REALM Project

Crisis management planning: Invisible Histories

“Unapologetically Southern, unapologetically queer”—Invisible Histories (IH) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, begun in 2016, that “locates, collects, researches, and creates community-based educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South.” Based in Alabama, the organization also serves the states of Georgia, Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle, with a special focus on preserving the stories and experiences of trans and queer people of color as well as those of people over 65 (and all the intersections across those designations) because these stories are most at risk of being lost forever.

Co-founders Josh Burford (Executive Director of Outreach & Lead Archivist) and Maigen Sullivan (Executive Director of Research and Development) have the following goals for this work:

• Create opportunities for intergenerational connection with Queer & Trans people in the South
• Create research opportunities for students, faculty, and community members in archives, research and preservation.
• Provide a network for LGBTQ historians and archivists through the South through the Queer History South network and conference.
• Work with universities, libraries, museums, and archives to create collection and preservation partnerships throughout the South.

To do this work, IH engages in four main activities—community engagement; archiving, preservation, research, and scholarship; education; and professional development and best practices. Josh and his staff have developed a model for community archiving that emphasizes the importance of centering and being led by community voices and experiences, which enables archivists to understand the importance of stepping lightly and building trust. This is especially important when approaching communities to which the archivists don’t belong and asking for permission to gain access to their archival materials.

This model is also evident in the organization's commitment to getting these collections into the community's hands as often as possible. While many archives house their own materials, IH seeks instead to act as “an intermediary between institutions, organizations, and everyday folks. We seek to break barriers between organizations and their local communities to ensure that preservation and research exist in a co-productive and relationship-centered way.” The intent is to house these physical collections in already-resourced university archives, library archives, state archives, and community-based archives so that the materials can stay as local as possible. Part of this process involves contractual agreements that clearly outline how the materials must be used, protected, and made accessible for people to use and learn from, whether it’s community members, scholars, K-12 students, etc.

While Josh understands this hands-on approach is unconventional in the archival field, he truly believes in the power of connecting people with historical objects that help to make the past more tangible. Similarly, by making these collections visible and available for people to see and learn from, IH is also “shaking things up” and pushing back on stereotypes that exist about who lives in the American South and what their lives are like. Josh points out that more queer adults live in this region than in any other part of the country—36% or 5 million queer and trans-identified adults, according to the Southern Equity Research & Policy Center and the Williams Institute at UCLA. Furthermore, while the American South is one of the most culturally diverse regions in the US, it also has the highest level of poverty (24%), and yet southern LGBTQ+ communities receive far less federal funding than those in the northeast, as reported by the organization Funders for LGBTQ Issues.

These statistics combine to paint a portrait of a varied community with rich stories to tell but high levels of need that can benefit from the awareness and visibility provided by these archival collections. These materials may be the first time community members see that others have lived what they are living, and this kind of representation can be transformational. As Josh puts it, “Who are we saving [these items] for, if not for this crowd of people?” He sees opportunities for items such as an activist t-shirt to spark conversations about the political climate in Birmingham in the 1980s in the face of the AIDS epidemic, or a brick from the Stonewall riots in New York to renew interest in civil rights, or an Army uniform and diary from a queer WWII soldier to rewrite an erased history. These collections bring the past to life and “get people excited about and reinvested in their history like it belongs to them.”

To organize this material and be a resource for communities and fellow archivists, the staff manage a collections database, offer virtual exhibits, provide training and education programs, resources, and more. They run a conference called Queer History South, held every two years, that sustains and builds on a network of researchers and archivists who want to study and preserve the queer stories and histories of this area of the country. IH hosts many training programs for budding archivists who want to record and preserve their community’s stories, including the Memory Keeper project and the Community Archivist project. The organization also recently received funding from the Society of American Archivists to develop a trans collecting guide that will offer best practices on how to collect trans materials and will be offered for free on their website.

