. The project also discussed how Mexican culture was critiqued by feminists for repressing women's sexuality through concepts like the Virgin-Mary dichotomy and the Catholic Church's role in marriage. It provided interesting facts from the interviews like differences in age of first intercourse, views of sexuality education, and sanctions for sexual experimentation. The document aims to make connections between these topics and themes in the movie "Like Water for Chocolate."
The Great Migration represented the movement of over 6 million black Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities between 1916-1970. Fleeing the oppression of Jim Crow laws, black southerners sought economic opportunities in growing Northern industries. While the North was imagined as free of racism, migrants still faced discrimination and segregation. Artists like Jacob Lawrence documented the harsh realities of this mass internal migration through works like his Migration Series paintings.
The Great Migration was the movement of over 6 million black Americans from the rural South to Northern and Western cities between 1916-1970. They sought to escape the oppression of Jim Crow laws and seize new economic opportunities. While the North offered higher wages, black migrants still faced racism and segregation, living in overcrowded neighborhoods with poor housing conditions. Publications like the Chicago Defender encouraged and helped black southerners make the journey North.
From Enslavement to Freedom: Resources for Teaching the African American Expe...Heidi Bamford
This Powerpoint contains many active links and images that can be used to present a general or specific perspective on the African American experience, focusing particularly on New York. While local history resources are identified, there are many national and regional resources included to make this adaptable for any classroom.
The document provides background information on LGBT history, culture, and milestones. It discusses how the history of LGBT peoples dates back to ancient civilizations but has faced centuries of persecution resulting in shame and secrecy. It was not until 1994 that the US began observing LGBT History Month to pursue and interweave LGBT narratives into historical accounts. Other countries have since adopted similar commemorations.
INT-450 Cultural Anthropology Topic 4c Cultural ArtifactsS Meyer
This document discusses cultural artifacts and provides examples of different types of cultural artifacts, including myths, cultural texts, food, cultural/religious objects, and rituals/traditions. It focuses specifically on myths, providing definitions of myths, grand myths/meta-narratives, and examining the Christian worldview story as an example of a meta-narrative. It also discusses analyzing myths by looking at elements like characters, plot, themes, and how the myth shapes a culture's identity and worldview. National and religious myths are also examined. Finally, the document discusses cultural texts and provides guidance on analyzing cultural texts like literature, songs, art, and films.
Analyzing primary and secondary sources of slaverypjkelly
This document provides an overview of various aspects of slavery in America, including field work, domestic work, runaway slaves, passive resistance, religion, slave auctions, family, and children. It lists relevant primary and secondary sources for each aspect of slave life. The primary sources are first-hand accounts from slaves and eyewitnesses during the time period, while the secondary sources were written later by people not present at the events. The document serves as a reference guide for sources related to different experiences of slaves in America.
This document discusses the work of several African American artists from the 20th century and how their work reflected themes of cultural identity and liberation. It mentions Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series from the 1940s, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities. It also discusses works by Robert Colescott, John Biggers, Betye Saar, and other artists that explored African American history and themes of empowerment in the face of oppression. The document examines how these artists used their work to express aspects of cultural identity and the ongoing quest for racial equality in America.
Similaire à Cradle of Texas Gay Liberty: An Alternate History of the Alamo City (20)
VRA 2023 Collections Management in Fashion and Media session. Presenter: Wen Nie Ng
The goal of the paper is to enhance the metadata standard of fashion collections by expanding the controlled vocabulary and metadata elements for Costume Core, a metadata schema designed specifically for fashion artifacts. Various techniques are employed to achieve this goal, including identifying new descriptors using word embedding similarity measurements and adding new descriptive terms for precise artifact descriptions to use when re-cataloging a university fashion collection in Costume Core. The paper also provides a sneak peek of the Model Output Confirmative Helper Application, which simplifies the vocabulary review process. Additionally, a survey was conducted to collect insights into how other fashion professionals use metadata when describing dress artifacts. The survey results reveal 1) commonly used metadata standards in the historic fashion domain; 2) sample metadata respondents use; and 3) partial potential metadata that can be appended to Costume Core, which is relevant to Virginia Tech's Oris Glisson Historic Costume and Textile Collection. The expanded Costume Core resulting from the project offers a more comprehensive way of describing fashion collection holdings/artifacts. It has the potential to be adopted by the fashion collections to produce metadata that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
VRA 2023 Adventures in Critical Cataloging session. Presenters: Sara Schumacher and Millicent Fullmer
This paper will cover the results of a research study looking at visual resources professionals' perceptions of the visual canon at their institutions and their actions confronting biases in their visual collections. This research is innovative because the "visual canon" as a concept is often evoked but rarely defined, and there has not been research into perceptions and practices that span different types of cultural heritage institutions. The researchers seek to focus on the role of the visual resources professional as a potential change-maker in confronting bias and transforming the “visual canon.” In our presentation, we will discuss the analysis of our survey and interviews around three key research questions: What barriers do visual resources professionals perceive in remedying the biases in the visual canon? What authorities, past and present, do they identify in shaping the visual canon? How do they approach teaching users to identify and critically confront these issues? We will highlight trends as well as unique concerns and solutions from our research participants and engage our audience with how these issues impact their own collections, policies, and instruction.
VRA 2023 Beyond the Classroom: Developing Image Databases for Research session. Presenter: John J. Taormina
The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database project collects historic images of the medieval monuments of South Italy, from the so-called Kingdom of Sicily dating from c. 950 to c. 1430, during the Norman, Hohenstaufen, Angevin, and early Aragonese periods. The project was begun in 2011, as part of a 3-year Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, under project investigators Caroline Bruzelius, Duke University, and William Tronzo, University of California, San Diego.
The site features over 8,000 historical images in a range of media, including drawings, paintings, engravings, photographs, and plans and elevations culled from museums, archives, and libraries in Europe and America, often from the Grand Tour, as well as from available publications. The value of the database lies in making accessible to scholars the visual documentation of changes to historical sites because the medieval monuments of South Italy have been damaged, changed, and restored on many occasions, with tombs and liturgical furnishings often destroyed, dismantled, or removed. In fact, many of the 600 monuments no longer exist, often bombed during World War II or destroyed in earthquakes, or obscured by modern buildings and urban sprawl.
