My project was reviewing “Connecting the Dots: A birds-eye view of St. Louis’s LGBTQ history, 1945 – 1992″ which was a StoryMap. The project was funded by numerous organizations, appearing to have started in 2016 and was published in January of 2021, and is currently being maintained by the Washington University Library. The project focused on finding and compiling resources surrounding the topic of LGBTQ culture and history in the St. Louis and Metro East areas, specifically to explore the ways in which gender, sex, race, class and geography influenced queer culture of the time. The reasons stated by the project for the importance of this work was that LGBTQ culture was inherently secretive, due to the danger that being out could mean for individual safety, which meant that many of the physical locations for the culture were obfuscated. This project specifically aims to make it clear that even if LGBTQ people weren’t publicly advertising their inclusive hangout spots, that they still existed, and were important to many movements of the eras presented. The project used primary source information for places and events that they could confirm had physical addresses, as well as recollections from elders in the queer community who lived in the region. 

The project included two separate areas of history, the first leg focusing on general LGBTQ history, and those locations important that community in the St. Louis and Metro East region. The second leg, which was in my opinion much more fleshed out and had a ton of information, was the “The Impact of Segregation: Race in LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945 –1992″ StoryMap that was listed in the “More” section of the first project. This project contained a wealth of information about how the region’s history as a border state for slavery, and as a “gateway to the west” formed its cultures in minority communities, in this case in African American and LGBTQ communities. The project details how white flight from the metropolitan St. Louis area affected city, rural, and suburban life for the LGBTQ communities in every area, and the ways in which racial tensions formed the cultural boundaries of those same communities.  

I think that both parts of the project were great, but I definitely gained a lot more from the second project on segregation and will be recommending this to people to read. As a non-local who grew up in a very homogeneous area, I try really hard to learn about this region, so as to better understand its culture. I was more aware of the processes of racial injustice in terms of segregation, redlining, and other predatory practices of the post Jim Crow Midwest before this project, but now I can provide more context around how that informed microcosms of different LGBTQ history.