This week I finished searching the University of Mississippi--having worked my way through the curated LGBTQ research subject guide, finding aid search, catalog, and digital repository. It makes sense that UM is the Mississippi partner for IHP, as it is clear that a group of highly motivated professionals is working to preserve LGBTQ history and culture. In addition to the subject guide of archival collections, I spent some time reviewing the Queer Mississippi Oral History Project materials in the digital repository. Ole Miss currently has a multi-discipline class and each semester new projects are adding to the LGBTQ content being preserved for tomorrow, with a goal of 40 oral histories by this year. With two years of oral history recordings and transcriptions, images, and videos--including a documentary of the first Pride event in Tupelo, Mississippi--the archival resources I surveyed at UM was emotionally overwhelming and professionally satisfying.
The importance of community-driven archives in particular and IHP specifically has been on my mind this week. While searching for LGBTQ history specific to Mississippi, I learned that a former president of my university, who himself was the former archivist of the Mississippi Department of History and Archives, was an active participant in the Lavender Scare purge of students and faculty from Southern Miss. The importance of institutions recognizing their role as historical agents of injustice cannot be overstated. My disappointment in the actions of leaders and professionals and my current frustration with a lack of archival collections had a moment of serendipity when I came across a news story today of another southern state archive acknowledging their part in preserving the dominant, racist narrative. Public statements like these and works like those being undertaken at UM and by IHP are necessary to balance the injustice enacted on marginalized groups by institutions.
I have been doing some open-source research to identify named people and places that could be present in archival collections that are not described with access points. I found this reference to a pride march in Ocean Springs in 1994 as the "first ever" in Mississippi. As a transplant from a state with an equally isolating culture, I am finding myself drawn in by the pieces. I have been woefully ignorant of history earlier than the movements of the 60s/70s.
As I am reading and doing research on LGBTQ history in Mississippi, the names of institutions are becoming familiar, and I am moving them up my list of places to search. Next up in the queue: Tougaloo College, Millsaps College, and Rust College.