In rural Appalachia, being openly queer can be dangerous for kids. But a group of students in one small town knew they weren't getting the history education they wanted -- so they banded together with their favorite French teacher to bring an idea to life. From the perspective of that teacher and the student who started it all, this is the story of the Open Light club, and how students’ idea to teach themselves LGBTQ history after class grew into something so much bigger. They faced opposition they never expected... but created a community that would stick with them forever. In this episode, we're talking about how young people can make change in their community -- and how the rest of us can support them. Learn more about how you can build change at actblue.com/buildthechange or follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
In rural Appalachia, being openly queer can be dangerous for kids. But a group of students in one small town knew they weren't getting the history education they wanted -- so they banded together with their favorite French teacher to bring an idea to life. From the perspective of that teacher and the student who started it all, this is the story of the Open Light club, and how students’ idea to teach themselves LGBTQ history after class grew into something so much bigger. They faced opposition they never expected... but created a community that would stick with them forever.
In this episode, we're talking about how young people can make change in their community -- and how the rest of us can support them.
Learn more about how you can build change at
or follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Build the Change Ep 3 - Youth Activism
Transcript
One afternoon, Willie Carver was sitting in his classroom. And a group of his students walked in and handed him a box. This... has happened before. So, Willie thought, maybe it's an animal.
Willie:
I've literally, at multiple points in my career, this is how country this place is, been given animals and asked to hold them till the end of the day.
Willie:
Uh, I had a student bring a calf to school once. She did not ask me to hold it. Uh, I had students give me cats that they found on the school farm, and they were like, will you hold this cat until the end of the day? Um, so I assumed it was gonna be an animal 'cause they had been to the farm,
But there was no animal in this box. It was books.
Willie:
It was a box full of L-G-B-T-Q themed books. And they said, we used these to keep ourselves alive in middle school. Um, our parents didn't pay attention to what we read, so, and we were afraid to be out. So we would share these in a little underground network. Um, and they said, we don't need them anymore because we feel safe here. Um, so they thought maybe I could find a place for these books. And I said, I think you all have already come up with a new idea.
[Music]
In the rural Mount Sterling, Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, being openly queer has been dangerous for kids. And a group of students at Montgomery County High School teamed up with Willie, their teacher, to create a space where they could safely explore queer identities, and learn about their histories. But it wasn’t easy.
Larah:
…Looking back at it now, I think it's horrific the way that I was treated. Like I cannot believe the way that grown people treated a 16-year-old because they were trying to make a safe space. Like it's insane to me. Um, but at the time I really just was so nourished by that community and was so devoted to it that it was worth it. And I like would do it again a million times over.
[Music]
In partnership with ActBlue, this is Build the Change, a show about the people at the center of progress. I’m your host, Alok Vaid-Menon. I’m an author, poet, actor, advocate… And your companion for this trip around the country. We’re in search of the most compelling causes, and stories from the candidates, activists, and everyday people driving them forward.
Today, we’re talking about student organizing: What it takes for young people to mobilize against unjust rules, to make big changes – and how the rest of us can support that.
[Music]
Larah:
I would describe Mount Sterling as, I think when I moved it had like 7,000 people. Um, very small, very rural. It's a farming town. You're either a farmer, preacher, teacher, or a banker. There's not much else to do. Super homophobic, super, super, super homophobic and very limited in what is acceptable, um, in general. I guess the one positive thing that I would have to say about it is it's in like the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains. So it's really beautiful. It's like very hilly and like the landscape is lovely, but that's about it.
That’s Larah.
Larah:
I'm a musician, uh, songwriter and playwright.
Larah:
I identify as transmasc and I use he/they pronouns.
Larah enrolled at Montgomery County High School back in 2016. And at that point, he already knew about Willie Carver.
Larah:
I usually just call him Carver because like Mr. Carver feels too formal and Willie feels too informal because I just call him Carver. I met Carver when I was in the eighth grade I think, or the summer before high school at an open mic that I was playing. I was like, oh my God, gay people. Like I've never seen gay people in this town. I was like, oh my God, like we are here. There are actually other people like me.
Willie taught French and English for about 15 years, and the administrators made it into a painful, uphill battle.
