A USF professor highlights the history of Tampa Bay’s LGBTQ+ community on a new website
By Clara Rokita Garcia
July 11, 2025 at 5:00 AM EDT
History professor David Johnson decided it was time to take the stories in the University of South Florida's collection and share them with the public.
A University of South Florida professor recently launched a website that highlights nearly 100 years of history of the Tampa Bay area’s LGBTQ+ community.
David Johnson, a history professor, has been working on USF’s LGBTQ+ Collection since joining the school in 2003. The collection is housed at the USF Library on the Tampa campus and features materials dating to the 1930s.
The USF Library has been collecting LGBTQ+ materials for over 20 years in its Special Collections and recently began to digitize them.
Zibby Wilder, assistant director of communications and marketing for USF Libraries, said that when walking into the Special Collections room, visitors shouldn't expect to find dry stacks of words on paper. Instead, they will meet history.
"It's a lot more than just, say, books, which you would normally expect stored in a library,” she said. “It can be everything from photographs to letters to personal effects to objects. So it's the whole picture, just not the written part."
Wilder said part of her job is to make sure these kinds of materials don't just sit in boxes, but are actually used by students, researchers and the general public.
“Our librarians and library staff are working tirelessly to make sure that we are getting through everything, getting it archived, getting it documented, and trying to digitize as much as we can,” she said. “Having things digitized makes it more accessible to everyone."
Still, Johnson decided it was time to take the stories in the collection and share them with the public.
Johnson’s website, Tampa Bay LGBT History: Telling Our Stories, draws from thousands of items in the USF Library’s archives and tells the story of select materials.
The inspiration for a website came when Johnson was teaching an LGBTQ+ history course at USF.
He said for students’ final projects, he asks them to do an examination of a local group, person or event.
After some time, Johnson said, he realized there wasn’t a lot of information available online about Tampa’s LGBTQ+ community, so his students often had to conduct primary source research.
So Johnson decided to create a website to share the information he had learned with his students and show that the community had been present in Tampa for longer than some people would expect.
“I think a lot of us, when we think of LGBT history, we think that's something that happened in New York or San Francisco, right?” he said. “There's LGBT history right here, locally, in Tampa. There's all kinds of stories of oppression and resistance that happened right here.”
Johnson said he decided to launch his website in June because Pride Month “seemed the appropriate time to do it.”
Pride Month is celebrated in June because it commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York.
“This is an example of how we're very New York and San Francisco-centric in LGBT history,” he said. “But it's not just New York and San Francisco where this stuff happens.”
USF's LGBTQ+ Collection has photos and flyers from protests that happened in the 1980s. (5330x2998, AR: 1.7778519012675116)
Johnson said USF’s collection started with a few materials. One of them was a collection of photos from Bobby Smith, a transmasculine photographer from Tampa who documented the LGBTQ+ community from the 1940s to the 1980s.
“We have images inside of gay bars in Tampa in the '50s,” Johnson said. “There are very few pictures of inside gay bars in the '50s anywhere in the country.”
Smith photographed people inside the Knotty Pine, the Saratoga Bar, Jimmie White's Tavern and more.
USF’s collection also includes papers from Equality Florida, the primary LGBTQ+ rights organization in the state, as well as the Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, one of the largest LGBTQ+ film festivals in the country.
Johnson’s website is organized into six themes: Metropolitan Community Church, Celebrating Pride, Lesbian Life, Beach Bars & Resorts, Drag and Fighting for Our Rights.
The Metropolitan Community Church was the first formal LGBTQ+ organization in Tampa.
Women's Words was a St. Petersburg-based periodical that advocated for women empowerment and supported the local LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s. (5712x3213, AR: 1.7777777777777777)
Johnson said he hopes to expand his website and maybe even have exhibits in the future.
A Facebook group was also launched as part of Johnson’s initiative, where approximately 350 members share photos and stories.
"And that's sort of the point, is to find other sources, other people that have documents that they've kept and get those into the archive. It is becoming a community-based effort," Johnson said.
And while Johnson appreciates people sharing their memories, he said he has a different audience in mind when adding materials to the website.
