This week’s Queer Historians in Spaaaace (4 a’s, take note) will cover the topic of preservation of queer spaces!
The main questions we will ask ourselves will be:
-What is historic preservation?
-What exactly is/can be preserved?
-What does preservation mean specifically to queer history?
Take a look around, everything you see is possibly, maybe, a site of queer history. Unlike most such sites, you aren’t likely to see many historic markers about queer history. In fact, in many cases these histories are deliberately obscured while others are unceremoniously destroyed.
Take this site, for example: https://www.nps.gov/places/habs-documentation-cinema-follies-dc.htm
Cinema Follies was key to queer sexuality and socializing in DC in the short time it was particularly active up until a catastrophic fire in 1977 took the lives of 9 patrons. Its value as historic could simply rest in that fact but the revelation that Rep. Jon C. Hinson (R-MS) had been present during the historic fire makes it integral to the story of a queer politician that ultimately became a gay rights activist: https://www.intomore.com/impact/remembering-jon-c-hinson-the-house-representative-arrested-for-sodomy-turned-lgbtq-activist/
Meanwhile, some other sites that would have fallen out of public memory had they not been memorialized demonstrate the variety of ways queer history can be remembered.
One site, that of Compton’s Cafeteria, was the site of a lesser-known queer uprising in August 1966 that saw trans women of color facing off against increasingly punitive Pinkertons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton%27s_Cafeteria_riot
The riot has sunken so far into history that its actual date is long-forgotten and it is now memorialized during an entire month, its actual date still in question. In this way, memorializing queer sites has preserved an often-overlooked history, that of trans women in the American West.
This process of memorializing queer places also runs parallel with the preservation of queer public memory. Where should such a monument toward queer history be situated? Or is one necessary? In the City of New York in 2016, President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall Inn the Stonewall National Monument in dedication to the broader movement. Even as it memorializes the Stonewall Uprising, it is treated as a national monument to queer people in lieu of a physical place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
How should queer memory be memorialized and prioritized?