Atlanta’s gay rights history told in new exhibit

The banners in the museum’s lobby display the artifacts of history.

Some of the images — the disco ball from Outwrite book shop, a piece of the dance floor from Backstreet dance club, the poster announcing a “Die-In” in front of the Centers for Disease Control — may seem like unrelated tokens of the past.

But they are part of the narrative of the gay rights movement, a narrative in which Atlanta plays a leading role.

The new exhibit at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights brings these visual reminders together, and tells us that though the movement came to national attention at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, great changes took place in Georgia.

“In the Deep South the LGBT march towards freedom and equality has been unique and Atlanta’s role in that journey has been pivotal,” reads the introduction to the exhibit, which opened to the public on Thursday, Sept. 3.

The opening of "Forward Together: A Look at Atlanta's LGBT History Since Stonewall" coincides with the informal launch of the LGBT Institute, a "platform" within the rights center intended "to study and advance the state of civil and legal human rights for LGBT communities," according to its mission statement.

This has been a year of tremendous change for lesbian and gay Americans, but LGBT Institute interim director Ryan Roemerman points out that the movement doesn’t end with marriage equality. Gay Southerners can marry, but no Southern state has passed anti-discrimination laws, he said. “You can still be fired for being gay.”

The LGBT Institute intends to foster discussion of these inequities, and to advocate change.

Known for its civil rights display, and its exhibit of the papers of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the rights center’s new exhibit demonstrates how civil rights and gay rights have often intertwined in Atlanta. It includes a photograph of Coretta Scott King, dressed to the nines, during a 1986 appearance at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in New York, where she affirmed her “solidarity with the gay and lesbian movement.”

King appeared at the dinner as a direct response to the Bowers v. Hardwick decision, which stripped the right to consensual sex from gay men and which wasn’t overturned for 17 years. In the case, the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld a Georgia state law.

Images and text telling these stories from the 1970s to the 2010s have been photo-transferred to a series of banners, which hang in the lower lobby of the rights center. Many of those images and narratives were contributed by the Georgia LGBTQ Archives Project, a collaborative effort by several Atlanta universities, libraries and history centers to accumulate the documents of this history.

At Georgia State University alone, the LGBTQ archive takes up 150 linear feet of space, according to Morna Gerrard, GSU archivist and project vice president. The collection includes many taped oral histories, and Gerrard said “when you listen to those oral histories, so many say ‘we came to Atlanta from other places in the South because Atlanta was a safe haven.’ It really is a hub.”