Chances are you’ve never heard of Hannah Nokes, a Black transgender woman who overcame severe discrimination in Loudoun County during the 1930s. It’s probably just as unlikely that the story of the Hershee Bar, a historic lesbian bar and longtime community focal point in Norfolk, is any more familiar.
It was at a meeting of LGBTQ+ leaders in Richmond at the Department of Historical Preservation in 2017 that it became clear that stories such as these needed to be shared with a greater audience. Many attendees were surprised there had never been a statewide anthology on the topic, despite states such as Arkansas having produced its own.
“From there, some of us thought an edited collection of local LGBTQ articles from around the Commonwealth would be useful in highlighting their relevance and significance,” says Charles Ford, a professor of history at Norfolk State University. “I put out a call for submissions right before the pandemic, and we had most of the contributors by 2021.”
The University of Virginia Press agreed to publish the project, which was intended as a happy medium between popular history and academic history. “We wanted something very nitty-gritty, very local, very detailed,” says Ford.
He’s the co-author, along with Jeffrey L. Littlejohn of Sam Houston State University, of “Queer Virginia: New Stories in the Old Dominion,” an essay collection. He’ll speak about the book on Sept. 30 at the Library of Virginia.
The book provides a record of the creative ways that LGBTQ+ people across the Commonwealth have persevered and fought for their rights. It’s part of a larger effort to gather oral histories and produce a queer digital archive in the former capital of the Confederacy. Full of glimpses into LGBTQ+ life through the decades, the book tells of generations of widespread prejudice and oppressive laws, and the resilience that queer Virginians brought to the struggle.
Ford and Littlejohn have been research partners since 2004, having published a dozen articles and three books together on civil rights struggles in 20th-century Virginia and Texas. In 2012, they published “Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk’s Public Schools,” a book that was the first to include Black voices and sources in the drama of the closing of the schools to prevent desegregation. Their work has won awards in both Virginia and Texas.
According to Ford, the “Queer Virginia” collection explores the lavender dimensions of conventional historical topics such as the New Deal, the politics of respectability, urban renewal and removal and the legal definitions of obscenity. The essays uncover hidden perspectives on these national narratives. Says Ford, “These articles show that transgender individuals have always existed and are not figments of 21st century social media.”
Ford and Littlejohn wrote the opening essay that explores sodomy laws and same-sex marriage discrimination, as well as another on the obscenity debate in Hampton Roads.
“I can only speak for myself, but I found the police in Norfolk in the early 1970s charging patrons of the Cue Club with obscenity if they said they were gay or lesbian astonishing,” says Ford. “The community standards definition was especially harsh on queer cultures.”
Historians Ford and Littlejohn make the point through “Queer Virginia” that it’s impossible to understand larger national issues without understanding that even before people called themselves LGBTQ, these issues were there.
“The most challenging part is getting the general public to see these topics as not a circus sideshow, but an integral part of our Commonwealth’s development,” says Ford. “The role of the historian is to provide credible evidence for the visibility and legacy of these identities.”
Charles Ford will give a talk on “Queer Virginia: New Stories in the Old Dominion” on Tuesday, Sept. 30 at noon at the Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad St. Registration required.
