This talk is sponsored by the Student Activities Board and The LGBT Center. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Register .

Sam’s keynote will address his journey, triumphs over hardships, and lessons learned from key mentors in his life.

Sam ended his career at the University of Missouri as a consensus All-American and Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He made history in 2014, as the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team when he was drafted by the then-St. Louis Rams. He is currently a free agent.

This event is part of a series of events that will make up UofL Pride Week 2016. Pride Week is a series of events hosted by The LGBT Center and is made possible by more than 40 sponsors from across the campus and community.

In addition to Sam’s talk, schedule highlights include:

HSC Pride Week Kickoff: Oct. 27, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Health Sciences Center Courtyard.ĚýResource fair and free food and shirts.Ěý

Belknap Pride Week Kickoff & Flag Raising Ceremony: Oct. 31, noon to 2 p.m., Red Barn & West Plaza.ĚýResource fair and free food and shirts.

“Mission Accomplished?:The LGBT Movement One Year After °ż˛ú±đ°ů˛µ±đ´Ú±đ±ô±ô:”ĚýOct. 31, noon to 1 p.m., Brandeis School of Law, Room 275; Free lunch & presentation from speakers: Chris Hartman, Fairness Campaign; T Benicio Gonzales, board member, ACLU of Kentucky; and Professor Jamie Abrams, UofL Brandeis School of Law.Ěý

Come Together Kentucky Conference 

In addition to Pride Week, UofL is also hosting the Come Together Kentucky Conference 2016 from Nov. 3-6. The regional conference is planned by and geared toward LGBTQ college students. Students from across the state have been working for months to plan this event, which consists of more than 30 workshops and plenary speakers.Ěý

This year’s conference features the “Y’all Means All” slogan, used courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center.Ěý

Conference speakers include:

Michael Sam, University of Missouri football star, NFL free agent and the first openly-LGBT player to be drafted in any major American sport.

Payton Head, a recent graduate of the University of Missouri, where he served as president of the undergraduate government and has been at the forefront of conversations about improving race relations on campuses in the aftermath of Ferguson.

Marta Miranda has more than 35 years of experience in organizational and clinical social work practice. She is now the CEO of the Center for Women and Families and has been an advocate, activist and community organizer for more than 30 years.Ěý

Tiommi Luckett is a black transgender woman who co-directs the Arkansas Transgender Equality Coalition. She works nationally with Positively Trans and will speak about rural trans life.

Layha Spoonhunter is a two-spirit-identified Native American studying political science at Idaho State University. Spoonhunter was recently invited to the White House to meet with President Obama.

CTK is presented by the Kentucky Association of LGBTQ Higher łÉČËÖ±˛Ą. Registration is $15 with college ID, but no college student will be turned away from attending. .Ěý

Alicia Kelso contributed to this story.

But in the spring of 1976, being gay “was not the kind of thing you could say you were proud of,” Bourke said. “There was no safe place on campus or movement, there was not a sense that you could talk openly and that you would be welcomed.”

Bourke now works at Humana and is also an advocate for lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) rights and founding member of UofL’s LGBTQ Alumni Association. He and husband Michael DeLeon were plaintiffs in the 2015 landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell vs. Hodges, which ultimately granted same-sex couples the right to marry.

Bourke’s story is one of many that is now part of the Kentucky LGBTQ Heritage Project. The project, led by the Fairness Campaign, is a collaborative effort between UofL’s College of Arts & Sciences’ Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, the Williams-Nichols Collection in UofL’s Special Collections, the Kentucky Heritage Council, State Historic Preservation Office, and Preservation Louisville.

Professor Cate Fosl (Women’s & Gender Studies, and director of the Anne Braden Institute) is research director on the project, working with a group that includes Professor Dan Vivian (History) and a team of student researchers. They are composing a historical context narrative for the project that will act as the key in identifying places of LGBTQ significance in the state, as well as amending two National Register of Historic Places sites in Louisville that housed two of the state’s earliest gay bars.

The first step in writing a narrative of LGBTQ life in Kentucky were three “history harvests” held in Hindman, Lexington, and Louisville. At the events, Fosl, graduate student Wes Cunningham (History) and undergraduate Kayla Reddington (History) collected memorabilia, documents, and oral histories from LGBTQ Kentuckians and their friends in an effort to understand more about 20th century life in Kentucky.

“You can’t find out about the places without finding out about the people,” Fosl said. “This is the first step in documenting and lifting up LGBTQ heritage in Kentucky.”

One of the goals of the project is to develop a statewide inventory of landmarks in the LGBTQ community where historical markers can be installed, or already existing markers can be amended. Preservation Louisville and the Fairness Campaign applied for the grant from the National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior.

Kentucky is one of only two states awarded the grant. The other was given to New York, which received the first LGBTQ historic designation last year at The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. The National Register of Historic Places is focusing on underrepresented communities that need to be better represented in the national register, according to Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman.

The historical context narrative being crafted by Fosl and her team will focus on places significant to LGBTQ heritage across the Commonwealth of Kentucky, including the two NRHP sites in downtown Louisville – the Henry Clay Building on South Third Street and Whiskey Row on Main Street. The Henry Clay housed the Beaux Arts Cocktail Lounge, which was gay “friendly” if not strictly gay, from the 1940s through 1955, and The Downtowner, then thought of as the gay bar in Louisville, which opened in Whiskey Row in 1975, according to Vivian.

“These kinds of establishments were really important, it was the difference between loneliness and isolation, and a community,” Vivian said. “There is a story worth recognizing here.”

Photo by Tom Fougerousse