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New Group Plans To Preserve History With Digital Archive

PreservingHistory
Preserving our history: an early activists’ meeting.

Twenty-five community members gathered downtown at the Houston Public Library on January 28 to discuss ways to bring historical pieces of Houston’s GLBTQ community together and to make them more accessible. During that conversation, a new community-based initiative was proposed: to preserve, collect, and promote wider awareness of Houston’s rich GLBTQ history through an Internet-based archive. Organizers of the project have already unearthed artifacts, including the Montrose Voice reporting the election of pro-gay Mayor Kathy Whitmire and a photo of an early activists’ meeting. (see photo)

“What would you do to protect your valuable papers and photos from a natural disaster—put them where floodwater cannot get to them? Scan them so they might not be lost in a fire?”

MontroseVoice
Preserving our history: the Montrose Voice reporting the election of pro-gay Mayor Kathy Whitmire

Brian Riedel, one of the project’s collaborators, posited. “But what would you do if those photos and papers were not just yours, but represented the history of a whole community? And what about the stories of our community that have not yet been recorded? What happens to those stories when the ones who know them pass on?”

The group hosts an open community meeting on Wednesday, March 25, 6:30 p.m., in the Montrose Counseling Center’s first floor meeting space, 401 Branard St. Details: 713/348-2162 – by Nancy Ford

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