On March 1st, 2024, artist-activist Nasir Anthony Montalvo launched one of the world’s first and only Black queer archives—right in the heart of Kansas City. Titled {B/qKC}, Montalvo is disrupting modern-day museum and archival practices through a Black queer digital archival that is placing people and their stories over institutional ownership and profit–namely by paying reparations to Kansas City’s Black queer eldership.
A Journalism Project Turned Transdisciplinary Tool
Born out of their frustration with the lack of Black queer spaces in Kansas City, Montalvo initially began their historical work as a journalism series with The Kansas City Defender, focused on researching the prevalence of Black queers in Kansas City through investigating their local archival institutions. And after a years-long worth of work and success, where they discovered Kansas City’s first-documented Black drag queens among other things, Montalvo more deeply understood the need to preserve Black queer materials from the physical plane–where keepsakes are often stolen and used for profit; or actively forgotten and erased in furthering American indoctrination.
Wherein Kansas City is home to the Nelson Atkins Museum, one of the largest art museums in the United States, and one that has dually suffered a negative reputation for displaying artifacts acquired through colonization, Montalvo sees it as doubly important to use {B/qKC} as a way to challenge these institutions–specifically by using the digital realm.
Launching with three inaugural collections from Kansas City’s Black queer eldership, Montalvo and co-producer Zach Frazier have created an innovative system of co-ownership with archive “shareholders.” These shareholders loaned their photos, documents and ephemera to be digitized by Montalvo and Frazier as a free-service in exchange for the duo being able to preserve and story-tell with them through a partial licensing agreement–allowing shareholders to keep their material and the intellectual property over them (notably different from the ways archives require transfer of copyright and ownership).
Moreover, Montalvo and Frazier have compensated the inaugural shareholders to the archive in setting precedence for reparative efforts and acknowledging the strife Black queer Kansas Citians have gone through to simply survive. Each shareholders was paid a stipend of $666.67, to add up to a total of $2,000. The stipends are made possible due to {B/qKC}’s growing list of grantors and sponsors, which include Stories For All (a digital humanities project between The University of Kansas and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, international grantor Diaspora Solidarities Lab, and local Black queer health organization BlaqOut.
Now, after building the backend and pedagogy to support this archive, the duo is launching the digital archive for the world to see.
{B/qKC}’s Archive Launch Party
On March 1st, 2024, Montalvo, Frazier and host-site The Kansas City Defender hosted a Launch Party for the archive–which sold over 180 tickets weeks in advance of the launch. The Launch Party launched {B/qKC} as its own standing, community-based archive, and previewed its “Volume_2” exhibits (whereas Volume_1 was Montalvo’s initial research into their local archives).
Volume_2 specifically tells the story of Soakie’s: a sandwich shop in Downtown Kansas City that, through an unlikely partnership between the Italian mob and two Black gay men, would become a booming Black gay nightclub from 1993 – 2004. A dazzling display of Kansas City’s rich ballroom culture, Black queer camaraderie and chosen family, the inaugural Gary Carrington, Tisha Taylor and Starla Carr collections of {B/qKC}–each named after their eponymous shareholder–tell their own stories of this once safe space.
Gary Carrington’s collection is a more comprehensive view of Soakie’s as a whole, Tisha Taylor’s collection focuses on the pageant competitions once-held there and her own “coming-of-age” story, and Starla Carr’s collection specifically focuses on the Black lesbian community of Kansas City, and her work to grow Kansas City’s Drag King circuit under the performing name, “MT.”
An hour into the party, Montalvo gave a speech announcing the launch of {B/qKC}, thanking partners and sponsors for making the project possible, and compensating the inaugural shareholders of the archive (along with thanking others among Kansas City’s Black queer eldership–including Eric Robinson and Jerry Colston, the founders of Soakie’s as a Black gay bar).
The Future of Black queer Kansas Citians
Montalvo hesitated during their speech in simply calling {B/qKC} an archive. While recognizing that at its core, this is what {B/qKC} is meant to do–that is, to preserve history–Montalvo more readily saw {B/qKC} as a tool for Black liberation. Interpolating their previous works in abolition, radical protest, accessible design and community organizing, Montalvo hopesd to ultimately use {B/qKC} as an “educational jump-off” for local organizers and Black queer community overall.
“Without knowing more deeply and intimately the places and spaces we reside in, and the peoples who once resided there, we have no ways of knowing how exactly our local institutions must rectify their harm,” Montalvo says. In saying this, Montalvo specifically reflects on how Soakie’s was ultimately shut down by Cordish Companies, the development company behind today’s Kansas City’s Power & Light District. Montalvo hopes that by asking audiences to contend with these more-troubled aspects of Kansas City’s history beyond the glitz and glamor of what it means to be Black and queer, it will move KC’s Black queer community further toward a space of safety and justice.
Fresh off the archive’s inclusion in Charlotte Street’s first gallery show of the year, “Miss/They Camaraderie 2024,” and on the brink of launching a city-wide exhibit experience in April 2024, Montalvo and Frazier are ensuring that, though the archive will be primarily digital, audiences will still be able to access these histories in low barrier-to-entry locations like coffee shops and bookstores. Montalvo and Frazier are planning to launch a full-fledged digital database with their collected material thus far in Fall 2024.
During Starla Carr’s commemoration at the party, she gave a short speech speaking about the importance of remembering Black queer ancestors and the need to share love with one another:
“I am so proud of this room. You don’t know you’re here because of people like me. We come together and meet at these intersections […] I go to the hospital and have caregivers who are queer, and proudly display their rainbows. I see the future in [Nasir]. And I love you all, I don’t care if I know you or not.”
Audiences looking to engage with {B/qKC}can:
- Read through Montalvo’s groundbreaking research on Soakie’s, Downtown Kansas City’s former Black gay bar from 1993-2004.
- View {B/qKC}’s current exhibit at The BlaqBox (3601 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111) between the hours 10am – 2pm. The last day of this exhibit is Saturday, March 16th, 2024.
- View {B/qKC}’s city-wide exhibit experience, launching across 5 Kansas City locations, during the month of April. More info about this will be shared on The Kansas City Defender’s website and social media.
Photos from {B/qKC}: The Archive Launch Party
Captured by Gabriella Salinas