We wanted to tell that story through the Manhattan Club. It was a safe place for LBTQ+ people to come together during an era when it was dangerous to be openly queer. The Manhattan Club was a gathering place, a place of community. We chose a site that many people can relate to. It’s women, and people of color, and disabled people, and gay people, and immigrants– the list goes on. For most Texans, we are taught that history is a bunch of old white men that did some great things (aka boring). Hullum and Tassin: People often think that history is nothing but names and dates with no connection to the present. Oram: Why did you choose the Manhattan Club for this project? Thus started our trip down the rabbit hole.ĭr. On the list was an establishment called Manhattan Club, which had opened more than 50 years ago. We first started with good old Google and stumbled upon a list of Austin’s gay bars and clubs and the years that they had opened. We teamed up to work on the project together and then began looking for any leads to follow. Oram’s Local and Community History class and one of our projects was to write up a narrative for a possible historical marker with an “undertold story.” Neither of us had ever seen a historical marker with an LGBTQ+ topic, and we knew that we wanted to try and find something– anything– that could help fill that void. Oram: How did you first find out about the Manhattan Club? She asked Hullum and Tassin to explain why they chose to research the Manhattan Club and the significance of the site receiving a state historical marker.ĭr. This successful marker project began in a public history graduate course at Texas State taught by Dr. The Manhattan Club is also the first site commemorating LGBTQ+ history to receive an Official State Historical Marker as part of this program. The Manhattan Club was the only site in Travis County selected in 2022 and one of 15 sites selected for this program statewide. The THC selects a handful of sites each year that commemorate “undertold stories” and fully funds the manufacture and installation of Official State Historical Markers. Hullum and Tassin successfully nominated the Manhattan Club for the THC’s Undertold Marker Program. You can read some of Hullum and Tassin’s scholarship on the Manhattan Club in the Handbook of Texas, an online encyclopedia of state history. The Club operated from 1957 to 1969.ĬBS Austin interviewed Hullum and Tassin about their research on the Manhattan Club.
The Manhattan Club was one of Austin’s first queer-friendly public spaces located in the back of a Jewish Deli at 911 Congress. In February 2022, the Texas Historical Commission (THC) approved an application prepared by public history graduate students Amber Leigh Hullum and Railey Tassin to fully fund an Official State Historical Marker for the Manhattan Club.