“Who I really hope takes a look at the website is a younger generation who knows nothing about this history and feels somewhat under siege because of what's going on, because [of] the current backlash against the community, and can take some solace in it and see that the community has withstood even greater oppression and backlash in the past, and I hope they're inspired by it."
Inspired, Johnson said, to realize one thing: “We've got this.”
David Johnson, a history professor, has been working on USF’s LGBTQ+ Collection since joining the school in 2003. The collection is housed at the USF Library on the Tampa campus and features materials dating to the 1930s.
The USF Library has been collecting LGBTQ+ materials for over 20 years in its Special Collections and recently began to digitize them.
Zibby Wilder, assistant director of communications and marketing for USF Libraries, said that when walking into the Special Collections room, visitors shouldn't expect to find dry stacks of words on paper. Instead, they will meet history.
"It's a lot more than just, say, books, which you would normally expect stored in a library,” she said. “It can be everything from photographs to letters to personal effects to objects. So it's the whole picture, just not the written part."
Wilder said part of her job is to make sure these kinds of materials don't just sit in boxes, but are actually used by students, researchers and the general public.
“Our librarians and library staff are working tirelessly to make sure that we are getting through everything, getting it archived, getting it documented, and trying to digitize as much as we can,” she said. “Having things digitized makes it more accessible to everyone."
Still, Johnson decided it was time to take the stories in the collection and share them with the public.
Johnson’s website, Tampa Bay LGBT History: Telling Our Stories, draws from thousands of items in the USF Library’s archives and tells the story of select materials.
The inspiration for a website came when Johnson was teaching an LGBTQ+ history course at USF.
He said for students’ final projects, he asks them to do an examination of a local group, person or event.
After some time, Johnson said, he realized there wasn’t a lot of information available online about Tampa’s LGBTQ+ community, so his students often had to conduct primary source research.
So Johnson decided to create a website to share the information he had learned with his students and show that the community had been present in Tampa for longer than some people would expect.
“I think a lot of us, when we think of LGBT history, we think that's something that happened in New York or San Francisco, right?” he said. “There's LGBT history right here, locally, in Tampa. There's all kinds of stories of oppression and resistance that happened right here.”
Johnson said he decided to launch his website in June because Pride Month “seemed the appropriate time to do it.”
Pride Month is celebrated in June because it commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York.
“This is an example of how we're very New York and San Francisco-centric in LGBT history,” he said. “But it's not just New York and San Francisco where this stuff happens.”
USF's LGBTQ+ Collection has photos and flyers from protests that happened in the 1980s. (5330x2998, AR: 1.7778519012675116)
Johnson said USF’s collection started with a few materials. One of them was a collection of photos from Bobby Smith, a transmasculine photographer from Tampa who documented the LGBTQ+ community from the 1940s to the 1980s.
“We have images inside of gay bars in Tampa in the '50s,” Johnson said. “There are very few pictures of inside gay bars in the '50s anywhere in the country.”
Smith photographed people inside the Knotty Pine, the Saratoga Bar, Jimmie White's Tavern and more.
USF’s collection also includes papers from Equality Florida, the primary LGBTQ+ rights organization in the state, as well as the Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, one of the largest LGBTQ+ film festivals in the country.
Johnson’s website is organized into six themes: Metropolitan Community Church, Celebrating Pride, Lesbian Life, Beach Bars & Resorts, Drag and Fighting for Our Rights.
The Metropolitan Community Church was the first formal LGBTQ+ organization in Tampa.
Women's Words was a St. Petersburg-based periodical that advocated for women empowerment and supported the local LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s. (5712x3213, AR: 1.7777777777777777)
Johnson said he hopes to expand his website and maybe even have exhibits in the future.
A Facebook group was also launched as part of Johnson’s initiative, where approximately 350 members share photos and stories.
"And that's sort of the point, is to find other sources, other people that have documents that they've kept and get those into the archive. It is becoming a community-based effort," Johnson said.
And while Johnson appreciates people sharing their memories, he said he has a different audience in mind when adding materials to the website.
“Who I really hope takes a look at the website is a younger generation who knows nothing about this history and feels somewhat under siege because of what's going on, because [of] the current backlash against the community, and can take some solace in it and see that the community has withstood even greater oppression and backlash in the past, and I hope they're inspired by it."
Inspired, Johnson said, to realize one thing: “We've got this.”