Undergraduate Research Accomplishments Accomplishments: OUR Grantee: Congressman Barney Frank & His Contributions to the LGBT Community

In 2011 Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank donated his archives collection that documented his U.S. congressional career from 1980-2012. They are currently located at UMD's library’s Archives and Special Collections and are sorted in many boxes.  Through a Summer 2022 OUR grant, Carmen Zhao was able to spend many hours in this room sorting through Frank’s archives to help with her research. The collection is categorized into 6 series, legislative files, district files, election and legislative records, correspondence, press and public relations, and artifacts and awards. Zhao was assigned a supervisor in the library, Ms. Judy Farrar. With Farrar’s help she learned how to navigate the archives and special collections. Zhao wrote her research paper about Barney Frank’s political career as a gay man. Frank’s biggest struggle seemed to be separating his personal life with his public life. She found how keeping his sexuality a secret effected some of the choices he made and how he was able to gain people’s trust. If he had come out earlier, he could not have effected the outcome of his 1980 congressional run or the Democratic Primary when fighting conservative candidate, Arthur Clark. Frank defeated him in the general election in a close race. The same thing happened when Frank took on former Congresswomen Margaret Heckler in 1982, the disclosure of his sexual preferences may have lost him in these elections. It was interesting to see how these career choices and the timing of them effected the outcomes of Frank’s career. Delving into the archives was helpful because Zhao was able to find press clippings from the archives. It was very informative to know that Frank was not alone in this struggle. There were many important figures who were closeted politicians at that time. However, the important point to highlight here is that while still silent about his sexual orientation, Frank was a strong advocate for LGBT. In the archives legislative files are divided into sessions of Congress and special issues. There Zhao found his dealings with LGBT issues and  was able to locate additional information on these issues that occupied a good portion of Frank’s career. Zhao plans to expand this research paper and publish it in an undergraduate journal.