Focus on Education Documenting Past & Present

Exploring Georgia State University’s Special Collections & Archives

By Collin Kelley

When you step into the eighth floor space of Georgia State University’s Special Collections & Archives, an impressive wall of windows reveals a west-facing panorama of Downtown’s skyscrapers. Perched on top of the campus’ South Library tower, the commanding view of Atlanta – once dubbed the “City Too Busy To Hate” – is an entryway for a unique collection of materials that explores what some might consider a divisive part of our history: gender and sexuality.

The archivist for this collection, Morna Gerrard, is a dynamic presence in the building. Her interest and fascination with women and gender is apparent from the hours she keeps. “Sometimes I’ll just come in on a Sunday and process material for the archive,” she says. “It’s very calming and gives me the security that I’m preserving history for this city.”

GSU’s special collections is wellknown for housing the Southern Labor Archives, Popular Music and Culture Collections, Social Change Collections and materials related the university’s own history. Women and Gender is a growing segment of the collection that Gerrard is working to build, along with a new focus on the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) history of the city.

“Women and LGBT are so underdocumented, so the work we are doing here is to make sure that history does not disappear,” Gerrard said.

The Georgia LGBTQ Archives Project and LGBT Institute, a partnership with the National Center for Civil and Human

Rights, is gathering the personal papers of the movement’s leaders, authors and activists to build an eclectic collection that goes beyond stuffy academic journals. In this collection, you’ll find periodicals (the city’s first publications for the gay community, ETC. magazine and Southern Voice newspaper), t-shirts (from various marches and protests, including AIDS advocacy group ACT UP), correspondence and personal papers from noted Atlanta LGBTQ residents, and there’s even pornography. You’ll find it marked in boxes with big, red “Restricted” stickers. Gerrard said if the material touches on the LGBTQ history of the city, it would be in the collection.

“We have a wide latitude on what we can add to the collection,” Gerrard said. “Some of the material will take people outside their comfort zones, but that’s part of making a wide array of research material available.”

Recently added to the collection are the personal papers and archive of Franklin Abbott, a longtime LGBTQ activist, poet and psychotherapist who also happens to be an occasional INtown contributor. Gerrard calls Abbott’s archive the “cornerstone” of the burgeoning collection. With his correspondence with fellow writer and gay poet and filmmaker Jim Broughton and his participation in groundbreaking organizations like Gay Spirit Visions and the Radical Faeries, Abbott’s personal collection stretches back into the early 1970s when the LGBTQ movement was just beginning.

Other noted personal collections are those of lesbian activists and authors Maria Helena Dolan and Lorraine Fontana, as well as professor and poet Jim Elledge.

As part of the Women and Gender collection, the archive has also become the repository for Planned Parenthood material and for organizations promoting reproductive choices and combating domestic abuse. While the collection may seem to lean to the left of the political spectrum, the collection also houses pro-life material including a collection of newsletters donated by the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

“We had one visitor come in to see the collection and make the comment that we are taking all the stuff nobody would touch,” Gerrard said. “There are difficult conversations to be had with this collection because it is difficult subject matter.”

While there are some late 19th and early 20th century materials in the collection, Gerrard said documenting the 1970s and onward has become the main thrust of the archive.

A new project being supervised by Gerrard is documenting the Women’s Marches held in response the election of President Donald Trump. Signs, posters, buttons and literature from those events are currently being catalogued for the collection.

Another important part of the archive will be oral histories from leaders, activists and authors, which are being recorded and made available online.

“This year, more than any year, I am more proud of being in my profession,” Gerrard said. “We are witnessing history and GSU will make sure its here forever regardless of what political party is in office.”

The collection is growing at a fast clip, and Gerrard said there are plans to expand to the 5th and 6th floors of the library.

As well as opening up the archive to researchers, GSU now offers classes on using the collection. A vast majority of the collection has been digitized and is now online at library.gsu.org by searching for Special Collections & Archives.

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