Queer History Month has always been important to me long before finding identity within the LGBTQ+ community. Since its beginning in 1994, Queer History Month has run during the entirety of October, coinciding with National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11th. This month is meant to be used to remember queer history and, for some, to learn about queer history for the first time. Most education on LGBTQ+ topics and events has to be done through individual research, considering students do not often, if at all, learn about the queerness of historical events.
The entire idea of queer history is still new! Because homosexuality had been frowned upon and criminalized, there are few sources of evidence regarding early queer history. For example, Florence Nightingale: considered the founder of modern nursing and a strong feminist, she may have been a lesbian. She never married, was never known to have any male partners, and wrote about her intimate interactions with other women.
A name from the Civil Rights movement you may not know is Bayard Rustin. That is because he was an African American gay man, choosing to be active behind the scenes so as not to jeopardize the Civil Rights movement. He worked as an advisor alongside Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., assisting to organize the March on Washington, and advocating for peaceful protesting during some of the most aggressive police brutality seen in the United States. Rustin was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 for his work. Former President Barack Obama stated in the press release, “As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.”
And that’s just half the story! This does not include notable events that have shaped our world. Well-known to LGBTQ+ history are the three day-long Stonewall Riots, but very few have heard of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot that happened three years prior to what occurred at the Stonewall Inn. The only thing historians and researchers can do is guess, and that’s what makes Queer History Month so important. Prominent names and events in history have been edited out of textbooks, or have been completely forgotten, because they are queer.