Pride Month 2021: Alabama’s LGBTQ community in vintage photos – AL.com
In his apartment in Birmingham’s Highland Avenue, Joe Hulse wrote poems in his diary about men he fondly remembered. Gordie. Alf. Duke.
“If you were not away, these hills we know and love so well, these trees, this wailing wind, this dreary day, would all be mad with glorious ecstasy,” Hulse once wrote.
The poem was dated Nov. 1, 1910.
It was nearly 60 years before New York’s Stonewall riots brought LGBT rights into the national consciousness and 105 years before Alabama’s first same-sex marriages.
Hulse’s diary is kept by the Invisible Histories Project, which for years has been researching and collecting pieces of LGBTQ history.
“This book stands in stark opposition to the idea that Southern Queer community history is a modern invention, and serves to remind us that the locations of Alabama Queer history exist in multiple formats throughout history,” the project wrote on its website.
In honor of Pride Month, we are partnering with Invisible Histories Project and combing our archives to share a small glimpse into Alabama’s LGBTQ history.
Joe Hulse from central Alabama (left) and his partner at the Cahaba River in 1912. The Invisible Histories Project recovered Hulse’s diary which contained poems written by Hulse to several men he loved. IHP believes the diary is from the early 1900s.
This is a photo of the 1976 Ms Vulcan Pageant held in Birmingham. Ms. Vulcan was a camp drag event that took community members and put them in drag to raise money for the local community. Many local drag performers got their start of this event and the draw of this event was the amateur drag that was some of the most entertaining in the community.
Mabel’s Beauty Shop & Chain Saw Repair: this photo is of the outside of Mabel’s which was a gay bar located in Birmingham. This beloved bar opened in the mid-1980s and remained a popular LGBTQ bar until its closure in the 1990s. This picture was donated by Roger Torbert of Birmingham.
Jody Ford, formerly Sidney Ford, hairdresser had sex change operation (deceased)
(Jody Ford owned Ms. Sid’s Coiffures in Birmingham’s Five Points South. A transgender woman, she had played college basketball and semiprofessional football earlier in life. She was known for her skill as a hairstylist and her big yellow Cadillac. A motel owner shot her to death in 1977, argued he was acting in self-defense and was acquitted.)
People protesting a visit to Birmingham by President Reagan in June 1985 are carrying signs that read, ‘Is Our Planet Worth Saving? U.S. / U.S.S.R. Get Rid of Nuclear Bombs’; ‘Freeze and Reverse the Arms Race’; ‘Let’s Not Make Outer Space a New Frontier for Warfare / Ban ‘Star Wars”; ‘Money for Food / Social Security / AIDS Research / People Not Arms’; ‘More Aid for AIDS Now’; ‘The Heavens Are for Wonder Not for War’; and ‘AIDS Is a Public Health Crisis Not a Gay Issue.’ Reagan was in Birmingham to speak at a fundraiser for U.S. Senator Jeremiah Denton. Alabama Media GroupAlabama Media Group
This t-shirt from 1984 is the 1st tshirt produced by the UA Gay Student Union on the celebration of their 1st year. The GSU was the 1st #LGBTQ student group in the state of #Alabama and was co-founded by local activist Elliott Jones. The group, now called Spectrum, is still in existence in Alabama. This t-shirt is part of the Miller-Stephens Collection housed at Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama and was donated by David Miller who was their first advisor.
This is a photo taken by Sandi Stong of a group of women marching in Washington DC as part of the Gay & Lesbian March on Washington in 1987. Groups from all over the state travelled together to the march and this picture is a group of women from Birmingham. This picture was donated by Beth Gunderson in 2018.
(This photo show Auburn’s Gay Lesbian Association marching in the 1993 LGB March on Washington.)
Pete Tepley, center, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Bob Burns, near right, of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama lead a gathering of approximately 70 people stepping out against hate crimes Wednesday at UAB Mini-Park. The group honored the memory of Billy Jack Gaither, who was killed on Feb. 19, 1999 for his status as a gay man. PHPH
(Billy Jack Gaither, 39, was killed in Coosa County on Feb. 19, 1999 because he was was gay. Gaither’s murder sparked a national outcry and a movement to include sexual orientation in Alabama’s 1994 hate crime law.)
(Florence native Bronzie De’Marco has been a legend in the drag queen community for almost 50 years. She was 10 years old when she snuck into her first gay bar.)