Blue Ridge Pride LGBTQIA+ Archive launched in January 2019.

We are a cultural heritage repository for LGBTQIA+ oral histories and physical artifacts (e.g., PRIDE festival paraphernalia, travel scrapbooks, reader-written periodicals, T-shirts, buttons, and more). With the help of community volunteers and undergraduate research students, our archive is home to over 112 oral history interviews and thousands of images related to LGBTQ+ history of the South. 

Our “counterstory” approach to collecting oral histories is informed by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Zora Neale Hurston, and Aja Martinez. The products we create (e.g., youtube videos, educational media, academic scholarship) attempt to counter dominant narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ+ and how those stereotypes intersect with being Southern, Appalachian, rooted, transient, and/or transplant. Our archive is working to make LGBTQ+ history of the South easily accessible and educational for readers of all ages.

Ways to get involved include:

• Share your story (email us to get partnered with a trained volunteer to begin your oral history journey)

• Attend an oral history training workshop and be paired with an oral historian on our waiting list

• Volunteer to create educational media from existing interviews or to help digitize existing materials (all remote labor)