In 2024, IH reached a milestone—150 collections accessed, handled, managed, and shared in the six years the organization has been working (the first collection was acquired in 2018), and has surpassed that amount already, looking at 200 collections by the end of 2024.

Crisis management and emergency response planning

IH has weathered several crises, mostly centered around the changing political climate that is impacting the safety and security of LGBTQ+ archival materials, archivists, and funding partners in the states they serve. Most recently, Josh and his team have pivoted from only managing collections for a few weeks before sending them to a long-term archive, to processing and storing collections from Florida for a longer period, following recent legislation (SB266) that puts restrictions on the use of funds to acquire LGBTQ+ materials at institutions of higher education in Florida. Following a long-term loan-based protocol, the staff are now going through the steps of processing these collections with the help of volunteers and others, so that they can be organized and then kept safe. Josh points out that, while the intent of IH was never to house collections, they were “not going to stop collecting just because we don’t have a place.” So, the offices have been converted into a working archive and the collections are being added to the organization’s database to keep them searchable. IH is also processing collections from Mississippi following some legal battles there as well. The hope is that these collections can soon be returned to their home states, in keeping with the organization’s mission to keep collections local.

At the same time, Josh and his staff are developing an emergency response plan, to be available by the end of 2024, that can provide archivists with guidance on what to do if their funding is pulled or they are ordered to deaccession LGBTQ+-specific materials. This guide has been sparked by the recent legislation and archiving emergencies. The idea is that an archivist can fill out a form as part of the plan, send an email, and “we’ll light up the network with the hope that it can stay in the state.” If not, Josh is working with institutions around the country, including the Smithsonian American History Museum, the Library of Congress, and other LGBTQ+ archives, to find people who are willing to be on call to receive collections, should these emergencies continue. To equip these institutions with the knowledge they need to preserve and archive all kinds of media, including textiles and other non-paper formats, the team is developing a media training that they hope to have ready by the end of the year that people can access on their website.

Josh also described situations in which he and other staff have received threats that have resulted in FBI involvement and protection, and risks to funding partners. While Josh maintains a deep commitment to continue this work, it’s clear that stress and danger also take a significant toll on the staff. As a result, they have implemented a variety of wellness measures to take care of themselves and one another amidst this difficult work. First, they have regular staff meetings, sometimes lasting a couple of hours, in which they reach out to one another, see how everyone is doing, and support one another. They also reach out to partners in the same way. The team also has a time-away policy, in which a staff member can simply say they need some space, and they are encouraged to step away, no questions asked.

Josh pointed out ways that donor management and interaction has included providing emotional support in ways that he didn’t expect following what he had learned in library school, saying sometimes they “call and just need to talk” to be able to process past and current events. Finally, the team takes a multi-week summer sabbatical to unplug and “be out in the world,” following the crunch of Pride month in June and in anticipation of a similarly heavy workload during Queer History Month in October. Josh describes his staff as “a family,” and they do their best to be kind to one another and take care of each other both in their work and personal lives. “It’s what queer Southerners have always done, we’re working our personal networks, asking for what we need, getting through today because others have gotten through it.” Josh describes the work as highly rewarding, knowing that it’s an honor to be the caretakers of some of this history.

The future is bright for Invisible Histories. Josh talked about the potential for expansion to other states, particularly if the organization can receive funding to expand staff that can support the extra work. The Queer History South conference, too, could expand to include other regions of the US.

Recommendations

1. How are you “lighting up” your networks to draw on shared expertise and experience? That information and knowledge can help guide you in your own work to protect and sustain your collections and spaces.
2. How are you bringing your community into your institution, particularly around your disaster and crisis planning? Think about ways to develop and refine your community communication for advocacy and support.
3. Look for ways you might partner with other cultural heritage institutions—if you’re a library, maybe you can partner with an archive or a museum; their practices and approaches may offer you new ideas on how to develop your own plans in non-traditional ways.

Other examples

Read other examples of how libraries, archives, and museums are approaching crisis management and planning for disasters.

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