Willie:
So I have been openly gay since I was a teenager. Um, and have, I mean, it's not been perfect. I have faced, uh, discrimination, but it's been a livable, doable life with lots of moments of beauty. And I had no intention of going back into the closet. But my first year of teaching, uh, was pulled into an administrator's office, which was a harbinger of things to come by an administrator who told me before the first day of school, so you are openly gay. And I said, yes. And then they said, just so you understand and this community, you will be crucified and no one will protect you, including me.
Willie had to follow a strict set of rules. He was not allowed to deviate from the curriculum or influence students in a direction deemed “too progressive.”
Willie:
So I can have the school technically, uh, come to me and say, we don't want you teaching X, Y, and Z. I can have the school coming and telling me, you can't read this book.
[Music]
Some parents even dug in their heels and demanded that Willie remove “black” books from the curriculum – and the school would encourage Willie to appease them and find a new title.
The thing is, students… aren’t bound to that contract.
Willie:
The school cannot tell a student, you can't talk about this. The school cannot tell a student. You can't write about this.
So, in the midst of this hostility, some students decided to get together and start a “happy club,” with Willie as the advisor. The student group was initially dedicated to spreading general positivity: making a wall of sticky notes filled with affirmations. Handing out cartoons of chubby unicorns with goofy jokes on the back. Sending encouraging notes to the kindest teachers in school. Anything to quell the waves of hostility.
But Happy Club had a comparatively large percentage of LGBTQ students – one group particularly suffering from the unchecked bigotry at school. For some time, the club teetered on the edge of becoming a true, open Gay Straight Alliance.
That’s where Larah came in – eventually.
Larah had been a strong ally since elementary school, but remained in the closet for years. He spent the first few semesters of high school denying Willie’s suggestion to take over Happy Club.
But one radical, exciting experience changed his mind. He went to music camp.
Larah:
Uh, I met the first trans person I ever met there and heard about concepts like consent for the first time. Um, and it was just like something like busted open in me, like it just cracked my egg. It like slammed my egg on the table and was like, you've gotta face this now.
The camp represented community. Education. After catching a glimpse of what he was missing at camp, he could tell he wasn’t getting the education he wanted at Montgomery County High – not about LGBTQ history, and not about systemic injustice.
Larah:
So I went to Carver and I was like, okay, I'm ready to do this. Um, because it had been two years at that point of me saying, no, I'm not ready. Like I can't, um, I went to him and he was like, okay, great.
It started with a new name: In 2019, Larah and a new cohort of students changed the name of the club from Happy Club to Open Light.
Willie:
And the idea behind that name was they really wanted to shine a light on those issues that were causing the problems, but they wanted it to be open to everyone. And so the first couple of years we just sort of listed a whole bunch of perspectives. Uh, are you black, brown country, hillbilly hick, redneck city? Uh, come please. We want to hear what what you're thinking.
After his banjo lessons one afternoon, Larah posted up in a cafe and pored over the founding stories of iconic queer organizations. That research inspired the foundation of Open Light – and there, in the cafe, Larah wrote a new description for the club:
Larah:
Open Light is a non-hierarchical community of students that provides an open platform to discuss issues in the school and community, learn from one another and become equipped with the tools necessary to change our school and world for the better.
That was our founding statement because I wasn't allowed to say anything about queerness. And so I had to be really, really clever and make it clear that like, this is a safe space. We just can't fully tell you that yet.
Larah:
I also had a few friends who were already out as trans at that point and I remember asking them like, what, what are the issues you all are facing in school? Like how can we, how can we make your life safe? Because it really was in the beginning just about establishing safety. Like that was the bare minimum students in the South don't even get that.
(...)
those were the confines we were working in. I think that influenced what we were able to do a lot and definitely made me like come at everything with just a really strong sense of compassion and like empathy and being like, you have no idea what these people are hiding or like how much energy that takes to literally like be in survival mode a hundred percent of the time.
Open Light took on some early projects centered on inclusivity in school and improvements in the community. The group advocated for working class students to be allowed more time for buying school books. The students got together after school and cleaned parks across town. They sold chocolate bars to raise money for mental healthcare access and awareness in school.
