About me

• Chapter 1: Prologue: Why LGBTQ Historic Sites Matter by Mark Meinke
• Chapter 2: Introduction to the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative Theme Study by Megan E. Springate
• Chapter 3: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History in the United States by Leisa Meyer and Helis Sikk
• Chapter 4: The History of Queer History: One Hundred Years of the Search for Shared Heritage by Gerard Koskovich
• Chapter 5: The Preservation of LGBTQ Heritage by Gail Dubrow
• Chapter 6: LGBTQ Archeological Context by Megan E. Springate
• Chapter 7: A Note about Intersectionality by Megan E. Springate
• Chapter 8: Making Bisexuals Visible by Loraine Hutchins
• Chapter 9: Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands by Will Roscoe
• Chapter 10: Transgender History in the US and the Places that Matter by Susan Stryker
• Chapter 11: Breathing Fire: Remembering Asian Pacific American Activism in Queer History by Amy Sueyoshi
• Chapter 12: Latina/o Gender and Sexuality by Deena J. González and Ellie D. Hernandez
• Chapter 13: “Where We Could Be Ourselves”: African American LGBTQ Historic Places and Why They Matter by Jeffrey A. Harris
• Chapter 14: LGBTQ Spaces and Places by Jen Jack Gieseking
• Chapter 15: Making Community: The Places and Spaces of LGBTQ Collective Identity Formation by Christina B. Hanhardt
• Chapter 16: LGBTQ Business and Commerce by David K. Johnson
• Chapter 17: Sex, Love, and Relationships by Tracy Baim
• Chapter 18: LGBTQ Civil Rights in America by Megan E. Springate
• Chapter 19: Historical Landmarks and Landscapes of LGBTQ Law by Marc Stein
• Chapter 20: LGBTQ Military Service by Steve Estes
• Chapter 21: Struggles in Body and Spirit: Religion and LGBTQ People in US History by Drew Bourn
• Chapter 22: LGBTQ and Health by Katie Batza
• Chapter 23: LGBTQ Art and Artists by Tara Burk
• Chapter 24: LGBTQ Sport and Leisure by Katherine Schweighofer
• Chapter 25: San Francisco: Placing LGBTQ Histories in the City by the Bay by Donna J. Graves and Shayne E. Watson
• Chapter 26: Preservation of LGBTQ Historic & Cultural Sites – A New York City Perspective by Jay Shockley
• Chapter 27: Locating Miami’s Queer History by Julio Capó, Jr.
• Chapter 28: Queerest Little City in the World: LGBTQ Reno by John Jeffrey Auer IV
• Chapter 29: Chicago: Queer Histories at the Crossroads of America by Jessica Herczeg-Konecny
• Chapter 30: Nominating LGBTQ Places to the National Register of Historic Places and as National Historic Landmarks: An Introduction by Megan E. Springate and Caridad de la Vega
• Chapter 31: Interpreting LGBTQ Historic Sites by Susan Ferentinos
• Chapter 32: Teaching LGBTQ History and Heritage by Leila J. Rupp

• chose to take on his slave grandmother’s last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.
• grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which just— is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet
• he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.
• even beyond that, he generally put up with a lot of racist bullshit in France, so he went and wrote a novel about colonialism and a BLATANTLY self-insert anti-slavery vigilante hero (which he then cribbed from to write the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character of which, Edmond Dantés, Dumas also based on himself).
• (…a novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y'all.)
• famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

• for the bicentennial of his birthday, Pres. Jacques Cirac was like, “…sorry about the hella racism,” and had Dumas’s ashes reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris, bc if you’re gonna keep the corpses of the cream of the crop all together, Dumas’s more widely read and translated than literally everybody else.
• and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering “lost” works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.

• daddy general dumas was an immense fierce french warrior who was a 6 foot plus, stunningly gorgeous and charismatic Black gentleman 
• he invaded egypt
• the native egyptians said “is this napoleon? this must be napoleon. we for one welcome our majestic new overlord”
• then napoleon showed up
• napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus
• the native egyptians were like “… no… no, we’ve thought very hard and we’ll have General Dumas actually”
• this did not make napoleon happy
• in fact it made him jealous
• napoleon felt so emasculated that he launched a campaign of revenge against General Dumas, including taking away his pension, that probably inspired a lot of Alexandre’s rather satisfying scenes in which fathers are nobly avenged and the money-grubbing villains are rubbed in the mud

Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens playing for her grandson.