The City of Worcester, Massachusetts, honored three local professors with the Key to the City on January 26 for their efforts to create an exhibition at the Worcester Historical Museum that “documented and celebrated the history of the LGBTQ+ community in Worcester County,” reported Clark Now of Clark University.
The honorees are Robert Deam Tobin of Clark University, Stephanie Yuhl of the College of the Holy Cross and Joseph Cullon of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
“The history of our community’s most marginalized and unrecognized communities are the most vital and need to be shared and celebrated for the edification of our entire city,” Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty wrote in a letter accompanying the city keys. “Thank you for improving and expanding upon what it means to be from Worcester. For your service to our city, for preserving and sharing the stories and history of the LGBTQ+ community, it is only right and fitting that you receive the City of Worcester’s highest honor.”
“I was really moved that the city leaders took the time to honor scholarly work in the humanities as important for preserving ‘our identity as a city,'” Tobin told Clark Now. “They were able to see how this kind of work, documenting ‘marginalized and unrecognized communities’ like the LGBTQ+ community, helps create a more justice society.”
Along with exhibition, “LGBTQ+ Worcester—For the Record,” which ran through much of 2019 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, its creators also produced the 119-page catalog, documenting the stories in the show. The full-color book can be purchased at the Worcester Historical Museum’s gift show and online.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
