Culmination of the 2024-2025 JOIP internship project
Resurrecting beautiful ghosts and solid bridges…
In 2024, the MLP partnered with University of Montevallo undergraduates Damian McCrickard and Bridget McCurrach through the Jean O’Connor-Snyder Internship Program, supported by the University and the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. Together, we explored new ways to connect MLP’s mission to the broader Montevallo community through digital storytelling and community organizing.
Over the 2024–2025 school year, Damian and Bridget focused on researching Montevallo’s queer community—tracing its silences, celebrations, and the complicated generational threads. Their work included building relationships, hosting intergenerational storytelling events, and preserving local memory through oral history interviews.
This blog post offers their final reflection—a mix of storytelling, truth, and personal insight. Selected quotes from their oral history interviews appear throughout in brown boxes, and full transcripts of the interviews can be found here. We hope their words serve as witness and invitation.
Determined to resurrect
Written by Damian McCrickard
My name is Damian McCrickard. All of my elders are dead.
When you grow up queer, you have a knack for feeling isolated. In a room, in a household, in a town. It becomes hard to be yourself when living in the Bible Belt. You find out when you’re young–there’s a word for what you are, several, actually, that I shouldn’t repeat.
But one thing is clear: You’re taught that what you are is wrong. So what is to be done? What is to be learned?
Well, in the words of a member of Montevallo’s queer student community…
"Don't give them more to take from you."
— Malakai Eisenberg
So we hide. In plain sight even.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had to keep a secret, a really big secret, one that creeps its way up your throat and claws at the back of your mind when you lie awake at night. It’s a fight really, to keep it down. To be hidden is a small death that the soul tries its hardest to rage against. Even numb, you still feel it.
I grew up believing I was the only one to ever feel this way.
Shoal Creek Park, a space of reflection, inspiration, and solace for Montevallo’s community.
Across the entirety of Alabama, from Huntsville to Birmingham to Tuscaloosa. All these places I spent many years growing up, I had nowhere to turn and no one to guide me through what it meant to be myself. The joys and horrors that come along with it. I grew up believing all of my elders are dead.
I am determined to resurrect them.
That’s why I set about this project, chasing the ghosts of guiding stars I should have seen when I was young. The loved ones I’ll never come to know, lost to the AIDs epidemic, lost to time, lost to the small death of hiding within one’s self and soul. That is, never leaving the closet.
In short, one could say this was a quest for understanding, a search for family.
"If you don't have those roots and you don't have that history, you don't know what's going on. You don't know anything, frankly, about your community if you don't have queer elders."
— Fox Conneen
We’re living in a different time now. While the world is still an unsafe place for members of the LGBT community, the youth of today are far less pessimistic about their place in this world than I was once.
It has been truly inspiring interviewing the LGBT students of Montevallo. They seem to go about the world and their queerness with a bold determination to be themselves here unlike anywhere I have seen before.
"Being queer in Montevallo isn't something that separates you. It's just who you are."
— Olivia Flynn
This observation led me to a very pressing question: Why?
Why here, in the center of a red state at the heart of the Bible Belt does there exist what seems to be a queer safe haven? A collection of people who seem to unashamedly know their place in the world as young queer adults.
I sought the answers to these questions through interviews–one question in particular: What is it like to be queer in Montevallo?
It seems to me that the answer is “safe.” Safety is a complex thing.
As for our elders…
"We need to hear your stories"
— Bree Roberts, Faculty at UM
The definition of safe is really dependent on one’s age.
Seen or unseen, we are all marching towards the future in the footsteps of those who came before us. Through my interviews it became clear to me that my lifelong desire for guiding forces was not just my own, but a feeling that permeates throughout the queer community regardless of generational divides.
"I feel like both generations would have something to learn from each other"
— Brandelyn Nelson
We as a community have lived through too many heartbreaks, too many queer siblings lost to the cruelty of this world, too many names never known, and others unable to be forgotten. This has culminated in an insatiable hunger to witness, through not just visibility of queer elders, but connection with them. .
"Queer survival… and joy in banality."
— Malakai Eisenberg
That is why this work has been created. To ensure queer survival. And perhaps somewhat selfishly, to ensure my survival.
Within me there is a desire to love, a lust for life, a determination to grow older and my heart softer with each passing year. I long to provide for those who come after me a certain love and tenderness I was never afforded. That is my purpose, and the purpose of these interviews.
May they stand in my place and act as guiding stars; may the joy, love, laughter, and words of wisdom be rendered immortal for all who find their place here in Montevallo. May our history be documented and our contributions remembered–not erased–when we weave the cultural tapestry of this town.
So come explore with me the intricacies of queer life in this small town. Immerse yourself in a culture still being created with every new interaction. With each interview we are brought closer together, actively crafting community.
On the edge of something beautiful
Written by Bridget McCurrach
Montevallo is a conundrum of queer acceptance and isolation.
Many young queer folk come here hearing of acceptance and community that it has established. The typical freshman experience involves being scared and lost, and then you find your group of people. You stick with that group, and you establish the beginning of your college journey.