VRA 2023 Archives Tools and Techniques session. Presenters: Maureen Burns and Lavinia Ciuffa
The Ernest Nash collection documents ancient Roman architecture in pre- and post-World War II Italy. What made Nash's work significant, beyond capturing the present state of the ancient Roman monuments at a volatile historical moment, was the primacy of the topographical photography and the systematic order he brought to this subject. The American Academy's Photographic Archive contributed Nash's images to an open access, interactive website called the "Urban Legacy of Ancient Rome." It reveals the city in stunning detail and uses geo-referencing to provide the viewer with a better understanding of the overall contextual and spatial logic. These Nash images and metadata are also IIIF compatible. As the Academy continues to digitize and describe the full collection of about 30,000 images, thanks to the generous support of the Kress Foundation, a new partnership has developed with Archivision and vrcHost. Current high quality digital photographs of the same ancient Roman monuments are being added to compare with the historical images documenting architectural changes--whether conserved, restored, altered, reconstructed, re-sited or destroyed. This presentation will provide a progress report about what it takes to move new digital photography into IIIF and the various tools available for close examination and presentation. Finding ways to provide ready access and juxtapose historic and contemporary photography online, builds upon the legacy of Nash's quality curation and scholarship to create 21st century, accessible, online educational resources of great interest and utility to scholars, students, and a wide audience of ancient Roman enthusiasts.
VRA 2023 Exploring 3D Technologies in the Classroom session. Presenter: Amy McKenna
Amy McKenna (Williams College) discusses her project that uses Photoshop and cardboard 3D glasses to recreate the 19th-century spectacle of a historic glass stereo collection.
VRA 2023 Beyond the Classroom: Developing Image Databases for Research session. Presenter: Mark Pompelia
Material Order is an academic consortium of material sample collections (including wood, metal, glass, ceramic, polymers, plastics, textiles, bio-materials, etc.—any material that might be used in or considered for art, architecture, and design disciplines) founded by the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and Fleet Library at Rhode Island School of Design and now comprising several more institutions in the US. It provides a community-based approach to management and access to material collections utilizing and developing standards and best practices. Material Order created the Materials Profile that serves as a shared cataloging tool on the LYRASIS CollectionSpace platform and can be further developed as the different needs of consortium members are identified. Open Web searching across all collections occurs via a front-end discovery portal built with Wordpress at materialorder.org.
The Material Order project was born from the acknowledgment that resource sharing and collaborative catalogs are the most promising approach to exploration and implementation. It was always the intent, now actualized, for partner institutions with different mission and scope to compel the project to consider and accommodate criteria such as material health ecologies, fabrication possibilities, and overlap into adjacent fields such as engineering and archeology. Thus, Material Order represents not just items on a shelf but a knowledge-base of compositions, uses, forms, and properties. No longer in its infancy, Material Order provides a shared and adaptable framework for managing collections across the consortium and optimal facilitation of materials-based research and exploration for art, architecture, and design applications.
VRA 2023 New Frontiers in Visual Resources session. Presenters: Meghan Rubenstein and Kate Leonard
The Art Department at Colorado College is piloting a Personal Archiving program in select undergraduate studio courses that combines visual and digital literacy instruction with personal reflection and professional development. Meghan Rubenstein, Curator of Visual Resources, and Kate Leonard, Professor of Art, will discuss the drive behind this initiative to develop student competencies within a liberal arts setting. We will share our ongoing iterative process as well as select student activities and learning outcomes that may be adopted to various institutions.
VRA 2022 Teaching Visual Literacy session. Presenter: Molly Schoen
Our everyday lives are more saturated in images and videos than any other time in human history. This fact alone underscores the need to implement visual literacy skills in all stages of education, from pre-K to post-grad. Learning how to read images with critical, analytical eyes is crucial to understanding the world around us as we see it represented in the news, social media, advertisements, etc. New technologies have exasperated this already urgent need for visual literacy education. Synthetic media, deepfakes, APIs, bot farms, and other forms of artificial intelligence have many innovative uses, but bad actors also use them to fan the flames of disinformation. We have seen the grave consequences from this age of disinformation, from undermining elections to attempts to delegitimize science and doctors, undoubtedly raising the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic. What do we need to know about these new forms of altered images made by artificial intelligence? How do we discern between real, human-made content versus fakes made by computers, which are becoming more and more difficult to discern? This paper aims to raise awareness of how new forms of visual media can manipulate and deceive the viewer. Audience participants will learn how to empower themselves and their peers into being more savvy consumers of visual materials by understanding the basics of AI and recognizing the characteristics of faked media.
VRA 2022 Individual Papers Session. Presenter: Malia Van Heukelem
This case study of a large artist archive at a medium sized academic research library will connect the success of the artist serving as his own archivist and the collection's broad research appeal locally, nationally and internationally. Like many artists, there is so much more than his own work represented. There is correspondence, fine art prints, ephemera of other artists and writers hidden in the collection. The foundation of organization is in place; now the focus is on creating online access points through finding aids and image collections. The presentation will explore the use of ArchivesSpace, Omeka, and other software to increase access. It will also demonstrate how a solo archivist can leverage interns, student assistants, and volunteers for collections management projects that benefit both the institutional priorities and desired learning outcomes. This talk will delve into the challenges of 20th century visual resource collections such as copyright and engagement with donors. Featuring a local artist has brought other art and architecture collections to the library, without clear boundaries which has led to questions of sustainability, who and what is collected. There is definitely a need to balance the historical record and yet, there are already more archival collections accessioned than can be responsibly managed by one person. The primary collection does include works by women and artists of color, yet much descriptive work remains to forefront the diversity contained within. As an archivist and librarian at a public university, there are many competing demands for collections management, support of researchers, and instruction plus the added interest for exhibition loans and the desire for other artists and architects to be represented. This artist archive is both interesting and complex.
This document summarizes an art history course titled "Pattern & Representation: Critical Cataloging for a New Perspective on Campus History" taught at Oklahoma State University. The course examines major developments in American art across different media from European contact through the mid-20th century. As part of the course, students are divided into groups to create digital exhibitions cataloging artworks from university newspaper archives between certain years. Students must include contextual information and link their entries to related articles. Their entries and a reflective essay are graded individually based on their work plan. The course introduces the concept of "critical cataloging" to bring social justice perspectives to archival and metadata work.
VRA 2022 session. Organizer/Moderator: Allan T. Kohl. Speakers: Virginia (Macie) Hall, Christina Updike, Marcia Focht, Rebecca Moss, Steven Kowalik, Jenni Rodda
During the past year, the “Great Resignation” (aka. The “Big Quit”) has roiled the world of employment nationwide in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had already caused job losses among our membership. While many institutions and individuals now hope for a “return to normal,” others anticipate that the past two years mark a watershed necessitating further transformational changes in the years ahead. These larger employment trends have come on top of quantum shifts in the visual resources field itself, as traditional tasks give way to new responsibilities, and siloed image collections are replaced by interdisciplinary projects.
