BOSTON, MA (APRIL 20, 2021) The History Project (THP), Boston’s LGBTQ community archives, is pleased to announce a project to update and share Boston’s Black LGBTQ history. With the support of a Mass Humanities Digital Capacity Grant, THP will hire a Community Curator Fellow to oversee virtual community outreach with Boston’s Black LGBTQ community. The fellow will hold Zoom-based focus groups, develop mechanisms for soliciting feedback and submissions to a timeline of Black LGBTQ history, and create a guide for undertaking community outreach activities remotely. 

“Funding from Mass Humanities is essential to continuing our work to highlight and share the stories of Black LGBTQ Bostonians,” said Executive Director Joan Ilacqua. “Through this project, we’ll be able to make the stories we hold in the archives available freely online and add new stories and milestones to the history of Black LGBTQ Bostonians with the input and guidance of the community. We are so grateful to Mass Humanities and Mass Cultural Council for enabling us to hire a Community Curator Fellow to undertake this work.”

Established in 1980, THP’s mission is to document, preserve, and share LGBTQ history. In 1997, The History Project curated “Black and Gay in Black and White,” a groundbreaking exhibition exploring the cultural and social contributions of local Black LGBTQ artists and activists. The timeline prepared as a part of the original exhibit, which explores this history through the early 1990s, is available as a PDF file. 

Interest in the history of Boston’s Black LGBTQ community has significantly increased in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and ensuing conversations about the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender in the LGBTQ rights movement. This project builds on the recommendations of a consultant hired in 2018 with the support of the Boston Foundation to learn the humanities needs of Boston’s LGBTQ communities of color. The Community Curator will use new digital methods of community outreach and digital interpretation to update and present previously overlooked or excluded histories and voices.

Under the guidance of the Community Curator, Black LGBTQ Bostonians will be invited to participate in virtual focus groups. Using The History Project’s connections to Black-led LGBTQ organizations to promote the virtual focus groups, the Community Curator will introduce the project’s history, and moderate virtual community-based history and storytelling sessions to understand how the Black LGBTQ community defines historical moments of importance. 

Click here to view the Community Curator Fellow job description and learn how to apply.