While it is true that Montevallo has a strong queer presence, at this point in time it is more so a disjointed web of connections than a cohesive community. The community is present, but there is a fearful hesitation among its members that creates divisions between groups.
It’s like we are scared to let our circle become too big out of fear that we will lose it.
"I would like to see… Less like, I know that there’s a lot of fighting over pedantics, because I know people like to get on YikYak (an anonymous social networking app) and just like, start things for no reason.
Unity amidst students, and not defining what is or is not cool. Throwing away those sort of like, biases within communities.
Just like 'Those aren’t the cool gay people.' It’s not fair, and we should just be happy to see each other and know that we’re all here together as a part of a community, as a part of a whole. To see more like, connection across the board. Because we tend to like, clique off."
— Malakai Eisenberg
Despite the community that many of us came here seeking, we still fall victim to stereotypical drama and judgement.
The students of Montevallo’s queer community need to learn to embrace the variety of identities on campus and grow their social circles beyond who they first flock to so that we can focus on what really matters: keeping Montevallo a safe space.
Students find comfort in establishing their small friend groups and that is something that is essential to getting comfortable with the unknowns of college life.
We shouldn’t just stop there. Push yourself to get to know others around you. Establish more connections that you can fall back on, by doing so you begin to shift this community into more than just disjointed parts of a whole. We only hurt ourselves and our community more by letting ourselves fall into these deep divides.
They keep us isolated, and if we are not interacting with each other on a personal level, then how can we expect to establish that feeling of safety across the entire university and town? This is the first step in creating a better queer community in Montevallo.
"And I think it's just like reminding elders in the community. We need to hear your stories. And sometimes, like, the younger people need to hear your stories or, you know, being that person that they can talk to."
— Bree Roberts
Growing up in the south it is easy to fall into the belief that you are alone in your experiences. For most people they grew up without the presence of other queer people, peers or elders.
With the internet and social media our generation has been able to access glimpses of the queer community through other means if they did not see it personally. But distant interactions through the phone is a poor substitute for the feeling of having that community experience firsthand.
Bree Roberts, a faculty member at the University, has been able to offer that experience to the students of Montevallo. They can come to her for advice or just to talk and she grants them that safe space they need.
There needs to be an establishment of interpersonal connections not just among the students but the locals and faculty.
Beyond just the comfort of a figure you can look up to, having their presence and wisdom teaches us that we are more similar than we think and their experiences can guide us on what not to do. Our generations may have vastly different experiences but there is still value in hearing the stories of those who came before you.
"Because you're- if you don't have those roots and you don't have that history, you don't know what's going on. You don't know anything, frankly, about your community if you don't have queer elders. And I don't know really any in Montevallo, and I think there are some, but they're so important for everywhere.
They're important for young queer people to see, and they're important for non-queer people to see. This isn't some silly thing that young people are doing. This is something that goes through your whole life."
— Fox Conneen
Our generation faces an unusual dilemma when it comes to what we want and what we actually seek out. We crave that sense of community and belonging but we sell ourselves short from actually obtaining it fully.
We tend to find a few like-minded friends with similar interests and experiences. We are able to get that feeling of belonging from those few friends and stick with it.
I think we do this so that we have that feeling of belonging but on a level that is not immediately noticeable to the eye of someone who looks at the queer community with hate.
Past the University there is an entire town as well. If you are unsure where to look then I suggest visiting Meri Moon Cafe where you can find students and locals. Look past your biases and comfort zone.
One main goal of this research project was to seek these elders out and help get the ball rolling for establishing connections among the different generations of Montevallo’s queer community. That is the next step for improving this community.
"Yeah, I think just to share experiences, to share in joy, to know that we have people who have our backs, or people that we just can wave at while we're walking our dog, you know?
Like, I know that person. I feel connected to them. I think that's really cool. We don't have to be best friends, but as long as we, you know, have something like even networking to know, 'hey, do you need this? I know somebody who can help you out with that. And since you're my, since your fam we’ll give you a discount on it,' or whatever, you know, I like that kind of stuff."
— Jo Hogan, local and Montevallo alumn
Conducting this research project and getting to know so many other queer people was a bundle of complex emotions. I am proud of my community for how strong we are, despite how this world is out to get us.
I feel frustrated that we have so many interesting people and stories surrounding us but we still stay so isolated. The strongest feeling throughout this experience was a restlessness, a feeling that we are on the edge of something that could be just what the southern queer community needs.
Montevallo has so much potential to be a famous safe haven that people can flock to. We are a small bubble of queer acceptance and joy in a pool of animosity.
Hosting our event, “Coffee with Pride”, gave us a glimpse of what Montevallo could be. Seeing a cafe filled with so many queer people of different ages was inspiring and hopeful, and more events like this can create a stronger, more cohesive queer community.
Now more than ever we need to strengthen bonds and protect this small safe space as we see so much change and animosity in our political climate.