For several years, our annual conferences have featured the perspectives of newer professionals in “Stories from the Start.” Looking at the opposite ends of their career arcs, this session brings together the perspectives and experiences of two pre-pandemic retirees, two of our members who made their decisions to retire during the past year, and two currently active professionals whose retirements are pending in the near future. When and why did they make their decisions to retire? What was/is the actual process? Concerns? What comes next after we leave our offices for the last time?
VRA 2022 Digital Art History session. Presenters: Melissa Becher and Samuel Sadow
In 2019, the art history program at American University gave its masters students a new option for the capstone project that is the culmination of the degree: create a digital project on an art historical topic using Omeka S or Wordpress. Initially, only a single student chose to complete a digital capstone over a traditional thesis, but within two years there was near parity between the two options, meaning seven digital capstones for the 2021 cohort. To support these projects, a close partnership quickly developed between the University’s library, the visual resources center, and the archives. This session covers how three campus units coordinate that support for these innovative digital humanities projects, including administration of the platforms, instruction, technical support, preservation, and access to the final projects. The session will also showcase examples of student work to demonstrate the variety and creativity of projects that can be accomplished using these platforms, as well as their contributions to the field of art history. The outcome of this initiative is clear: the best of digital humanities, weaving design and technology with rigorous art historical research, and finished projects that have already resulted in successful job applications in the field.
VRA 2022 Material Objects and Special Collections session. Presenters: Allan T. Kohl and Jackie Spafford
Materials-based collections represent a challenging new mode of information management in terms of subject specialization, physical description and accommodation, and institutional mission. Building upon the successful introductory meeting of this Group in Los Angeles at the 2019 Conference, the goal of this SIG is to provide a forum for open discussion of Material and Object Collections and their relationship to various library/visual resources tasks. The Material and Object Collections SIG provides an opportunity for individuals working with a variety of materials and objects collections – including those that support art and art history courses, those that support architecture and design courses, and those in cultural heritage organizations – to share ideas, issues, and potential solutions in regard to tasks similar to common library/visual resources activities (including cataloging, documentation, staffing, outreach), as well as more specialized concerns relating to the management of physical objects (security, storage and retrieval, the design of user spaces, etc.).
By continuing to offer an opportunity for participants to share brief introductions and profiles of their collections, we hope to encourage networking and exchange information about sources for specialized items; to display sample items and share surplus samples with other collections; and to provide examples of successful solutions to typical problems. Our long-range goal is to maintain an ongoing support group that can be of particular benefit to those professionals who are in the beginning stages of building or organizing physical collections.
VRA 2022 Digital Art History session. Moderator: Otto Luna
Exploration of visualization tools in the Digital Humanities/Digital Art History realm. Presenter: Catherine Adams
Assessing the use of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) by Art Historians and Archaeologists. Presenter: Kayla Olson
Supporting Art History Students’ Digital Projects at American University. Presenters: Samuel Sadow and Melissa Becher
VRA 2022 Digital Art History session. Presenter: Kayla Olson
This paper discusses a study (completed in the spring of 2021) which explores how common the use of Qualitative Data Analysis software (QDAS) is among two kinds of object-based researchers: art historians and archaeologists. Surveys were disseminated in a snowball fashion and contained open and closed questions. The questions sought to give participants a platform to describe if, why, and how they use programs like Atlas.ti, NVivo, Dedoose, and MAXQDA throughout their research process. While not QDAS, the image management application Tropy was also included. The author hopes that the anonymized responses will prompt discussion among professionals in academic librarianship and visual resources management about the possible impact of these digital tools on researchers in these disciplines. The question remains on whether researchers in art and material culture disciplines would benefit more from QDAS if participants were aware of: 1) Their existence and 2) Their ability to help organize artifact data and to assist in performing image-based analysis.
VRA 2022 Critical Cataloging Conversations in Teaching, Research, and Practice session. Presenter: Ann M. Graf, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science, Simmons University
In the field of information science, we strive to provide access to information through the most efficient means possible. This is often done through the use of controlled vocabularies for description of subjects, and, in the case of art objects, for the identification of styles, processes, materials, and types. My research has examined the sufficiency of controlled vocabularies such as the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) for description of graffiti art processes and products. This research is evolving as the AAT is responding to warrant for a broader set of terms to represent outsider art communities such as the graffiti art community. The methods used to study terminological warrant by examining the language of the graffiti art community are helpful to give voice to artists who work outside the traditional art institution, allowing the way that they talk about their work and how they describe it to become part of the common discourse. It is hoped that this research will inspire others who design and supplement controlled vocabularies for use in the arts to give priority in descriptive practice to those who have been historically underrepresented or made invisible by default use of terminology that does not speak to their experiences.
VRA 2022 Session. Presenter: Douglas Peterson
In 2021, the National Archives of Estonia engaged Digital Transitions’ Service division, Pixel Acuity, to build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool to analyze part of its historic record. The objective was to use this tool to enhance their collection with descriptive metadata that identified persons of interest in a collection of over 8,000 photographic glass plate negatives, a task that would ordinarily take years of human labor. In this presentation, we discuss our approach to accurately detecting and identifying human subjects in transmissive media, our initial findings using commercially available AI models, and the subsequent refinements made to our workflow to generate the most accurate metadata. In addition to working with commercially available AI models, we developed strategies for validation of AI-generated results without additional human supervision, and explored the benefits of building bespoke, heritage-specific AI models. By combining all of these tools, we developed a highly customized solution that greatly expedited accurate metadata generation with minimal human oversight, operated efficiently on large collections, and supported discovery of novel content within the archive.
VRA 2022 Community Building Session. Presenter: Dacia Metes
Queens Memory is an ongoing community archiving program that engages with our local communities in our two-fold mission to (1) push local history collections out to the public through programming and online resources, and (2) pull new materials into our collections from the diverse communities of Queens, NYC. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to close our buildings, cease all in-person work and programming and shift our work to the virtual world. Our team quickly modified our processing workflow and asset tracking with the high volume of crowd-sourced donations coming through new online submission forms, set up in a rapid response to capture the stories coming from the pandemic’s first epicenter in the U.S. In my proposed conference session, I will discuss how we planned and managed the shift to fully online collection development. I will talk about our virtual outreach efforts to engage with the community and get them to contribute their materials, and how we developed the online tools and processes that allowed us to collect photographs, oral history interviews and other audio/visual materials, while also capturing the necessary metadata and consent forms. New internal communications channels, roles for volunteers, and triage processing for publication resulted from these efforts and are now essential parts of the team’s practices.