But the biggest initial goal of Open Light was education. Particularly as a gateway to community-building and mutual support.
Most weeks after school, the students in Open Light gathered in Willie’s classroom to teach themselves LGBTQ history.
Larah:
The very first slideshow that I have on here that we did is lgbtq plus history through the eras. And so yeah, it starts in two, 2,450 BCE and then goes through this one goes through the present day. And then we did History 2.0 where like students picked either specific people or events that they wanted to focus on. And then we did a collaborative slideshow.
Club members did presentations about Harvey Milk, the riots at Stonewall, Stormé DeLarverie. These high school students were essentially giving themselves homework projects that they then presented to each other. And they loved it.
Larah:
I think it was like very like respectfully engaged but also like, just shocked. Like I think we were all just like mind blown to find out that we weren't the first people in the world that were gay or that were trans. And realizing that we also weren't the first people to have a really hard time with it and to face homophobia every day of our lives. But this was the first time that we had heard that there was a way out of it for a lot of us.
[Music]
Willie would never get away with teaching these subjects himself. But remember, students aren’t bound by the same rules. In fact, there is a rule that gave the students the immunity to provide themselves education, as long as they led the charge… and didn’t cause too much trouble.
Willie:
So we call it the limited open forum rule. So if afterschool clubs get to exist, then any afterschool club gets to exist. The school can't use politics or gender or identity as a litmus for stopping, uh, that access. And then the other thing is that students are the one group in the school that has the most right to free speech. (...) And so putting the direction of the club on in the hands of the students and providing them with a group level anonymity so that the school didn't try to attack a single student was sort of my goal.
[Music]
While Open Light taught themselves, they also went on with their projects to better the community at school. They distributed materials from GLSEN’s safe space program – stickers and a small kit for ally teachers. Students participated in the Day of Silence, a protest where students refuse to speak in class to raise awareness about the bullying of LGBTQ kids in school. At its peak, the club had at least 40 students regularly attending.
But… as the club’s organizing ramped up, so did its opposition.
[Music]
POSTCARD: HUE
We’ll get back to Larah and the Open Light Club in just a moment. But first, we’re going to zoom out a bit. Because Kentucky isn’t the only place where queer kids are fighting for their rights to learn about their history. That’s exactly why organizations like History UnErased exist.
Deb Fowler:
History UnErased is an education nonprofit and our mission is putting LGBTQ history in its rightful place, the classroom. We believe that LGBTQ visibility through an intersectional lens within the history, civics, and social studies education all students receive is a powerful method to advance the ideals of American democracy.
[Pause]
Deb Fowler:
Hi, my name is Deb Fowler. I am a co-founder and current executive director of History Unerased and also a former, as I always like to say, boots on the ground in the trenches classroom teacher.
[Music]
Deb was a classroom teacher for several years in both South Korea and an American high school’s English Language Learning program. Working with students across a wide array of cultures was a fulfilling experience – but often Deb, who is gay, would censor her private life.
Deb Fowler:
I firmly believed that I was protecting them because if they knew that I was gay, that could potentially compromise our purpose together and might impact how the family trusted our school.
Deb Fowler:
And I learned from them over the years that self -censoring and dishonesty had been doing a great disservice to them. That I had not respected their need and expectation for me to tell them the truth and I had disrespected their capacity for understanding.
Deb Fowler:
And with my colleague at the time, Mary Morgenstern, she and I were having a lot of conversations about the absence of inclusive curriculum and what all students were learning.
Deb Fowler:
That profound punch in the gut kind of awareness is what inspired Mary M and I to leave our classroom and found History Unerased. And we spent about two years in conversations and digging into the rabbit holes of research, connecting with experts that could help us know where to look for the primary sources that we needed to build out the curriculum.
Deb Fowler:
So for example, every student learns about Jamestown in early colonial America. So our curriculum broadens that to include this particular case study about an indentured servant, Thomas Thomasine Hall. And this indentured servants contract was up for sale and given the fact that they had presented as both male and female in the community there was some confusion about the value of that contract. So it went all the way up to the highest court in the land at the time the general court of Virginia where it was determined by Governor Potts that Thomas Thomasine Hall was both male and female. This is in 1629. So young people love talking about gender. This excites them. It's presented through the lenses of economics, labor systems and gender.
