Leslie Feinberg — a transgender activist, author of Stone Butch Blues, and one of the first to chart a trans-historical lineage in her 1996 book Transgender Warriors — once wrote, “I couldn’t find myself in history. No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”
That absence is not benign; it is violence. It’s the quiet devastation of growing up and never seeing yourself reflected in the curriculum, the library or the museum field trip. It’s the story of too many queer people in Texas and across the country.
It’s my own story. And it’s no accident.
GLSEN’s most recent National School Climate Survey (2021) shows that only 16 percent of LGBTQ+ students are taught positive representations of queer people, history or events in their schools. Fewer than half — just 43 percent — say they can find LGBTQ-related information in their school library.
That silence is systemic and deliberate, reinforced by book bans, executive orders aimed at erasing queer people and pressure on institutions to self-censor. And it’s only getting worse.
Since day one of the second Trump administration, we’ve witnessed an aggressive campaign to erase queer and trans people from the public record: stripping away federal protections, scrubbing websites of LGBTQ+ references, dismantling data collection on our communities and so much more, fueling a culture war that produces new horrors against us on a daily basis. Erasure of our community is being engineered from the top down.
When our stories are missing, the lie takes root that we are recent, “new” or temporary, that our existence is a passing social fad. Without history, we are easier to erase. This is why memory matters. Not the Hallmark Channel version of nostalgia, but the radical kind: queer memory as active resistance, as an antidote to cultural amnesia, as a living record that insists “We have always been here.”
That conviction that history must be visible and accessible is the foundation of Badge Of Pride: From Silence…To Celebration!, the largest LGBTQ+ history exhibit ever presented in Texas (on view through Sept. 28 at Irving Archives & Museum).
It didn’t come from a government grant or an institutional archive. It began as my own private collection of more than 10,000 artifacts, built over three decades. I’m not an academic or a trained historian. I am, unapologetically, a disruptor — and I relish that role for Badge Of Pride as an organization, too.
My job is to crack open the doors that have been closed to our history, to put the artifacts in front of people who’ve been told they don’t matter and to make it impossible to look away. I wanted this work in the open, where it could do what history is meant to do: inform, affirm, provoke and move people to act.
The three-year journey to create this exhibit wasn’t easy. There were, of course, efforts to prevent it from happening at all. And, as with any project like this, there were conversations about whether certain language or topics might be too provocative for audiences conditioned to oppose anything “queer” without ever actually engaging the merits of the material itself.
We stood firm. If our history can only be told on someone else’s terms, it isn’t our history anymore. And when we were refused public funding, we turned to our community — grassroots donors, small businesses, and affirming communities of faith — to make it happen.
Community matters now more than ever, because without it, this history would have remained unseen.
Badge Of Pride: From Silence…To Celebration became what it needed to be — unapologetic, bilingual, free to the public and radically accessible. We partnered with local archives like The Dallas Way and YesterQueer in Fort Worth and national organizations like the National AIDS Memorial and the NOH8 Campaign. We also incorporated a sample from Lost Faces: Trans Day of Remembrance & Vigil (2024), curated by community organizer Gordy Carmona and featuring portraits by DFW-based illustrator Gabriel Mendez to confront the ongoing epidemic of anti-trans violence. Including it was intentional. Our fight against erasure must also honor and protect those whose lives have already been stolen. We built it all in coalition with community curators, participatory spaces like The Fabric of Us and programs that carry the conversation beyond the gallery walls.
The exhibition follows a deliberate arc from the eras of criminalization and invisibility to the fight for identity and liberation, through the devastation and activism of the AIDS crisis and into the joy and political power of Pride. Each section refuses erasure by offering precedent, proof that queer people have always existed, loved, resisted and shaped the world around them.
This matters in DFW right now because Texas is a front line in the fight over who gets to be remembered. The Irving Archives & Museum — under the leadership of Jenn Landry and her incredible team — took a bold, public stand in hosting this exhibition. They didn’t just make room for it; they worked intentionally to create a safe, brave and truly welcoming space for all who walk through the doors. In a state where public institutions are pressured to shy away from LGBTQ+ topics, their partnership and courage are an example for all. We need allies like that who don’t just open the space but stand beside us in it.
Our work at Badge Of Pride does not end when the exhibit closes. We will be launching ongoing programming at the intersection of art, activism and history, and we will soon be formatting this exhibit to travel, partnering with local communities wherever we go to weave in their stories. Because everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in history. And yes, we’ve already begun imagining our next exhibit.
Our stories will not be erased, not on my watch. But holding that line is a community act. We have been breaking attendance records, but in this climate of escalating attacks on our very existence and our history, it’s still not enough. The time to really show up is now. The time to activate is now.
Badge Of Pride: From Silence…To Celebration closes on Sept. 28. There is no time to waste. If you are older, think of how different your life might have been if you had experienced an exhibit like this as a young person. Come claim the history that’s yours. Add your voice. Take up space. Be part of living history.
If we do not tend and defend our memory, someone else will rewrite it. And we all know how that story ends.
Adrian J. Cardwell (he/him) is the founder and executive director of Badge Of Pride, a Dallas-based nonprofit fighting the erasure of LGBTQ+ history in Texas and beyond. His current exhibit is a direct stand against those who would write queer people out of the story. Learn more at BadgeOfPride.org.
So I predict that next week, the Dallas Voice will publish another hit piece on President Trump.
You people live in an alternate universe!
To Bo Richardson – perhaps instead of trying to accept, adapt and conform to wrong and internalized harm by seeking such acceptance by self-hating oneself and seeking to be accepted by the very worst haters and backward tht are not interested in a far better world, which those offering liberation and freedom – instead of behaving in deadly isolation, shame and believe you or others – do not deserve better. Trump was not the first narcicist or insecure male. Many othes as Trump were haters and feared those different. But the world really should grow and deserves better than the haters who benefit off the abuse and harm they cause as “traditional values”. No more “traditions” of racism, sexism, homophobia and instead justice and respecting others different and to have a better world. Bo if you are a Gay man or Lesbian – you do not have to cling to your ancestors backwardness and not seeking better.