The document summarizes a workshop on accessibility guidance for digital cultural heritage collections. The workshop consists of two hours which include presentations on accessibility requirements and workflow strategies, a breakout activity where participants practice creating accessible descriptions for images, and a wrap-up discussion. The presentations cover topics such as common barriers to accessibility, guidelines for making images, video, audio and documents accessible, and best practices for incorporating accessibility into workflows. The breakout activity has participants work in groups to write alt-text and accessibility descriptions for sample images from online collections.
CCO (Cataloging Cultural Objects) is a content standard that provides guidance for formatting and entering metadata values and terms to create shareable metadata for cultural heritage collections. It was developed in the late 1990s/early 2000s in response to questions from catalogers using the VRA Core standard and Getty vocabularies about how to properly format terms. While inspired by these standards, CCO can be used with any controlled vocabulary or data structure. It aims to improve discovery, retrieval, and access of cultural heritage collections through common practices and support for linked open data. The general guidelines also provide advice on structuring local databases and defining hierarchical relationships in controlled vocabularies.
This presentation was provided by Steph Pollock of The American Psychological Association’s Journals Program, and Damita Snow, of The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), for the initial session of NISO's 2024 Training Series "DEIA in the Scholarly Landscape." Session One: 'Setting Expectations: a DEIA Primer,' was held June 6, 2024.
Walmart Business+ and Spark Good for Nonprofits.pdfTechSoup
"Learn about all the ways Walmart supports nonprofit organizations.
You will hear from Liz Willett, the Head of Nonprofits, and hear about what Walmart is doing to help nonprofits, including Walmart Business and Spark Good. Walmart Business+ is a new offer for nonprofits that offers discounts and also streamlines nonprofits order and expense tracking, saving time and money.
The webinar may also give some examples on how nonprofits can best leverage Walmart Business+.
The event will cover the following::
Walmart Business + (https://business.walmart.com/plus) is a new shopping experience for nonprofits, schools, and local business customers that connects an exclusive online shopping experience to stores. Benefits include free delivery and shipping, a 'Spend Analytics” feature, special discounts, deals and tax-exempt shopping.
Special TechSoup offer for a free 180 days membership, and up to $150 in discounts on eligible orders.
Spark Good (walmart.com/sparkgood) is a charitable platform that enables nonprofits to receive donations directly from customers and associates.
Answers about how you can do more with Walmart!"
हिंदी वर्णमाला पीपीटी, hindi alphabet PPT presentation, hindi varnamala PPT, Hindi Varnamala pdf, हिंदी स्वर, हिंदी व्यंजन, sikhiye hindi varnmala, dr. mulla adam ali, hindi language and literature, hindi alphabet with drawing, hindi alphabet pdf, hindi varnamala for childrens, hindi language, hindi varnamala practice for kids, https://www.drmullaadamali.com
This slide is special for master students (MIBS & MIFB) in UUM. Also useful for readers who are interested in the topic of contemporary Islamic banking.
Main Java[All of the Base Concepts}.docxadhitya5119
This is part 1 of my Java Learning Journey. This Contains Custom methods, classes, constructors, packages, multithreading , try- catch block, finally block and more.
A workshop hosted by the South African Journal of Science aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers with little or no experience in writing and publishing journal articles.
Beyond Degrees - Empowering the Workforce in the Context of Skills-First.pptxEduSkills OECD
Iván Bornacelly, Policy Analyst at the OECD Centre for Skills, OECD, presents at the webinar 'Tackling job market gaps with a skills-first approach' on 12 June 2024
LAND USE LAND COVER AND NDVI OF MIRZAPUR DISTRICT, UPRAHUL
This Dissertation explores the particular circumstances of Mirzapur, a region located in the
core of India. Mirzapur, with its varied terrains and abundant biodiversity, offers an optimal
environment for investigating the changes in vegetation cover dynamics. Our study utilizes
advanced technologies such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and Remote sensing to
analyze the transformations that have taken place over the course of a decade.
The complex relationship between human activities and the environment has been the focus
of extensive research and worry. As the global community grapples with swift urbanization,
population expansion, and economic progress, the effects on natural ecosystems are becoming
more evident. A crucial element of this impact is the alteration of vegetation cover, which plays a
significant role in maintaining the ecological equilibrium of our planet.Land serves as the foundation for all human activities and provides the necessary materials for
these activities. As the most crucial natural resource, its utilization by humans results in different
'Land uses,' which are determined by both human activities and the physical characteristics of the
land.
The utilization of land is impacted by human needs and environmental factors. In countries
like India, rapid population growth and the emphasis on extensive resource exploitation can lead
to significant land degradation, adversely affecting the region's land cover.
Therefore, human intervention has significantly influenced land use patterns over many
centuries, evolving its structure over time and space. In the present era, these changes have
accelerated due to factors such as agriculture and urbanization. Information regarding land use and
cover is essential for various planning and management tasks related to the Earth's surface,
providing crucial environmental data for scientific, resource management, policy purposes, and
diverse human activities.
Accurate understanding of land use and cover is imperative for the development planning
of any area. Consequently, a wide range of professionals, including earth system scientists, land
and water managers, and urban planners, are interested in obtaining data on land use and cover
changes, conversion trends, and other related patterns. The spatial dimensions of land use and
cover support policymakers and scientists in making well-informed decisions, as alterations in
these patterns indicate shifts in economic and social conditions. Monitoring such changes with the
help of Advanced technologies like Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems is
crucial for coordinated efforts across different administrative levels. Advanced technologies like
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
9
Changes in vegetation cover refer to variations in the distribution, composition, and overall
structure of plant communities across different temporal and spatial scales. These changes can
occur natural.
Cradle of Texas Gay Liberty: An Alternate History of the Alamo City
1. Cradle of Texas Gay Liberty
an Alternate History of
the Alamo City
Melissa Gohlke
she/her
VRA Annual Conference Keynote Presentation
September 26, 2023
2. Exploring SA’s
LGBTQ (Queer) Past
• Gender bending entertainment
• Regulating transgressive and
deviant behavior
• Bar life
• Queering the Archives
3. Early Signs of Queer Things
• Vaudeville and the art of female
impersonation
• Curious Case of Zelldo Bunkerr
• Womanless Wedding
• Pansy Craze sweeps into San
Antonio
4. Early signs of queer things
Gender crossing as entertainment
5.
6. Zelldo the
Great!
Snake charmer, man
milliner, fire and serpentine
dancer, palm reader,
clairvoyant, vaudeville
impresario, and female
impersonator
22. Hidden no longer:
claiming queer space in
gay and lesbian bars
• Hap Veltman’s Legacy
• Gay and lesbian bar life
• Proliferation of queer spaces and
the evolution of SA’s LGBTQ
community
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30. Queering the Archives
• UTSA Special Collections who we
are and what we collect
• LGBTQ collections
• Happy Foundation Archives
32. HAPPY Foundation
“Dedicated to Life, Liberty, and
the pursuit of Happiness, the
preservation of GayBLT history,
encouraging contemporary art,
and promoting ballroom
dancing.”