History UnErased doesn’t advertise their curriculum, and they’re hardly on social media. Conferences and word of mouth are essential to spreading their name.
Once a teacher, administrator, or even a student learns about History UnErased, they can start the process of seeking approval from the school to receive a virtual consultation, and potentially integrate the new curriculum.
Deb Fowler:
We offer an informational session for parents, caregivers, and families.
Deb Fowler:
We are there to answer questions about what's included in the curriculum to provide that type of information, but that any questions about policy and classroom practice is up for the school leader or district leader to answer. It's fun. It's interactive. It's engaging.
Deb Fowler:
And so everyone benefits, irrespective of their discipline or role in the school, from learning a bit of what they had been deprived of learning within their own academic experience.
Deb Fowler:
I can share a quote with you from an elementary parent. At the end of this informational session she wrote in chat, nobody knows what this should look like so imaginations run wild. Glad I came.
Deb Fowler:
I'm definitely leaving this meeting with greater understanding and happy to have learned. So we, nobody knows what it should look like or what it is and that's nobody's fault. And so showing them exactly what their child is going to be learning is really impactful
Deb Fowler:
So right now, currently, in 2024, early 2024, nearly 3 ,000 schools in 16 states are teaching History UnErased curriculum. And it's important to note that this is supplemental curriculum to be integrated within mainstream courses. So this is impacting all students that pass through those schools.
Organizations like History UnErased rely on the community to keep their mission alive. From hosting fundraisers, connecting with our own school or former school, and of course donating. Every action counts! UnErased and its mission going. You can find a link to learn more in the show notes.
Now, let’s head back to Appalachia.
[Music]
Larah, with the help of his fellow students and his teacher, Willie Carver, had turned Open Light into a club that fosters learning and understanding about queer history and queerness today. But, his school wouldn’t address – or even acknowledge – homophobia students were experiencing.
Larah:
So one thing that I was trying to get the school to do was like offering a training, um, I even had like organizations that were like willing and ready to do it for free. I had like people who were like, yeah, we would love to like come to your school and give the teachers like an LGBTQ plus sensitivity training for zero money. And the school would not let us do it. So I was trying to push the administration to offer that, not even make it mandatory, but just offer a sensitivity training for our teachers.
And, when Larah wanted to put “LGBTQ affirming club” in Open Light’s name, making its subtle allyship more explicit, the school tried to deny them – even in spite of the open forum rule. He presented administrators with a printout of the legal precedent.
Larah:
if you have any clubs, you are legally required to allow A GSA at your school. You have to. And so I like took out this sheet, printed out this sheet, took it to the principal and was like, you're going to let us have this club or I'm gonna make your life a living hell. Like that's just how it is.
Larah already had a reputation as a student who defiantly passed out condoms he picked up at Planned Parenthood, or slipped Plan B pills to his fellow students below bathroom stalls. He had no problem acting against the wishes of the school.
After that, the school admin tried to deal with the club by… focusing on Willie Carver. He was frequently being called into the office.
Willie:
I couldn't breathe the wrong way without having to go to the principal's office, uh, over some pretend issue.
Willie:
I was once called to the office because the students had created, um, little posters that said something along the lines of, hate has no home here. Everyone is welcomed. And there were sort of like people holding up rainbow hearts, um, as their flier for their club. And so some people were ripping these down. Um, another club was pasting over them and pasting their club. It was a conservative religious club, um, over my student's stuff. And so when I went to complain, the response was basically, what did you expect? As opposed to We care. Um, and I had one single administrator try to help me and a lot of other administrators, downplay it, dismiss it, or sort of blame us for wanting to be visible as L-G-B-T-Q people.
Willie:
I think a person can see the importance of student driven initiative in watching how the school responded to me as a teacher, versus the group.
[Music]
The school tried to push back against the students’ organizing, but after Larah’s defiant waving of documents, it knew there was nothing to be done. In that way, the students actually held a lot of power – power to teach themselves, and… power to organize.
