Archives Receives Grant in Support of Underrepresented Communities

Philadelphia, PA, January 6, 2020 -- The John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia has been awarded a $51,000 Community Based Archives Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The two-year grant will support the Archives' strategic efforts to seek out materials and welcome users from three underrepresented groups within the LGBTQ community: women, people of color, and transgender individuals.

The grant will fund several related initiatives throughout 2020 and 2021. It will support the development of deeper partnerships with individuals and service organizations within these communities, will help to build new collections and promote existing collections related to underrepresented communities, will support community-driven exhibitions, and will provide opportunities to take the Archives out into the community.

Archives Director, John Anderies explains the need for such a grant: "The Archives has a long history of productive engagement with each of these groups and there are important and meaningful materials related to each group within the Archives. However, assessment of the collections shows we can do much better. For instance, among our personal papers, roughly 70% have gay male subjects, while only 17% represent lesbian subjects, and 13% are from transgender individuals. Across these groups, people of color are the subject of only 17% of the personal papers collections. This is only one part of the Archives as a whole, but it suggests the scope of the challenge we face to properly document and serve all parts of our community."

The grant will build on work done by the Archives in the last couple of years. For instance, in 2018 the Archives offered two LGBTQ Community Digitizing Days which focused on the three underrepresented communities. For these events, community members brought in their personal archival materials to be scanned or photographed. Individuals left with their original materials as well as digital copies of those materials. They had the option of giving the Archives digital copies to include in its online Digital Collections, which most did. The current grant will allow for additional Digitizing Days to be held in community spaces around the city.

Additionally, the Archives will hire students and community members to assist with the work of building and promoting the collections. Graduate and undergraduate student interns will create research guides that provide visitors to the Archives a better understanding of its holdings in particular areas. For instance, they will create guides in broad categories such as "trans and gender non-comforming materials" and for more specific topics such as "underrepresented communities and the AIDS epidemic" or "the history of women's spaces in Philadelphia." The Archives will also start a "rapid-response" collecting program, providing stipends to community members to collect current LGBTQ material from parties, arts programs, lectures, public meetings, and demonstrations which focus on underrepresented communities.

Money from the grant will also go toward filling in holes in the collection. As Anderies states, "The majority of our collections come from donations over the years. That, of course, will continue, and we welcome additions to the Archives, especially in areas related to underrepresented communities. But we also recognize the need to more aggressively build out the collections and will begin to purchase materials related to underrepresented communities." These materials will be purchased from rare and special materials dealers or from private collectors.

"We have accomplished a great deal over the past few years in the Archives," says Anderies. "But we have so much more work to do. This generous grant from The Mellon Foundation really gives us an opportunity to take significant strides in making our collections representative of the totality of the LGBTQ community here in Philadelphia. And more importantly, we hope to use the support to further build relationships with those in the community who are creating LGBTQ history every day."

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The mission of the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives is to collect, describe, interpret, and provide access to publications, personal papers, organizations and business records, audiovisual materials, and ephemera created by, dealing with, or of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals. 

The William Way LGBT Community Center encourages, supports, and advocates for the well-being and acceptance of sexual and gender minorities in the Greater Philadelphia region through service, recreational, educational, and cultural programming.

For more information please contact archives@waygay.org.