Gene Elder 1950-2019
36. Sources
Karlos with a K at the Zoo Club, circa 1972, Lollie Johnson Papers, UTSA Special Collections.
Gilbert Sarony, undated, [https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-3b54-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99], retrieved
2018; Electric Park postcard, UTSA Special Collections ITC Library postcard collection.
Kitty Donor, J. D. Doyle collection, [https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/n009w253t], accessed September 2023;
Majestic show advertisement, San Antonio Express, December 29, 1929.
Alamo Plaza, circa 1910, UTSA Special Collections, Digital Photograph Collection.
Rankin, Jeff. “Monmouth drag queen tour world as exotic dancer and clairvoyant,” in [jeffrankin.medium.com], retrieved
2018.
Zelldo Bunkerr article, San Antonio Light, August 26-27, 1909.
Womanless Wedding, 1918, Atlee B. Ayres materials, UTSA Special Collections ITC Library.
Nite Spot advertisements, San Antonio Light, August 14, 1937; Houston Street, 1939, Zintgraff Photograph Collection, UTSA
Special Collection ITC Library.
Gay Paree souvenir program, San Antonio LGBTQ Ephemera Collection, UTSA Special Collections.
Royal Dinner Club advertisement, San Antonio Express, June 22, 1935.
Off limits list, 1945, ITC vertical files, UTSA Special Collections.
Gohlke, Melissa. Off limits map, Out in the Alamo City: Revealing San Antonio’s Gay and Lesbian Past, World War II – 1990s.
Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2012.
37. Lifesaver Grill, Harvey Belgin Photograph Collection, Keyhole Club, General Photograph Collection, UTSA Special Collections
ITC Library.
1960s queer bars photographs, Carolyn Weathers personal Collection (digital copies of Carolyn’s photographs are held at
One archives in L.A.).
Ponderosa photographs, 1972, John McBurney personal collection.
San Antonio Country, Happy Foundation Archives at the Bonham Exchange.
Turner Hall, acrobats, General Photograph Collection, UTSA Special Collections ITC Library; Bonham Exchange, BE publicity
photograph; Interior of Bonham Exchange, Melissa Gohlke, September, 2023.
Club life, 1970s-1980s, Lollie Johnson Papers, UTSA Special Collections.
Gohlke, Melissa. Gay bar maps, Out in the Alamo City: Revealing San Antonio’s Gay and Lesbian Past, World War II – 1990s.
Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2012.
Gohlke in the stacks, Kristin Law, UTSA Marketing and Communications.
Gene Elder photograph, Melissa Gohlke, 2012.
Happy Foundation/Bonham Exchange, Melissa Gohlke, September, 2023.
TranSanAntonian, Melissa Gohlke, 2018.
1998 Pride Parade, Marquise Collection, UTSA Special Collections.
38. Blog posts
San Antonio LGBTQ Publications: A Portal to the City’s Queer Past, Now Available Online
Off-Limits and Out-of Bounds, World War II and San Antonio’s Queer Community
LGBTQ History Month: Looking at San Antonio’s queer past through the Lollie Johnson papers
LGBTQ History Month-Preserving Queer History Through T-shirts
McNay TransAmerica/n
Community Alliance for a United San Antonio (CAUSA) records now available online
LGBTQ Pride Month-Remembering Queer Activism in SA-1978
San Antonio Lesbian Gay Assembly Records 1990-1998: a glimpse into LGBTQ community dynamics
Media
UTSA archivist works to preserve San Antonio LGBTQ+ history | Together We Rise
KSAT Q&A: UTSA Assistant Archivist Melissa Gohlke talks about legacy of LGBTQ+ pioneer,
developer Hap Veltman
The surprising century-old tradition of drag queen performances in San Antonio
Tuned In Presents - InQueeries: San Antonio's Colorful Past San Antonio Public Library
Podcast — Tuned In
Milestones in San Antonio LGBTQ+ History-SA Magazine
UTSA archivist’s work shines a light on San Antonio’s queer nightlife going back to the
early 1900s
Notes de l'éditeur
As a tourist destination, San Antonio is known for many things: the Alamo, the missions, the Riverwalk, and great Mexican food. The Alamo, as the “Cradle of Texas Liberty” exemplifies Texas as a fiercely independent state, where history has been wild and rugged. While the Alamo might be the city’s most iconic symbol of its history, there is an alternative past, far more interesting and captivating. Today, we will travel through the portal to San Antonio’s queer past exploring individuals, events, and places divergent from those commonly investigated in the history of the Alamo city.
**Note about terminology-the terms LGBTQ, lesbian, gay, transgender are anchored in contemporary history and therefore, are not always accurate or appropriate when describing the past. Additionally, it can be difficult to use LGBTQ over and over again. I use the term queer as an umbrella term to describe different ways of being on the spectrum of queerness.
As we traverse decades, we look at the nascent beginnings of San Antonio’s queer culture. We will explore how changing notions of gender norms led to regulation of gays and lesbians and the spaces in which they came together. Pivotal to carving out safe space, were gay and lesbian bars and the sanctuaries they provided. At the end of the presentation, we will discuss the importance of LGBTQ archives in the preservation of queer history.
At the turn of the 20th century, Vaudeville-variety venues-featured a broad array of performers. Acrobats, comedy duos, dancers, and clowns trod the boards of local theaters. Vaudeville performers were often part of national troupes that traversed the country visiting cities across America. Burlesque or “girlie shows” provided saucy entertainment for audiences. Within the Vaudeville circuit, female impersonators were extremely popular and often procured top billing. Male impersonators were also quite popular as gender bending shows captured the imagination of theater customers.
Gilbert Sarony, pictured here, “the greatest female impersonator on the American stage” (according to the SA Express News), appeared at San Antonio’s Electric Park in 1906, family destination next to San Pedro Springs Park (the 2nd oldest public park in the U.S.). Crossing the gender divide was seen as an art and Sarony’s representation of the frailties of the feminine was reported as amazingly convincing. Other female impersonators graced San Antonio stages including a performer known only as “Almond,” spelled like the nut.
Male impersonators, like Kitty Donor pictured here, shared the stage with their female counterparts.
