Projects
Student, faculty, and community projects that have come out of GLAMA
CATEGORIES
Show Me My Rights: Queer Activism in Kansas City and St. Louis, 1977-1993 (Thesis, 2022)
Radical queer (a term not in use at the time, but now more frequently employed) activists seized national headlines in the second half of the twentieth century with their fiery tactics, from so-called “die-ins” in the middle of church services to disrupting city council meetings. While many headline-grabbing protests took place in coastal cities typically characterized as queer havens, queer activists in the Heartland worked tirelessly for liberation from oppression. Queer historians in the 1990s and early 2000s tended to advance this coastal narrative, arguing that urbanization and large populations were necessary preconditions for queer activism. As they began searching elsewhere, scholars discovered evidence of thriving queer communities throughout the United States.
The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America,1960 and After
By Dr. Lucas Hilderbrand. Published by Duke University Press. Gay bars have operated as the most visible institutions of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States for the better part of a century, from before gay liberation until after their assumed obsolescence. In The Bars Are Ours Lucas Hilderbrand offers a panoramic history of gay bars, showing […]
The Ordinance Project
The Ordinance Project tells the story of the contentious struggle to pass an ordinance in Kansas City, Missouri prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations based upon sexual orientation and HIV status. Emerging from the local chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, activists struggled for nearly four years (1989-1993) to secure passage of the ordinance. Directed by UMKC doctoral candidate Austin R. Williams, the 90-minute film won the Celebration of Courage Award at the 2018 Kansas City LGBT Film Festival, and the Juror’s Choice Award at the 2019 Kansas International Film Festival.
The Ordinance Project: Commemorating Kansas City’s LGBTQ Landmark Legislation (Dissertation, 2021)
This project documents the efforts of Kansas City activists, organizers, and politicians who successfully fought for the passage of a municipal nondiscrimination ordinance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ordinance outlawed discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based upon a person’s sexual orientation or HIV status.
Welcome to Womontown
‘Welcome to Womontown’ is a publication exploring the history of an 80s and 90s lesbian community in the Longfellow neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Womontown was a community that challenged the system, defied traditional gender norms, and created a self-sufficient environment free from patriarchal influence.
Womontown (Kansas City PBS)
Producer Sandy Woodson shares the story of a group of women in 1980s and 1990s Kansas City who defied gender norms, transforming 14 city blocks in the Longfellow neighborhood into a revolutionary community by and for women.
Womontown Historic Marker (27th Terrace and Charlotte)
Historic marker erected in 2024 by GLAMA to commemorate Womontown, “an intentional women’s urban community,” created in the Longfellow Neighborhood by Andrea Nedelsky and Mary Ann Hopper in the late 1980s. The marker is located at the intersection of Charlotte Street and East 27th Terrace.