Chapter 4: Queering the University: The Evolution of LGBTQ Inclusivity at a University in the Deep South, 1950–2016

While historical scholarship has begun to capture the experiences of queer university students in the United States, the experiences of queer faculty and staff within institutions of higher education remains largely unexplored. In this chapter, we illuminate the experiences of queer faculty and staff at a large, public Southern university between 1950–2016 as they navigated and sought to change what was an oppressive—even potentially lethal—institutional climate. Engaging qualitative analysis of oral histories from faculty and staff who lived through the time period and triangulating these interviews with university artifacts and articles from studentlead newspapers, we look at pivotal moments of faculty and staff activism at this university with the hope that both historians and contemporary scholars alike may gain insight into what it took and what it will take to queer the university.