Most impersonators were adamant about their heterosexuality as social proscriptions against homosexuality prohibited individuals from openly expressing their same sex desires. Julian Eltinge, the most well-known female mimic of the time, fooled audience goers into believing he was a woman. The illusion was so successful, some simply could not believe Eltinge was a man. When his masculinity was called into question, Eltinge took pains to ensure his off-stage persona was one of hyper masculinity. Not everyone followed Eltinge’s lead…
This brings us to the curious case of Zelldo Bunkerr.
Zelldo Bunkerr was a famous performer with many talents, most notable of which was his art of female impersonator. Had it not been for a front page story in a local newspaper, Zelldo’s appearance in San Antonio in 1909 as one of many female mimics on the Vaudeville circuit might have disappeared into the mist of the past.
Context: Red Light District-safe haven for homosexuals
Zelldo Bunkerr, well-known female impersonator disappears. His concerned friends searched his apartment for clues to his whereabouts and found a stash of letters hidden under his mattress. The letters were enclosed in envelopes and addressed to specific people. All letters were published in the SA Light and Gazette. The letter “to my friends” tells of Zelldo’s heartbreak caused by another man (or boy as he refers to him). The name of the individual in question was omitted from the articles.
A friend stated that Zelldo had no financial issues and was “well-fixed.” Whether or not Zelldo had disclosed his same sex relationship to his friends and confidents will never be known. He had a flair for the dramatic, but I doubt he ever intended that his letters be published in the papers. The Brownsville Herald also reported the disappearance of the impersonator, “known over all vaudeville circuits…when last seen he was in his shirt sleeves and carried a pistol. He is said to have been driven crazy and heart broken by some love affair.” Zelldo’s love affair with another man is revealed on page one of the San Antonio Light. For an historian looking for elusive evidence of queer life, this article was a wonderfully serendipitous find.
Fortunately, there was a happy ending for Zelldo who turned up in Joplin, MO 11 days after he went missing. A fun fact about Zelldo, prior to and after his days as a female impersonator, his profession was listed as clairvoyant in the census. Too bad he didn’t see heartbreak on the horizon!
The largest group of patrons attending Vaudeville shows was middle and upper class women who had leisure time and discretionary income. They understood the popularity of acts that used gender crossing as a form of entertainment and amusement. Campy acts drew crowds and lots of laughs. In San Antonio, women from the upper crust of local society cashed in on their knowledge of what drew crowds and money.
CAUTION: The next slide contains an image in which one individual is wearing black face. I apologize if this offensive to anyone viewing this presentation. This image is an important part of the historical record of southern culture during the early 20th century and should be taken within that context.
On April 7, 1918, the Society Page in the San Antonio Light excitedly announced a “Womanless Wedding,” coming to the stage of Beethoven Hall, a popular concert venue. The event, put on by several of San Antonio’s women’s clubs was to bring in a large crowd and raise funds to purchase Liberty Bonds in support of the war effort. The women recruited their spouses or perhaps voluntold their spouses they would be in the cast of this production.
The cast included several prominent local citizens: Atlee B. Ayres, famous SA architect played the blushing bride. Texas State Senator Carlos Bee served as Maid of Honor and Harry Hertzberg makes an interesting mother of the bride. Hertzberg was an avid collector of circus memorabilia which he donated to the city. He was in a long term relationship with a local jeweler and fellow circus enthusiast Tom Scaperlanda.
The camp nature of the event was a page straight out of Vaudeville. As Vaudeville waned, fascination with gender bending took continued. A new fad gripped the country: the Pansy Craze. Female impersonators moved out of the cavernous spaces of Variety venues and into sleek, intimate, modern clubs. Female impersonation was evolving into a high art and most artists were amazingly convincing.
The 1930s pushed a wave of fascination with gender deviance and difference across the U.S. The Pansy Craze—as it became known—provided the public at large with a voyeuristic glimpse into to the lives of those who dared to transgress gender boundaries. Coming on the heels of the Harlem Renaissance, attraction to the exotic world of homosexuals was not confined to major urban centers such as New York or San Francisco. Bohemian attitudes and attractions made their way to San Antonio as well.
Houston Street in downtown San Antonio served as the bustling epicenter of the city’s nightlife. The Texas and Majestic theaters drew throngs to nightly performances. Tucked in amongst these two popular venues were several small clubs that attracted a clientele seeking more exotic forms of entertainment. It is within these night spots we find early signs of queer culture in San Antonio. The Nite Spot headlined female impersonator shows, a highlight of the club’s Friday night lineup. This 1937 ad from the San Antonio Light features Hotcha Hinton, a well-known female impersonator who performed in clubs across the nation.
The Gay Paree in the 1940s pulled out all the stops and brought in performers from across the country.
Mr. Lucian pictured here reportedly married a European countess and was entitled to use Count before his name. Harvey Lee, originally from Arkansas was known for his elegant costumes and entrances, often accompanied by two large white Afghan hounds. These performers were top-notch, nationally known, many of home called Seattle home base.
“The Boys will be girls” review highlighted Hotcha Hinton, back in the river city to dazzle audiences with her outrageous costumes and comedic burlesque. You will notice there is no “Mr.” preceding Hotcha’s name-her desire to be accepted as a woman was so intense she simply neglected to tell people she was a man.
While clubs that headlined female impersonators were a staple in SA during the 30s and 40s, not all appreciated this edgy, provocative form of entertainment. When impersonators left the clubs in drag, they ran the risk of being scooped up by police. During World War II, policing of queer spaces ramped up as the military stepped in to monitor the behavior and morality of armed forces personnel. With the persistent invasion of queer turf, gays fled to the country to escape prying eyes and the possibility of discovery.
The entertainers featured in this 1935 San Antonio Express advertisement were arrested after a resident of the hotel next to the club accused the performers of “indecent exposure.” The performers were released “after spending several hours in jail, during which they presented a program for the other guests.” District attorneys, unable to find grounds on which to the detain and charge the seven performers released the “gals” who agreed to leave the city. When the performers failed to pack up their gowns and move on, they were held once again on morals violations and charges of indecent exposure. Georgie Kay and His College Boys proved to be as popular in the courtroom as they were on stage. Many spectators who gathered in the courtroom were disappointed when the cases were continued. Phone calls to the court streamed in from locals wanting to the know the date of the trials. Perhaps some of San Antonio’s straight citizens were not brave enough to go to the Nite Spot or Royale but they could safely peek into the world of the gender deviants if such deviance was on display in a court of law!
World War II was a game changer when it came to policing homosexual/queer activity. No longer was it up to local cops to pick up stray men in drag, the military launched a national campaign to police the behavior of armed forces personnel. Congress passed the May Act, legislation that targeted specific vice and immoral activities including prostitution and lewdness.
