This digital project uses maps to explore the region’s LGBTQ communities from the end of World War II in 1945 through the passage of St. Louis’s first gay and lesbian-inclusive civil rights ordinance in 1992.
The project aims to document the history of people whose sexual and gender nonconformity has often meant that their stories have gone unheard, unrecorded, un-archived, and unremarked. To put this history literally, and metaphorically, on the map.
This project examines community spaces of all types -- the bars, the bathhouses, and the drag balls. It notes the emergence of other community spaces by the 1960s -- shops, community centers, churches, dances and self-help groups. It presents as many public sites as possible, from protests and organizing, to where people met for friendship and for sex.
We often describe LGBTQ people as forming a single 'community.' In practice, however, this community has often been divided along a variety of lines, including gender, class, sexual interest, and age. One of the most powerful and enduring divides among St. Louisans is race. It is no surprise that St. Louis’s LGBTQ history has also been split by race, with people often socializing in separate spaces and participating in different activist organizations.