The Cushing Library has contributed materials from multiple archival collections regarding the history of gay rights and the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M. The LBGTQ Archive contains documentation from as far back as 1899, as recently as 2020, and continues to grow. The bulk of its contents are from the 1980s to 2017. This time period includes TAMU’s Gay Student Services (GSS) lawsuit to gain official campus recognition (achieved in 1985), the founding of Aggie Allies (in the 1990s), debates over the language in TAMU’s nondiscrimination clause (multiple years), Hurricane Katrina (2005) when TAMU hosted evacuees, the evolution of Coming Out Week and Gay (then LGBT) Awareness Week on campus, and public controversy over university funding for the GLBT Resource Center.
The Kevin Bailey Collection features files regarding the GSS organization, Gayline, the GSS Roommate Locator program, and campus attitudes towards homosexuality and the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M from the 1970’s to present. This collection covers the TAMU Gay Student Services (GSS) organization, Gayline, GSS Roommate Locator Service, and campus attitudes toward homosexuality and the LGBT community at the university before and after TAMU officially recognized GSS as a campus organization. Some material dates back to 1976. Other documents go as late as 1990, but the bulk of the contents are from the mid-1980s (1983-1986). This scope of the collection spans the period when the GSS lawsuit for recognition was ongoing to when litigation ended in July 1985, giving GSS official recognition. Media coverage over the issue of gay and lesbian students at TAMU heated up in the fall of 1984 as GSS awaited a new court ruling. Most of the collection is local, given its subject, but there is regional LGBT news, and national entertainment news regarding LGBTQ persons.
The Tom and Tom Collection covers the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M University (TAMU), Brazos Valley, Texas, and US, from 1972 to 1990 (and one item from 2000). This time period includes the Gay Student Services’ (GSS) 1976 lawsuit to be recognized by TAMU and the subsequent litigation that ended in 1985 with GSS gaining official campus recognition. Local LGBTQ publications from the Brazos Valley from before and after GSS’ recognition are included. The National March for Gay/Lesbian Rights in Washington, D.C. in October 1979 is covered in this collection at the state and national levels. The collection also includes news coverage of the gay rights movement from around Texas and the US.
Primary contacts: Rebecca Hankins (bio); Beth Kilmarx (bio)