Mark Meinke (2021)
“Twenty-one Novembers ago, we started Rainbow History [Project] in DC to preserve the memories of our community and to seek to ensure that it was included in the American story…We will let no one erase us.”
“In those early days, we worked [with] two principles: First, do no harm, which is why we never outed people who did oral histories. And second, do not accept repression or suppression by anyone – which is why we promoted our history as widely as we could.”
Mark Meinke founded the Rainbow History Project in November 2000 in Washington, DC based on Meinke’s values of preserving and highlighting LGBTQ+ history.
Meinke’s goal in founding the Rainbow History Project was to fill that void in LGBTQ+ record keeping. Thus, his idea came to fruition to start the organization that has since become a home to the record of DC’s LGBTQ+ stories.
Meinke, born in northern Illinois, now lives in Fairfax, Virginia. He was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota and attended The American University in Cairo, Egypt, studying Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Later, as a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, he studied Comparative Religion.
When he was 21 years old, Meinke moved abroad. A fascination with the Middle East was kindled in him from a young age by his grandfather and he ended up living in Kuwait for the next 18 years.
When Meinke returned stateside, he settled in Washington, DC and became active in the LGBTQ+ community. It was the early years of the AIDS pandemic and one of the first things Meinke did when he came to DC in 1990 was to volunteer at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which served people living with HIV and AIDS. He also worked for a time in Chicago, volunteering at an AIDS Support Agency writing their newsletter.
Living in DC as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Meinke became enthralled with the world of DC drag. He attended drag shows at Mr. P’s Club in the DuPont Circle area and that is where he met his partner Ed, whom he was with for the next five years. When Ed passed away from cancer, Meinke was left with a hole in his life. He busied himself with new endeavors. One of those was the Drag Rag, a newsletter that documented the whereabouts and happenings of DC drag. At the time it was amongst the top three busiest drag scenes after Atlanta and Houston. Meinke recounts that drag saved his life and brought him out of one of his darkest moments – creating the Drag Rag was his way of saying ‘Thank You’ to the drag community. The newsletter continues to serve as an excellent archive of the drag scene in DC.
Meinke is also co-founder of the Rainbow Heritage Network, a nationwide network that recognizes and preserves heritage sites associated with sexual and gender minorities and initiates community-based projects. Their mission, as established by Meinke, is to advocate for the recognition and preservation of sites as a way to safeguard the past of LGBTQ+ histories.
Meinke’s ingenuity and vision led him to find myriad visionary ways of supporting and bolstering the LGBTQ+ community, preserving our history, and ensuring that it is never to be erased.
Bibliography
Washington Blade. (2016, January 20). Honoring the home of D.C.’s Furies. Washington Blade. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/01/20/honoring-home-of-d-c-s-furies/
Meinke, M. (n.d.). Mark Meinke. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-meinke-09991b14/
Rainbow History Project. (n.d.). Rainbow History Project. Retrieved from http://rainbowhistory.org/
Rainbow Heritage Network. (2015, December 10). Saving the house of the Furies. Rainbow Heritage Network. Retrieved from https://rainbowheritagenetwork.org/2015/12/10/saving-the-house-of-the-furies/