{B/qKC}: a digital archive

{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.’

The Kansas City Defender is an award-winning, Black-led community organization producing news, mutual aid, art & cultural programming for Black people in Missouri and Kansas. An Abolitionist organization, The Defender is a vehicle to contribute concretely to the social, economic, cultural and political uplift of Black people.

The project began as a two-fold response: (1) to the lack of local resources and spaces for Black queer community members to relish in, and (2) to local universities and institutions retaining ownership of a small portion of our histories with no plans to digitize or widely share any of the artifacts donated to them. Since {B/qKC}’s founding in April 2022, the project has “liberated” various aspects of our histories: including information on the first documented Black drag queens of Kansas City, an organization of gay men fighting racism in the community in the 90’s, and a gay and lesbian variety show called “Out There” that aired on public-access cable.

In early 2023, after researching Volume 1 of the project, Montalvo morphed these archival materials into a multi-location, self-service exhibit from February 27th – March 4th, 2023 hosted at different locations across Kansas City–with each location hosting different materials from the volume. Montalvo did this to increase open-access and knowledge of the “stamp” Black queer Kansas Citians have made on the City. In picking exhibit locations across the City, Montalvoa lso wanted to explore various aspects of Blackness: Montalvo chose a coffee shop in the historic Northeast to break down harmful misconceptions about the neighborhood, Café Corazón to show solidarity between Black and Latin American communities and honor Montalvo’s own Afro-Latine identity, and a radical bookstore to illustrate commitment to solidarity building.

Volume_1’s exhibit, also, had a grand opening and week-long feature at BlaqOut’s newest space on Main Street in May 2023; and was housed at PH Coffee in the Historic Northeast for the entirety of Summer 2023.

{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, and educating with these materials through 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.

Learn how to support these tenets through the {B/qKC} Sponsorship Guide.

In 2024, {B/qKC} plans to solidify itself as one of the world’s only archives exclusively dedicated to collecting and sharing Black queer history. The following are strategic expansions goals {B/qKC} hopes to achieve with the required funding.

a searchable, digital database

By creating an easily accessible, searchable database, Montalvo aims to provide a platform for material donors and any Kansas Citian at-large, to access these materials without any fees or restrictions. Montalvo understands the importance of preserving these materials and is committed to protecting them from commercial corporations and archival institutions that seek to profit from the hard work and labor of marginalized communities. With this database, Montalvo hopes to create a space where the stories and experiences of Black queer people can be shared, celebrated, and cherished for years to come.

volume 2 public exhibits

Continuing the success of their initial mutli-location exhibits, Montalvo hopes to expand the exhibits in 2024 with a refreshed look and feel by repurposing CRTs to project {B/qKC}’s material–creating a social commentary on the need to document our histories in the digital age, while dually calling people to the past.

2024’s multi-location exhibit experience would explicitly feature in coffee shops, low-cost restaurants and bookstores to eliminate barriers to entry–while also illustrating paradoxical relationships by specifically hosting in Black hetero and White LGBTQ+ spaces and demonstrating the effects of intra-communal homophobia/racism.

compensation for archive donors

Montalvo sees it as integral to the project to financially compensate donors contributing to the archive through one-time micro stipends. This is the bare minimum our community can do to show homage to the Black queer people who came before us, and who put their life on the line to create the histories so many are reflecting on today.

workshopping Black queer futures

It is not enough to purely learn about these Black queer histories; Montalvo hopes to host a series of workshops in the later half of 2024 and 2025 exploring the racial and sexual themes from their research, and what Kansas Citians can do now to prevent history from repeating itself.

Learn how to support the Black queer digital archive through the {B/qKC} Sponsorship Guide.