amistad research center

Decades before “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “The ‘L’ Word” or “Pose” hit screens across America, there was “Just for the Record,” a New Orleans public affairs show on Cox Channel 49 with programming and features just for the LGBTQ community. Behind it all was creator and producer Valda Lewis, a recent transplant to the United States, the daughter of a U.K. public relations professional. Although Lewis had never worked in broadcasting or behind the camera, she helped stee

Note: Brendon’s work on the “Just for the Record” Collection is part of a larger project to process and digitize our video collection. This work has been generously funded by a grant from the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. ARC is working with the New Orleans Video Access Center to digitize “Just for the Record,” which ran on New Orleans cable access from 1987 to 1993 and was New Orleans’ first LGBTQ+ television program. The show covered local and national topics of inte

Nearly six decades after Larry Bagneris began his activist career, the now-retired local and regional LGBTQ pioneer is busy learning meditation. “I never knew how much this could help!” Bagneris, 72, proclaimed recently from his French Quarter home. “I need it to deal with Trump.” Bagneris spent 30 years working for the City of New Orleans. First, as a commissioner on the 18-member Human Relations Commission’s advisory committee for 12 years. Then, as its executive director f

Masani Alexis De Veaux (1948- ) is an American writer and illustrator, and former chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Born on September 24, 1948, in Harlem, De Veaux received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York Empire State College. She continued her education in creative writing at the University of Buffalo, where she attained a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. A voice for blac

Amistad has continuously expanded our LGBTQ collections over our fifty year existence. The donation of the Larry Bagneris papers, which was acquired in 2011, placed us closer to the goal of developing a large holding of LGBTQ materials. The Amistad Research Center houses the papers of civil rights and gay rights activist Larry Bagneris, Jr. This collection documents the fight for LGBTQ rights in the South and in Washington D.C. The bulk of the collection consists of memorandu

Jimmie Daniels knew how to woo a crowd, and it was this skill that allowed him to become infused within the upper echelons of New York City’s entertainment community. The Jimmie Daniels and Rex Madsen photograph collection at the Amistad Research Center documents the life of gay African American night club owner and cabaret singer Jimmie Daniels. The collection consists of roughly three hundred photographs, with the earliest dating from the late 19th century. However, the pre