{B/qKC}: a Black queer digital archive
The Kansas City Defender- Nasir Anthony Montalvo, Managing Editor, The Kansas City Defender
Project Description
{B/qKC}, formerly known as Black/queer Kansas City, is a Black queer digital archive educating the Kansas City community on the contributions of local Black LGBTQIA2S+ community members. With bigoted legislation and representation that actively seeks to erase our knowledge and indoctrinate future generations, it is more important than ever to document our histories—not just as static stories but as didactic, interactive artifacts that educate, challenge, storytell, pay homage, repair, destroy, and build anew.
Conceptualized and curated by Nasir Anthony Montalvo through The Kansas City Defender, Montalvo is building a free, accessible, living database of Black queer history–challenging local institutions and their colonization of historical record–and sharing a widely unknown plight of Midwesterners living on the ‘fringe.’
{B/qKC} has evolved from its humble beginnings as an institutional research project to a full-fledged Black queer digital archive: conducting investigative research into local Black queer history, collecting historical materials through free digitization services for the community, creating new archival methodology around reparations and co-ownership, and educating with archival material through artistic, open-access formats.
With community support, {B/qKC} seeks to do the following:
1) increase access to our Black, queer Kansas Citian histories,
2) challenge local institutions and the concept of “ownership,”
3) demonstrate precedence for future reparative efforts, and
4) educate and imagine Black queer futures through community reflection of this historical research.
Project News
‘North Kansas City School District provides teachers with lesson plans on LGBTQ issues for students as young as kindergarten in celebration of LGBTQ History Month; provides teachers with resources from GLSEN and Learning for Justice’
https://defendinged.org/incidents/north-kansas-city-school-district-provides-teachers-with-lesson-plans-on-lgbtq-issues-for-students-as-young-as-kindergarten-in-celebration-of-lgbtq-history-month-provides-teachers-with-resources-from/
‘From the Queer Archives: A closer look at LGBTQ archives and the voices they preserve’
https://www.reckon.news/lgbtq/2023/11/from-the-queer-archives-a-closer-look-at-lgbtq-archives-and-the-voices-they-preserve.html
‘Black Beauty Meets Queer Identity in Art Exhibition ‘Miss/They Camaraderie in 2024”
https://www.communityvoiceks.com/2024/01/24/black-beauty-pageants-drag-performance-miss-they-camaraderie-2024/
Partner Details
Nasir Anthony Montalvo
Managing Editor, The Kansas City Defender
Bio
Nasir Anthony Montalvo is the founder and curator of {B/qKC} published through The Kansas City Defender; and also The Defender’s Managing Editor. Montalvo graduated from their alma mater, Stevens Institute of Technology, in May 2021, where they had extensive history as a student organizer–founding their University’s first and only space for marginalized community members, starting a Black writers column in their student newspaper, and leading protest efforts against Gianforte Family Hall (named after racist and anti-trans Governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte).
Montalvo and their work has featured in The Advocate, GLAAD, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, NPR, HelloGiggles, Flatland KC and various other local and national outlets.