San Antonio during the 1940s was a military training hub because of WWII. Concerns about the health of soldiers led to policing of sexual activity. Homosexual activity not only posed a threat to the moral health of soldiers, concerns about the transmission of venereal disease led to aggressive efforts to thwart interaction between soldiers and queer civilians. Off-limits lists, posted in barracks and at addresses declared off-limits were the manifestation of such efforts.
Thanks to military policing of “deviant behaviors” including homosexuality during the 1940s, places declared Off-Limits were often revealed as spaces where queers came together. Morals violations, venereal contacts, and bawdy house were coded phrases describing places with homosexual activity. “Owners request” often signaled that proprietors of establishments requested off-limits designations to protect their patrons from incursions from military police. Lucky for historians such as myself, Off-limits lists provided the names and locations of queer spaces that otherwise would have gone undetected. This off-limits list issued by the Provost Marshal at Ft. Sam Houston is an absolute gold mine of information and yet another one of those serendipitous finds.
Despite efforts to control behavior and venereal disease, disease rates continued to rise. Health department reports in 1945 revealed that the majority of infections were transmitted through “casual pickups and friends” as opposed to prostitutes.
This map of 1940s San Antonio plots out areas where queers came together in the city based on information gathered from a 1945 off-limits list. Not only were individual establishments declared off-limits, entire sections of town including a slice of the Riverwalk and the east side made the list. Note the close proximity of many off-limits to Ft. Sam. Access to such sites were a breeze for those in the military. Interestingly, the very lists that were supposed to discourage visits to off-limits establishments, were the lists that queer military personnel relied on to find gay and lesbian gathering spots in the city during the 40s and beyond!
The Life Saver Grill, pictured on the left made the 1945 off limits list for venereal contacts, a coded indicator that homosexuals patronized the establishment. You’ll notice the racially diverse crowd at the club. On the right, photographs from the Keyhole club depict a racially mixed audience enjoying racy floor shows and skits. Scholars of queer history have found that integrated venues served as safe havens for gay men and lesbians. Both clubs were on SA’s east side where queer life thrived.
While lesbians and gay men might find safe cover in the crowds of integrated clubs, transgender individuals sought other spaces. The Unknown Club on SA’s west side employed gay waiters and served gender fluid patrons. This information was provided by the nephew of the woman that managed the club who is now a well known queer entertainer. With his help I was able to pinpoint the location of the Unknown and identify the owner of the property-his grandfather.
Gay hangouts during the 1960s were hole in the wall places in peripheral areas of the city. Mary Ellen’s Tophat (pictured on the left) was on the eastside of San Antonio across from the cemetery complex; the Acme Bar (right) was in a derelict section of town, just north of the city. While the images show folks having a good time, the women in the foreground cover their faces, most likely because they were in the armed forces and fear of discovery could ruin careers and lives.
These images depict how run down this part of this section of the city was during the 60s. The Acme bar, a Chinese grocery, a few empty buildings, and an abandoned railway station were the few structures on this stretch of road. For the most part, the area was off the radar of the cops and MPs. For some, escaping just north of the city did not provide sufficient distance to feel safe.
Queer spaces outside the city limits provided safe havens for lesbians and gay men. Kleins, a rustic retreat for lesbians, was on the far outskirts of San Antonio. The retreat was situated two miles off the main road at the end of a dirt road, set in a grove of trees and thickets. According to a patron who visited Klein’s in the early 60s, the owners were “two old crusty buckets” who paid off the cops and Liquor Control Board to leave them and their patrons alone. Surprisingly, Klein’s was listed along with several other gay gathering spots in the Lavender Baedeker, a travel gay travel guide distributed across the U.S.
Klein’s wasn’t the only queer bar in the country. Paul’s Grove, picture here, was an extremely popular rural venue where folks could let their hair down and be themselves. The bar provided a microcosm of queer life. With a pool on the property and plenty of space for relaxing, lesbians often spent weekends at the Grove with their kids. Gay couples whiled away the hours enjoying cold beer and bbq. The big draw however, was same sex dancing, an activity not tolerated in city bars.
Of all the hidden queer spaces hidden in rural locations around SA, the Ponderosa was different from the rest. It oozed sophistication and high end drag.
The existence of the Ponderosa served as testimony to the long standing tradition and popularity of female impersonation in South Texas. The Ponderosa in Von Ormy (south of San Antonio) was the place to go for the best drag in Bexar County. For the late 60s and early 70s, the drag shows were ahead of their time and the crowds packed in on the weekend to see drag divas grace the stage. The exterior of the venue was inauspicious-an old repurposed airplane hangar-the lush interior was incongruent with the location and setting. Brocade curtains framed the stage as drag queens wowed the audience.
According to local stylist and entertainer, John McBurney, the Ponderosa main clientele with Latino men. Photographs also document lesbians of color in the audience. Karlos with a K (who I introduced before) captured the admiration of the crowd at the Ponderosa. Far from the hindrances of the city, brilliant performers took the spotlight. When I spoke with Karlos in 2009, he recalled running across the farm to market road in heels to make his set at the club.
In the wake of gay liberation, the 1970s saw changes in attitudes toward lesbians and gays. Notions of community and a sense of belonging emerged within this framework of newfound freedom..
The road to gay liberation was a bit rocky at the start. As business entrepreneur and San Antonio gay hero, Hap Veltman found out. Veltman was a true visionary. Born and raised in San Antonio, Arthur Veltman or “Happy” as we known, was committed to the preservation of the city’s architectural and cultural heritage and history. Hap was the person most responsible for the Riverwalk as we know it today. His restaurant, the Kangaroo Court which opened in the early 70s was the first to offer seating down by the river. Hap had many restaurant and clubs in downtown SA situated on the river, but none were as beloved as the San Antonio Country.
Hap chose a historical building for what would become “the largest gay disco in the country.” Situated on the river in the old Heidelberg restaurant, the Country featured a modern interior with multiple rooms to accommodate the diverse pool of clients that patronized the bar. The venue was packed every night with patrons; for some entering the Country was a life altering experience-it was their first time in a gay bar. One patron commented, he felt like coming home-same sex couples everywhere holding hands, drag queens holding court.
The popular clubs drew throngs (Hap advertised in Playboy) of clubbers. However, the club also drew the wrong kind of attention-M.P.s. who walked the parking lot checking for military tags, and checking inside for guys with crew cuts. Month after month, the club was under surveillance with periodic raids. On December 23, 1973, M.P.s were out in force checking plates and people. Their search inside the club intensified as they pulled lad with a crew cut out of the bar into the parking lot and started beating him. Paddy wagons rolled in as patrons were yanked outside and loaded up.
