Cece Cox takes the stage in the dimly lit nightclub like a stand-up comic.
“I swear, you just cannot make this stuff up,” says the lanky lawyer, hinting at mischief.
Then, she unreels stories of a double murder in Dallas’ Reverchon Park in 1988, of more murders in the early 1990s, of candlelight vigils and a state district judge who stirred local gay rights activists when he acknowledged giving lighter sentences to the killers of gay men.
“We’ve got to speak out,” Cox tells the crowd.
So they do.
Every three months for the last three years in a free event called Outrageous Oral, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community have told their stories — painful, comic or celebratory. It’s a part of a project called The Dallas Way, with a mission to gather, organize and present the history of the LGBT community of North Texas.
Cox is one of the latest storytellers. This night she narrates her story as a vulnerable woman in her 20s in the 1980s who had just come out as a lesbian when she witnessed activism against hate crimes as a photographer at the protests. Today, she’s an activist and CEO of the Resource Center, a Dallas-based nonprofit dedicated to assisting the gay community.
Too many stories are untold or undertold, says Jack Evans, the 84-year-old co-organizer of The Dallas Way and many other gay community groups. Women played a crucial role when AIDS descended with deadly force in Dallas, he says, as this night’s Outrageous Oral event ends. This night’s speakers are all women.
“Dallas is the one community in the U.S. where it is known the men and women hang tight,” Evans says. “The women fundraised for AIDS victims, they fed them, they buried them. It’s family.”
Evans and others established The Dallas Way when they realized there were already different collections among the community. Some were being kept in a library at the Resource Center. But the nonprofit, which has a three-decade history, wasn’t prepared to archive and preserve the growing collection.
Libraries’ role
That’s when discussions began with the University of North Texas Libraries.
The libraries now house the archives and are in the process of digitizing much of the material. It’s a collection of more than 500 boxes of books, newspaper articles, photos, campaign memorabilia, correspondence, and the Outrageous Oral videos.
Collectively, it represents the North Texas trajectory of civil rights struggles with passages of violence, deaths from AIDS, legal victories, and family dramas over the process of “coming out.”
Hate crimes
Hate crimes are part of the archives’ most jarring contents.
Among articles are details on the incident mentioned by Cox in her Outrageous Oral presentation, of the decision by a state district judge to give 30-year sentences for the double murders in Reverchon Park.
“I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level and I’d be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute,” the judge said in one newspaper account. The sentences set off protests in the gay community.
Three years later, another gay man was murdered at Reverchon Park, 29-year-old Thanh Nguyen. The diary of Hugh Callaway, a friend of the Vietnamese refugee, is part of the collection, along with an illuminating exchange of letters between Callaway and the man convicted of killing Nguyen.
“To have a primary source like this that documents someone’s experience is breathtaking,” says Morgan Davis Gieringer, the UNT Libraries’ head of special collections. “People are so moved by this, and it is such an important historical document to remember these terrible things that happened.”
The exchange includes these passages in the letters between Callaway and one of the convicted men, Frederick Kirby:
“You and your accomplices could have just taken our money and jewelry and you probably would never have been caught. But no, you were not that intelligent and had to stay and beat us, call us names, then execute us because we were gay …”
“Mr. Calloway [sic] If I could go back and start all over again, I never would have done it, if I had knowen [sic] that someone life would be taken witch [sic] is your ‘lover.’”
The collection also features memorabilia from the Dallas Buyers Club, a group devoted to getting black-market medication to HIV-positive people and the subject of the 2013 movie of the same name. Actor Matthew McConaughey won an Oscar for his role in the film as Ron Woodroof.
There is also plenty on the lawsuit against Parkland Memorial Hospital, which kept a waiting list for patients needing the only AIDS drug at the time. Many died before they could get the drug. A state district judge ordered Parkland to make the drug available to anyone who needed it.
Motherhood
Outrageous Oral is perhaps the history project at its most entertaining. The most memorable stories seem improvised and intimate yet with a pointed message, similar to The Moth, a series of storytelling nights started in 1997 in New York. That morphed into powerful revelatory events and a syndicated public radio hour that’s been copied in venues around the nation.
The recent event also featured Emma Colquitt, who spoke about motherhood. Her biggest defenders are her daughters, who tell their mothers’ stories as a test to potential friends, said Colquitt, a business owner.
“Trinity has outed us wherever she’s gone,” Colquitt said. “She loves her moms. And she tells you immediately she has two moms.”
The night closed with a final message from Kay Wilkinson, a board member for The Dallas Way. She took the stage, where a stray turquoise feather lay from a boa someone before her had used as a prop.
“I want you to think of telling your story,” Wilkinson said, as she took off her turquoise glasses. “Everybody in this room has a story.”
Follow Dianne Solís on Twitter at @disolis.