That brings us back to that moment in Willie’s classroom, when students came to him with a box full of books. These students weren’t quite sure what to do with this trove of queer-affirming literature. But with Willie’s help, they came up with an idea.
Before Larah graduated, he initiated a final project: expanding the LGBTQ section of the school library. If they found a way to buy everything themselves, maybe the administrators would consider it.
With some research, Willie and the students discovered that the It Gets Better project offers grants – so together, they wrote up a proposal.
Willie:
Uh, the initial project was to bring around $500 in books to their high school and $500 in books to their local library. Um, and the idea was that it would be a continuing library so that when they graduated, they still had access to things. Um, they applied for the grant, and then we got a response that said, you need to think bigger, please.
[Music]
Willie:
And I said, what does that really mean? Um, and they said, well, the limit is $10,000.
[Music kicks up]
Willie:
And so I asked the students, what do we think? And they really love this idea of having a conference. So we applied for 9,900 and some odd dollars to have a much larger library collection and to have a much larger library collection and to have a conference.
Willie:
The kids decided they wanted to do videos. So they, they just sort of filmed themselves each for a minute and a half talking about what mattered to them in books. And then another student watched the videos and just like came up with a one to two word caption for like, here's the concept the student is talking about. And that was their entire application.
With the new application sent, Willie and the students had to wait for their proposal to be reviewed.
It was around this time that something unexpected happened:
Willie won Kentucky Teacher of the Year.
Willie:
Um, the day that it happened, everyone was shocked, myself included. And most of my colleagues were fantastic, and the students were fantastic. It was very much a joyous day. Um, the news was at my front door with balloons, as was the Department of Education, as were my colleagues, um, and administrators that particular day. And then the next day, more Jubilee and people coming, they had streamers and they were coming into my room and randomly sort of throwing, uh, streamers everywhere. Um, it was a lot, it was actually really heartbreaking at first. Um, and that, that's hard to explain. Um, but I couldn't process this much kindness because I felt like I had a, a, a singular image of what my life was, which was one of fighting and not being liked.
The teacher of the year award in Kentucky doesn’t have much to do with the school district where the teacher works. All it takes is a nomination and an independent application – and then a state-level committee makes the decision.
So, unsurprisingly, the local community that Willie’s administrator once claimed would “crucify” him… did not take the joyous news very well.
Willie:
it started with insane rumors that the Kentucky Department of Education had only chosen me because I was gay. Um, and then, then the, everything sort of started, came, coming, crashing down. So I started getting weird threatening pieces of mail from all over, not just the county, but the country.
As Willie was grappling with hate mail, a new development lifted his spirits – It Gets Better accepted the $10,000 grant proposal. A local bookstore even offered to give Open Light 20 percent more books, further bolstering the collection.
Willie provided a list of book titles for review. If the school didn’t like any of them, they could replace them with different books.
Montgomery County High rejected all of them.
The students would need to find another home for the few thousand dollars worth of books they had.
To make matters worse – Wille was experiencing another wave of intense backlash after winning Teacher of the Year.
Willie:
I got Nazi esque paraphernalia shaped, uh, out of rainbow flags. Um, and then I realized, oh, when they came to my door, and this was all on the news, my physical addresses now everywhere Then a group of people started going to board meetings, um, started suggesting that it was inappropriate that a gay teacher would be at the school, that anyone would talk about being gay…
Willie called the school and implored them to speak up against the harassers, or defend Open Light. They refused.
Then, the onslaught turned toward the students of Open Light. Some members were outed, or images of them at their after school jobs leaked online. These attacks even included former students, like Larah himself.
He was attacked for his sexuality and work on reproductive rights. It didn’t matter the context. The national attention attracted far-right harassers looking for anything to latch onto.
[Pensive music]
Willie realized that, as the focus of the harassment, he might have been directing attention toward Open Light. He started to worry that the attacks were going to escalate, or hurt the students further.
So, he started to contemplate leaving education.
Willie:
I felt like I was abandoning them while simultaneously knowing that my presence was making them be put in danger because of the extremist right wing people in our community.
But, eventually, Willie knew he was making the right decision.
