Exhibit curated by MRC staffer wins second prize in national competition

“Publicly Identified: Coming Out Activist in the Queen City,” curated by Joshua Burford, assistant director for sexual and gender diversity for the Multicultural Resource Center, received the second place honorable mention in the 2016 Allan Bérubé Prize.

Presented annually, the Bérubé Prize recognizes outstanding work in public or community-based lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer history. Work from the previous two years is eligible for the honor.

“It is such an honor to have been chosen for this award for our work here in Charlotte. I feel like there is a change happening in the South and that LGBTQ history is about to be thrust into the spotlight,” Burford said. “I am thrilled to be a part of this new wave of historical preservation and access for Southern queer/trans history.”

“Publicly Identified” is comprised of selections from the LGBTQ archive housed in the J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and focuses on the history of Charlotte’s LGBTQ community.

Burford involved community organizations to create an interactive timeline that covers important events that defined the LGBTQ community in Charlotte and the regional area from the late 1940s to the 2010s. The archive was established in 2013 and evolved into an art exhibit in 2014.

The 2016 Bérubé Prize Committee included Amy Sueyoshi, race and resistance studies and sexuality studies chair at San Francisco State University; Mark Bowman, founder of LGBT Religious Archives Network at Chicago Theological Seminary; and Victor Salvo, founder and executive director of the Legacy Project.

Bérubé was best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. His 1990 book “Coming Out Under Fire” examined the stories of gay men and women in the U.S. military between 1941 and 1945. He helped found the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project and taught at many colleges including, Stanford University. In 1996, he was awarded a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.