Detail from a painting of Ray Hill, from the Ray Hill Papers
Timing and happenstance played a large role in the personal papers of Ray Hill coming to the University of Houston. What started over a year and half ago, first through a visit by documentary filmmakers to UH Special Collections looking for footage on Houston’s LGBT Community during the 1970s, led not only to an introduction to Ray Hill, but developed into several subsequent conversations and meetings with Ray over coffee at the local Montrose Starbucks in Hawthorne Square. Ray held us as a captive audience, regaling us with stories of his time in prison for burglary, to his release and work in Houston’s LGBT community, to meeting and going toe to toe with the legendary Harvey Milk, and most importantly his Prison Show on KPFT. As he would describe it, the Prison Show served as a lifeline to prisoners, connecting them to their families and the outside world that no prison wall could keep out.
He was a master at holding court and was never short of words, wit, humor, and wisdom given at the right moments. “Ray Hill, Citizen Provocateur,” as listed on his business card, was a self described writer, activist, actor, and raconteur to name but a few of the titles to which he laid claim. Ray was not someone to meet, but someone to experience. A force of nature and larger than life, he was completely at home whether talking with political dignitaries on issues concerning prison reform or to members of the LGBT community seeking him for counsel and personal advice. Ray’s genius and brilliance were not in the telling of the truth, but in the telling and retelling of the story that made you believe, or at least made you think.
Campaign poster for Ray Hill, Your Friendly Neighborhood Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1
For a man like Ray Hill, who fought against the system for so long, one might think it ironic that he would place his personal archives with the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. It made sense when we spoke to Ray on the significance UH libraries had on his life and how it shaped his formative years. As Ray would tell it, even before he was old enough to be a university student, he would sneak into the library stacks to find books that helped him discover or understand himself as a gay man. Placing his personal archives at UH, he is contributing to that exploration and understanding for current and future generations of students. Ray’s papers are now a major part of the Libraries’ significant LGBT historical collections alongside the Annise Parker Papers, the Gulf Coast Archive & Museum of GLBT History collection, the Diana Foundation Records, and many others. It is really an honor for us that Ray entrusted UH Libraries to preserve his history and make it accessible to our campus and our community.
The Ray Hill Papers collection contains 62 boxes of correspondence, awards, organization documents, photographs, audio/video recordings, publications, and artifacts that document Ray’s life and work as an LGBT community activist and prisoners’ rights reformer. His archives document the various aspects and endeavors of a complex individual whose work has affected so many in the community and beyond, capturing a life well-lived.
Elizabeth Cruces at the 15th annual Zine Fest Houston.
Last month Lawndale Art Center hosted the 15th annual Zine Fest Houston festival. Held annually in Houston, Texas, Zine Fest Houston (ZFH) was founded in 2004 by local creative shane patrick boyle as an event dedicated to promoting zines, mini-comics, and other forms of small press, alternative, underground, DIY media and art. Following the donation of the ZFH records and zine collections to UH’s Special Collections and the in the wake of boyle’s unexpected passing in 2017, current ZFH organizers (Maria-Elisa Heg and Stacy Kirages) collaboratively worked with UH’s Hispanic Collections Archivist, Elizabeth Lisa Cruces to increase awareness of boyle’s contributions to Houston’s DIY community and local history. boyle was an avid collector and creator of zines and is responsible for the bulk of zines and ephemera found in the collection. Thanks to spb’s collecting and contributions to growing the DIY scene in Houston, ZFH and other creatives have been able to flourish.
In addition to showcasing some of the earliest hand-made artwork and ephemera from the ZFH Records, Cruces provided information to attendees on how to make their own zines and how to donate zines to the archives. Regarding the future of this living archive, Cruces said, “For the ZFH archives to succeed in their mission—to more inclusively preserve Houston’s diverse voices, in particular LGBTQ and minority groups, we not only need to ensure that the collection is accessible to all, but that it continues to grow and in turn show the increasingly national and transnational contributions of Houstonians.”