Historian gathers LGBT historic artifacts for museums, seeks old copies of Out Front

Gregory Hinton is trying to preserve LGBT history — one keepsake at a time. Starting with projects small projects like getting the t-shirts from the movie Brokeback Mountain into the Autry National Center, an American West museum in Los Angeles and moving onto projects like bringing the Gay Rodeo’s history into museums Hinton has now set his sights on the Front Range, starting with Out Front.

“After five years of doing this I feel that the next step is to develop a dedicated LGBTQ archive of Western American history and culture,” Hinton said.

“The curators and directors that I’ve met with agree that now might be the time and I just need to formulate my idea better to see why a regional archive of our community’s history would be a good idea at this time,” Hinton said. “That’s why I came to Out Front — because of its history. It mirrors exactly the Gay Liberation Movement from 1976.”

Phil Price, the founder of Out Front, and Hinton were friends when they went to the University of Colorado, Boulder together. Hinton joked about how Price rejected a story from him because it was too sad.

“The Out Front newspapers would be the road map to the entire community if you think about it.”

Hinton is looking for past issues of Out Front, or any old paperwork surrounding the start of the publication. He also said that photographs or other items (i.e. t-shirts) are great items as well. Hinton’s dream is to recreate a place where people can bring items when they are going through their old things.

“Why we need to gather these things now is for the benefit of historians and scholars and basically students of our history to know and see, they’re there to tell our story. Right now they’re probably just loose pieces of paper, but cumulatively they give us visibility and history,” Hinton said.

Currently Hinton has not made a deal with any museums, but is calling for people to think about what items they may have that are meaningful to the community. He has spoken with museums both in Colorado and Wyoming. Since he does not have a spot to collect all these things he says that the best thing to do for now is to keep them safe to the best of your ability.

“We’re responsible to preserve and tell our own stories as a community. You have wonderful archivists right now who are trying their best to put collections together,” Hinton said.

To find out more about the effort or to contribute objects of historical interest, email gregoryhinton@earthlink.net.