A visit to the archives at UNC Charlotte

Charlotte’s Black LGBTQ+ history collection includes political victories, Pride and personal stories, but needs the community’s help to grow.

Beyond a wall of glass and just off the elevator on the tenth floor of the J. Murray Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte, you will find the Dalton Reading Room, a semi-circular space lined with rare books and study tables. The space is open to the public, although appointments are recommended, and it is where Qnotes went recently to view items from the university’s special collection and archives, specifically those that document Charlotte’s Black LGBTQ+ community.

Since 2013, the collection at UNC Charlotte has included the King Henry Brockington LGBTQ+ Archive, a community project designed to collect, preserve, and protect the LGBTQ+ community history of Charlotte. Named after Don King, Sue Henry and Blake Brockington, the collection covers primarily the 1970s-present, with personal papers, oral histories, organizational records, ephemera and the full archive of Qnotes. While named after Brockington, it includes no items from his life beyond the past issues of Qnotes. That absence is indicative of a problem archives face when trying to document Black LGBTQ+ history. Discrimination in both communities has limited the stories that are often recorded.