Here are the queer stories that you won’t find in most history books

Telling stories like Sir Lady Java’s is exactly why archivist, publisher, and rare bookseller Daylonn Orr started Fugitive Materials in 2020.Sir Lady Java was a Black transgender performer and activist in Los Angeles, originally from the New Orleans area, who transitioned in the late 1950s. The talented beauty became a popular fixture of Black and underground nightlife in L.A. for many years, and was even featured in Jet and Ebony magazines. She was also the first trans person to ever be represented by the ACLU in 1967, after police shut down her act at Redd Foxx’s nightclub due to violating “Rule 9” — a local ordinance banning performers from “impersonating” the opposite sex. Fugitive Materials zine on Sir Lady Javacourtesy Fugitive Materials“We were able to work with some of the archives related to her career and placed those with a university,” says Orr. “But she’s so underdocumented, understudied, and underrecognized. So that’s part of what prompts the publishing.… We like to do zines and items that are cheap and affordable for all sorts of people to then interact with these histories. I think it’s really, really important.”In a time when the histories of queer folks, feminists, people of color, and others who don’t fit the far-right agenda are being systematically and purposefully erased, documenting and preserving our stories has become more vital than ever. Fortunately, Orr’s independent archiving organization is doing just that.Based in Brooklyn, New York, Fugitive Materials “is committed to the preservation of radical, lesser-known, and alternative histories, and to the disruption of informational privilege through archiving, publishing, and bookselling,” as its website states. “We specialize in global material cultures of resistance: the detritus of radical social movements, queer histories, counterculture, pedagogy, urbanism, uprisings, and art.” An ACT UP poster from 1987courtesy Fugitive MaterialsIn addition to