NASHVILLE, TN – Appreciation was brought to hidden history this week at Vanderbilt Divinity School as professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State University and author of the book Hidden Stories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership, Dr. Monique Moultrie, spoke at a book talk focused around bringing light to largely unsung influential Black LGBTQIA+ faith-based leadership. Moultrie said whenever she hosts a talk about her book, she hopes most of all that she exposes people to women that they hadn’t known before. She said she does not expect for all of the people who attend her lectures to walk into the room already agreeing with her, or for her to convince everyone of her point of view, but she at least wants every person to leave more aware of how hard many women worked for real social changes that benefit everyone.
Moultrie said that it is especially important to fight against the historical erasure of queer history and queer people in history. She said it is not only important to remember these stories for history’s sake, but also for the sake of future thought leaders. Moultrie said it is the uncovering of previously unlearned history that can often teach people of all the unexpected and monumental changes different people are capable of influencing.
“Those stories are, I don’t say lost, they are purposefully obscured,” Moultrie said. “I found lots of cases where people would tell me stories of, you know, women in leadership and they would come in a leadership because their husband died and so they could take on the church afterwards. And then years later, when they tell the story of the church history, they just ignore those years the women served.”
Moultrie said the event itself was a roughly 90-minute conversation around her book led by herself. She said at all of her events she encourages audience engagement, which is the reason why they include a Q&A.
“This is meant to be a full conversation,” Moultrie said. “No one has to be an expert, you can come with whatever information you have, whatever interest you have, and feel free to join into the conversation.”
Moultrie said the journey that resulted in Hidden Stories being published arguably started in 2009 when she began conducting interviews for a dissertation. She said after receiving her doctorate in 2010, she continued her interviews while focusing on other aspects of her career until sometime between the years of 2012 and 2013, when one of her interviewees died. Moultrie said after their passing she saw that transcripts she had taken of her interviews with this person were cited all over news outlets, which showed her the wealth of information that each one of her interviewees possesses and how great the loss of that wealth would be if never recorded.
Moultrie said that since the release of Hidden Stories, the book has been well received in LGBTQIA+ spaces, though religious spaces have been largely slow to respond. Moultrie said she has given several book talks in religious spaces, though she feels that the slowness from these audiences to respond to her material may be because of the subject matter of the book itself. She said publicity for the book has also been slowed down due to her suffering a personal tragedy through the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband shortly before the book’s release, though Moultrie said she is now ready to travel and promote her work.
