When Linda E. Mitchell, Ph.D., professor of history and the Martha Jane Phillips Starr Missouri Distinguished Endowed Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at 威尼斯人娱乐城, began to think about estate planning, she decided to create an endowment fund for the Gay and Lesbian Archives of Mid-America (GLAMA.)
Mitchell’s academic career has focused on women’s, gender and sexuality studies, mostly in reference to the history of women and families in the Middle Ages. 她对中世纪研究和性别与性行为的研究表明，从历史上看，性别从来没有被简单地视为二元，尽管有些人可能会这么认为。
“This is what happens when you study history,” she says. “Situations were often more complicated than people try to make them.”
Because of her mentoring of students in history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, Mitchell was familiar with GLAMA’s mission to collect, preserve and make accessible materials that are part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities’ history in the Kansas City region. GLAMA 在米勒·尼科尔斯图书馆的LaBudde特别收藏中，米切尔与特别收藏馆长斯图尔特·海因兹密切合作，为LaBudde的档案收藏中的学生开发研究项目，包括那些构成GLAMA一部分的项目。
In addition to her professional interest, Mitchell’s connection to the collection is personal.
“My brother and his husband are two of the most important people in my life,” Mitchell says. “As I began making plans for my estate, I wanted to support GLAMA in their honor. I contacted Stuart to see if the archives had an endowed fund.”
海因兹证实GLAMA没有捐赠基金，米切尔决定为GLAMA创建比尔·米切尔和杰夫·哈尔本捐赠基金。
“I felt that establishing this endowment was tremendously important,” Mitchell says. “We are seeing even now attempts to erase and denigrate the history of underrepresented groups—such as women and people who do not identify themselves in binary-gendered ways—and this fund can provide some security for the collection.”
海因兹认识到编写堪萨斯城LGBTQIA社区文档的重要性，这些文档反映了以前被传统的当地历史叙述所遗漏的历史。
“The value inside the community really centers around preservation,” Hinds says. 这些故事、照片和材料都被保存了下来，它们被赋予了一个长期的家，这样它们就不会消失。 Over the years many donors have told me that one of the reasons they were interested in donating is because they were concerned that their family might not see the value in these memorabilia and throw it away.”
“堪萨斯城很幸运拥有GLAMA。 这些档案提高了国家对这座城市的认知。” — Linda E. Mitchell
虽然个人故事的丢失令人担忧，但保存的意义在于在更广泛的范围内包容。
“We're really at a moment where we're trying to incorporate a much wider variety of stories in the American historical narrative, some of which aren't very pleasant,” Hinds says. “It's the job of these kinds of archives to broaden that inclusion so historians can accomplish the work that they are trying to achieve.”
“Kansas City is lucky to have GLAMA,” Mitchell says. “The archives improve the national perception of the city. It’s not only barbecue and football. 我们生活在这个国家文化最丰富、最复杂的城市之一。 GLAMA is a great component of that diversity.”