The original "Milwaukee LGBT History Project" was started by founder Don Schwamb in 1994 when he began collecting old records, local LGBT publications, and documenting personal memories after holding several leadership roles in organizations including GAMMA, the Cream City Foundation, and the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin.
Various PrideFest celebrations in Milwaukee had begun hosting History displays, most notably from 1995 to 1997 by Steven Brondino and Jamakaya. However those records were considered proprietary by the authors, and lacked some detail. For example, bar names were listed, but no addresses or date ranges were documented.
Around 2002-2003, several community leaders met and began an effort to conduct interviews of a few individuals who were key contributors to the Milwaukee area's Gay and Lesbian lifestyle. Several of those interviews were used to create a display of panels for the June 2003 PrideFest display, documenting those individuals' efforts. But that project foundered after about a dozen interviews.
Schwamb was intrigued by the Pridefest exhibits, and had been one of those leaders organizing the 2003 interviews. But he recognized the importance of documenting in more detail the city's broader history of LGBT rights and activism, and making it available to the public at large year-round, rather than just at a single annual event. Thus Schwamb started a website for the Milwaukee LGBT History Project in 2004.
Schwamb began working on the annual Pridefest exhibit, working with a small core of volunteers (including Jerry Johnson, Michael Doylen, Bill Serpe and Paul Williams) to create the annual display there, hosted by Pridefest but funded by individual contributors such as Joe Brehm of 'This Is It' bar, F. Thomas Ament, Michael Johnston and others. The Display was seen by all to be a permanent archive to be built on in future years. Benefiting not only the gay/lesbian community, the information collected and documented also served as a source of information for the non-LGBT community to better understand the contributions and history of the LGBT community, by being displayed in public places and events as well as Schwamb's website.
Even prior to 2010, historian Michail Takach had joined Schwamb working on the website, which by then had been renamed the "Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project", reflecting its statewide reach. While Schwamb concentrated on the website, Takach wrote numerous articles and books focusing on specific people and places.
Unfortunately, Pridefest failed to follow up on its promise to make displays available year-round, so since 2020 the History Project has been sponsored by the Cream City Foundation, and in addition to its website, has hosted displays in City Hall, the County Courthouse, and numerous other events year-round. We today operate under a Board of Directors, and have a group of Community Advisors from around the state and beyond to help guide our efforts.
What will never change is our purpose: to document and make widely available the historical record of LGBTQ people, places, organizations and events throughout the state of Wisconsin.