The incident culminated with a military hearing as Hap decried the action and fought to keep the SA Country off-limits, designation which was bad for business. Fortunately, Hap won his case and the bar stayed off the list.
To celebrate the victory, club manager and local artist, Gene Elder created a performance piece entitled Fairies Fiasco, a camp ballet celebrating freedom of expression. The fairies performed on the banks of the River, very enchanting.
In 1981, Hap faced another challenge as Valero Energy Corporation put pressure on Veltman to sell the Country threatening litigation if he did not capitulate. Veltman eventually sold the club and moved on to his next venture. Unfortunately, all that remains of the SA County are a few cement stairs leading to what is now a parking lot. Valero razed the building to provide parking for its employees-an act that raises the hackles of the beloved spot’s former patrons.
With the money from the sale of the Country, Veltman purchased the building he would transform into the Bonham Exchange, a structure built in the 1890s for the Turnverein, a German Acrobatic/Athletic Club. The building also served as a USO suring depression when the Turners suffered financial ruin. During this time, the building was painted olive drab! It later served as storage facility for the post office. When Hap rescued the Victorian structure, he was well aware that his very large gay disco was a few steps from SA;s most iconic structure, the Alamo.
The Bonham, hailed as the top dance club in the city, is still packing them in 42 years later. Unknown to most guests, there is an LGBTQ Archives tucked in the bowels of the building, in a space that once served as a bowling alley…more about that in a bit.
I have a special connection to the Bonham. One night while standing on the cat walk overlooking the dance floor, watching queer folk connect in this very special place, I knew that one day I would write about the history of SA’s LGBTQ past. In 2009, I started grad school and the rest is history…
Like Hap Veltman, Lollie Johnson was a successful business entrepreneur who owner several lesbian and gay over three decades. The Zoo, pictured here was a favorite for lesbians. The 1970s saw the emergence of lesbian feminism and clubs patronized strictly by women were common during this era. Fortunately, a rich photo archive of Lollie’s clubs is housed at UTSA Special Collections.
Through the photographs in the Lollie Johnson Papers you can truly sense the camaraderie and happiness that such spaces engendered. (as well as the questionable hair styles of the time-talkin’ about that mullet!)
As club options expanded, drag was a staple in most of the venues. These photos are from the Broadway Cabaret, owned by Lollie Johnson. Jimmy James, who performed as Marilyn Monroe, became quite famous after he appeared on the Phil Donahue talk show. Jimmy is still performing today.
In addition to being a savvy business person, Johnson was an activist, fighting for queer rights. She was a member of the San Antonio Tavern Guild that worked to raise AIDS awareness. Local bars adopted the moniker “Play Safe” and distributed condoms to patrons as well as raising funds to support AIDS charities.
LGBT spaces flourished during the 1980s and 90s. White flight from the city center opened up spaces that gradually became queer turf. While a concentration of queer spaces clustered in the Tobin Hill area, there were gay bars sprinkled across the city. No matter where you lived, there was a gay bar near you! Many of these places remained queer space over decades and many still exist in the present day just with some name and ownership changes.
**I created a series of maps in ArcGis for the purpose of having print copies for my master’s thesis. At some point, I hope to make the maps available online with each point including photos/advertisements for the bars and clubs.
UTSA Special Collections focus on collecting queer materials began back in the 1990s with the Center for the Study of Women and Gender. One of the first donations came from early transgender activists, Linda and Cynthia Phillips. Other donations included WomanSpace, the newsletter of San Antonio’s women’s collective and the San Antonio Lesbian and Gay Assembly.
UTSA Special Collections currently holds 27 LGBTQ collections, many of which can be accessed online. This collecting area is one of our top priorities and we welcome inquiries about donating materials. Our collections and my work have been recognized by local media. We continue to partner with organizations and individuals to spread the world about our collections and let folks know there is a place for their materials should they choose to donate.
Collaborations are an important part of our mission. We have partnered with the Digital Transgender Archive and Wearing Gay History. Thanks to these digital platforms, our archival materials can be accessed online.
Perhaps our most important collaboration has been with the Happy Foundation Archives and former director, Gene Wesley Elder. Gene was one of the most interesting, talented, and eccentric people I have ever met. I owe him a debt of gratitude as he was one of the people most responsible for my career in archives. Joan Duckworth, co-owner of the Bonham introduced me to Gene at the dedication of an urban island to Hap Veltman. Thanks to Joan, I forged a permanent link to this iconic establishment.
The Happy Foundation is named after Arthur P. "Happy" Veltman, a San Antonio business entrepreneur who died of AIDS in 1988. For decades Elder collections materials about local, regional, and national gay history. Elder's interest in gathering bits and pieces of information evolved into a full-fledged commitment to preserve local queer history. The Happy Foundation's 400 square foot room, housed in the back of a gay nightclub called the Bonham Exchange in downtown San Antonio, is filled with boxes and file cabinets containing print materials chronicling the city's LGBTQ+ history.
In 2012, Gene donated his personal papers, which included 23 journals, to UTSA Special Collections. They are a favorite of individuals researching San Antonio’s gay history and when displayed in exhibits.
The Happy Foundation is at a critical juncture-housed in a deteriorating space with no environmental controls, this vital hub of queer history is in peril. UTSA Special Collections staff will be meeting soon to evaluate the future of Happy and how we might assist with the preservation of this important community archive.
Fortunately, there is a small army of volunteers ready to assist with the rescue effort. Many of the items housed at Happy are non-archival-Gene was a collector of everything! Sorting archival from non-archival items will be an onerous task. Among the many objects at Happy, Elder’s personal creations are everywhere-especially his beautiful organic looking ceramics and hand made paper (there is an entire room for that). Stay tuned…help is on the way!
One of my most memorable collaborations and a highlight of my professional career took place four years ago. In June of 2019, UTSA Special Collections participated in an exhibition at the McNay museum TransAmerica/n. This was an amazing opportunity to showcase our transgender collections.
“Transamerica/n is the country’s first broad survey of contemporary artwork from across North America to explore the construction of identity through gender and outward appearance. Transformative, transcendent, and trans-historical, Transamerica/n breaks down conventional boundaries and celebrates a spectrum of gender identity through individual presentation and societal perception.”
Collaborations with local museums and libraries offer Special Collections the opportunity to share our LGBTQ collections with a broader audience. During 2020 we had to move our outreach online which went quite well as everyone was stuck at home and needed things to do! This year we are back full throttle with a full slate of events through October!
This presentation barely scratches the surface of SA’s rich LGBTQ past. At the end of this ppt, I’ve included a list of additional resources for anyone interested in l
Thanks for listening. I’ll be happy to take any questions.