Oak Lawn is sometimes called Dallas' "gayborhood."
Cedar Springs Road, its main thoroughfare, is lined with LGBTQ+ friendly bars, clubs and businesses.
Until recently, the road also welcomed people into the neighborhood with its rainbow striped crosswalks.
Now, those colorful pathways are gone, following an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott calling for their removal.
The City of Dallas initially resisted removing the rainbow crosswalks, but eventually complied to avoid the potential loss of federal and state funding.
The decision was upsetting to many who frequent the neighborhood, including Adrian Cardwell. He's the executive director of Badge of Pride, a nonprofit dedicated to documenting and sharing LGBTQ+ history.
Cardwell described the order as "physically erasing the community and its visibility."
To counteract that removal, Badge of Pride collaborated with The Dallas Way, Dallas Social Queer Organization and Coalition for Aging LGBT to create a new community archival project.
'That was where we found each other'
The project is called "The Way We Were: Dallas LGBTQ+ Nightlife, 1945-Today," and it highlights the importance of gay bars and clubs to the queer community.
The coalition is hosting community scanning events, where people bring in their old photos, share information about names, dates and places and then digitize their photos or documents.
Later, those records will be added to UNT's Portal to Texas History database.
"Before we were so visible, the clubs, the bars, that was where we found each other, right? That's how we built community," Cardwell continued. "That's how during the AIDS crisis, we supported ourselves and each other. Even in the face of a disease that was ravaging our community, even in the face of society, you know, discriminating against us, we found these places to be ourselves and to be present with one another and to build support for one another."
Jeffrey Mena brought a stack of patterned photo albums that are about 30 years old.
"Wasn't he cute?" Mena said, pointing at a portrait of his husband Stephen Windsor. He wore a striped shirt and had a lush '90s boyband haircut. "He died at 33. Way too young to die... I hate AIDS. Oh, I hate it."
The photo was taken in 1995, a little more than a decade into the AIDS Crisis when HIV/AIDS was widespread, deadly and difficult to treat.
'We have a responsibility to them to tell their stories'
Robert Emery is chair of the Coalition for Aging LGBT, another group co-sponsoring the event. He remembers that era too.
"There was a time that the Turtle Creek Chorale sang at a funeral every Saturday. Then we would rehearse on Tuesday night. And we didn't know who of these men, who of these beloved friends of ours on a Tuesday night, we might be funeralizing very soon."
But that painful period makes this event even more important, Emery continued.
"For no good reason we survived. It wasn't anything special about us. Just dumb luck. But here we are and we have a responsibility to them to tell their stories, to preserve their history and celebrate them."
A majority of Americans support gay marriage, but that approval rating dipped to 65 percent this year. That's down from a high of 71 percent in 2022, according to new polling from Gallup.
It's just the latest in a long line of challenges for the gay community.
"The through line of all of that is joy. … Sorry I get a little … Joy and artistic expression and people finding their people. In a world that is very, very hard for this community to still find that joy and that connection and that community and it's just as important today," Cardwell said.
The photos of done-up drag queens, smiling bartenders and people waving rainbow flags will serve as a permanent reminder.
DETAILS: The next community scanning event will be held from 6-8 p.m. July 23 at Resource Center Community Center, 5750 Cedar Springs Rd, Dallas. Free.
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