Don Schwamb

Donald F. Schwamb — known as Don Schwamb — founded the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project in 1994 and has spent decades documenting the people, places, organizations, and events of Wisconsin’s LGBTQ communities. His work, shared under Creative Commons, underpins much of the research cited throughout Queer Wisconsin and remains the foundation of the active nonprofit site at wislgbthistory.com.

Schwamb has described a childhood in which he told his parents early that he liked boys, faced the threat of medical “correction,” and later found lasting acceptance. That personal history sits alongside a public record of volunteer research, partnerships with archives, walking tours, exhibits, and community advising that made Wisconsin’s hidden queer heritage easier to find.

Queer Wisconsin is an independent archive that credits Schwamb and the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project with gratitude. For his live project’s news and events, visit wislgbthistory.com; for how we cite that research here, see What we cite and why.