Sharon Dauzat & Daughters of Bilitis to be Honored on October 15 Join us at the Historic New Orleans Collection for an evening honoring the legacy of the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian social and civil rights organization. The program will include an archival...

Louisiana Gets First Historical Marker Noting a Gay Person           A Louisiana Historical Marker honoring physicist and philanthropist Peter Putnam was placed recently near 3127 East Main Street in Houma, Louisiana. In 1979, Putnam funded the Gay Liberation...

Daughters of Bilitis Collection We’ve recently added a new gallery to our website featuring the New Orleans chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. The collection consists of copies of the organization’s newsletter, GAY-LA, from 1975—1977. You can read the newsletters...

Up Stairs Lounge Plaque To Be Dedicated June 22 A new plaque commemorating the 32 victims of the tragic 1973 Up Stairs Lounge arson will be dedicated on Sunday, June 22. The ceremony takes place at 5:00pm at the site of the Up Stairs Lounge (604 Iberville St.) in the...

Annual Membership Meeting: June 5 Join us for our annual Membership Meeting, which will serve as the launch of our 2025 programming focus—Louisiana Queer Arts. After a brief business meeting, we will present the Stewart Butler / Alfred Doolittle Award for...

Up Stairs Lounge Plaque Update A dedication ceremony for the new Up Stairs Lounge commemorative plaque is scheduled for Sunday, June 22. You may recall the old plaque (pictured above) was stolen last year. The unveiling and dedication of the new plaque will be...

Rare Documents on HIV History Preserved The Archives Project recently preserved two rare documents that shed light on the history of the AIDS crisis in Louisiana. The first was the draft of a speech delivered by James Kellogg on June 12, 1994, to Celebration ‘94,...

Call for Gay Ball Program Covers Do you have old Gay Carnival Ball programs? If so, please take a picture of the cover and send them to us so we can include them in a new section of our website’s Gay Carnival photo gallery. We recently added the gallery and currently...

Preserving Northwest Louisiana Queer History Last year, Professor Rachel Johnson of Centenary College in Shreveport reached out to the Archives Project and asked if we could help her gender studies class document Shreveport queer history. We enthusiastically agreed...

2024 Was a Very Good Year! Collection Donations In 2024, we were able to facilitate the donation and processing of several major collections. A partial list of collections placed include: the Sharon Dauzat / Daughters of Bilitis collection (The Historic New Orleans...