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In 2016 Kansas City installed a marker that celebrated its role as host to the first meeting of the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations in 1966. The marker was the first to commemorate this historic gathering of gay rights activists as well as the first to recognize Missouri's LGBTQ history. This article charts the effort to install Kansas City's marker as a case study of the issues involved in documenting LGBTQ history. What began as a community collecting initiative quickly evolved into an effort that included students, city officials, and a federal heritage area. The authors--a founder of the community collection initiative, a public history educator, and a public history student--demonstrate how those involved attempted to navigate questions of ownership and shared authority. Ultimately, the authors ask public historians to see themselves as potential allies to, rather than authorities of, the communities with which they work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism, presented at the Museum of the City of New York from May to October 2017, aimed to complement and complicate popular narratives about the history of HIV/AIDS by examining how HIV/AIDS played out in the everyday lives of diverse communities in New York. The exhibition placed works of art alongside documentary photography, film, and archival materials in unique ways to ask visitors to rethink what counts as activism and to reconsider home as a crucial political space. This paper reflects on the ways the curator sought to activate the domestic archive--the everyday ephemera and affects of illness, care-taking, and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report from the field examines the interpretation of two notable queer women from Columbus, Georgia: blues musician Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939) and Southern Gothic author Carson McCullers (1917-1967). Although these women maintained complicated relationships with their hometown, the Columbus Museum is utilizing new ways to examine their sexuality in the context of their cultural contributions. Nuanced interpretation of Rainey's and McCullers's bisexuality offers opportunities to discuss connections between sexuality, gender, race, and economic realities. In presenting the museum's efforts to interpret these fascinating personalities through exhibitions and permanent collection artifacts, this article offers ideas, strategies, and questions for public historians to consider in their own practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the great challenges for public historians in LGBTQ history is finding and developing interpretation of the history of sexuality for public audiences at current historic sites. This article answers this challenge by repositioning historic house museums as sites of some of the most important LGBTQ public history we have, by using the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a case study. At this house museum, we can re-see historical interpretation through a queer lens and take on histories that have been until recently "slandered, ignored, and erased" from our public narratives of the past.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) historical interpretation is an increasingly common feature of museums and historic sites, while at the same time one that often pushes beyond the physical boundaries of historical organizations. This article considers various interpretive methods as tools for delivering LGBTQ history and offers multiple examples of each type of interpretation. Methods discussed include exhibits (both temporary and permanent); special events; arts programming; youth programming; monuments and memorials; historical engagement with the built environment; and digital history projects. The author acknowledges that, in 2019, these efforts still tend to favor the experiences of white cisgender men and to focus on the realm of political activism and offers some suggestions for how LGBTQ interpretation might develop in coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes OutHistory.org, the public Web site on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) history hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. OutHistory.org uses MediaWiki software to compile community-created histories of LGBTQ life in the U.S. and make the insights of LGBTQ history broadly accessible. Project Coordinator Lauren Gutterman explains how the public history project employs digital history to collect, advance, and project LGBTQ history, and how it serves as a model for other interactive history Web sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]