[Music]
Willie left Montgomery County High, taking some of the heat off students. Some of Open Light’s activism would slow down in the wake of the hate campaign against it, but Willie and the students still knew they had to finish organizing what they wanted to use the rest of the grant money for: A conference for LGBTQ youth. It finally happened in fall of 2023.
It was years in the making, and Willie helped bring it across the finish line from outside a teacher position.
[Music]
Dozens of students, parents, and teachers attended. The Commissioner of Education spoke about the importance of self-advocacy. Trans adults talked about their life experiences and maintaining hope, giving students an opportunity to imagine what growing up would look like. Part of the conference budget even went toward distributing de-stressing goodie bags.
Willie:
We had some speakers talk about, uh, civil rights, um, what, what sort of the limits of their rights were. We also had, uh, Narrative 4, which is an international group that, uh, looks at how to use your story and share your story, um, with other people as a way of making connection and building empathy.
Willie:
So they came and hosted a story exchange, um, and it was really cool to get to pair young L-G-B-T-Q people with L-G-B-T-Q Elders, um, as they sort of shared these stories.
And, finally, after being rejected by Montgomery County High, the books found a home – the very place where the conference was held: the Gateway Regional Arts Center in Mount Sterling.
Willie:
I said, Hey, how would you feel about having a Rainbow Freedom Library, uh, with all of these books? And they were ecstatic about the fact. We then gave them the books. They've set up the library. And so we created a little thing online (...) and sent it out and said, Hey, uh, would you like to help these kids get $400 for books? We got thousands. Um, we got thousands within days.
[Music]
Willie:
this is what these students taught me. They reminded me that we have to hope. They reminded me that nothing can defeat us if we keep believing that we're going to win, if we keep believing that what we're doing is worthy of continuing our search to find ways to implement it and to find ways to help people. Um, and those students, despite all of the setbacks and despite some pretty harrowing things, all that I know still live lives in which they're trying to help the world, um, in which they're creating music for rural L-G-B-T-Q people in which they're literally pastoring Baptist churches and talking about L-G-B-T-Q, um, youth and concepts.
Willie and the Open Light students faced a lot of backlash in their attempts to spread acceptance and create a safe space for the LGBTQ kids in their rural community. But in the end, they made the little idea to teach themselves what they wished they could learn, and that little box of books, into a movement that changed Mount Sterling.
…And the movement is still going. Willie heard from other towns that were inspired by the Rainbow Freedom Library, hoping to build their own. Open Light had enough grant money left over to buy some books for neighboring counties, too.
Willie:
it's definitely a project that keeps growing, and it's based upon this little seed of an idea that these students had.
[Music]
So much had to come together to make Open Light’s successes a reality – donations from the community, the support of a network of organizations, hard work from students, and the deep history of pioneering queer organizations and activists that inspire work to continue today.
[Music]
Today, Larah lives far from rural Kentucky. But their experiences with Open Light – their experiences as an activist – are something they carry with them. And they’re still proud of where they come from.
Larah:
The part of my Appalachian identity that I still really resonate with is the history of protest. (...) That's the part of Appalachia that I still hold very dear. And the importance for me of knowing where you came from, like knowing who came before you, who fought for you to have what you have.
Larah:
I think what makes life feel really purposeful is connection and is relying on each other and knowing that the people in your life, your community will take care of each other. Even if all you have is each other, you'll be okay. Because that's what got me through high school. It wasn't about anything that we were trying to get the school to do. It was about the people.
And Larah still brings that sense of community and connection with him, and shares it with the world through his music.
[Larah’s folk song plays through the credits]
We’re inspired by what can be built when individuals work to create something bigger than themselves.
That’s core to ActBlue’s mission. How to use technology to not only make it easy and accessible to raise money but also to help more people participate in our political process
You can find, support, and fundraise for the candidates and causes you’re passionate about at actblue.com/buildthechange
See you next time.
Build the Change is created in partnership with ActBlue, produced by Wonder Media Network, and hosted by me, Alok Vaid-Menon.
Our production team includes Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Sara Schleede, Abbey Delk, Hannah Bottum, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Our executive producer is Jenny Kaplan. Our showrunners are Rohita Javangula and Maria Jose Hurtado.