Acclaimed librarian Harlan Greene retired Feb. 29 from his post as head of the LGBTQ+ archives at the College of Charleston (CofC). It was Leap Day, fitting timing for someone whose career has been equal parts extraordinary and predictably consistent. Few Lowcountry scholars have demonstrated the same ability to break the mold time and again the way Greene has.
Greene’s influence is both timeless and enduringly relevant, as the college’s dean of libraries, John White, recognizes: “No one person can replace Harlan Greene. He’s an institution. Everyone likes to talk about Harlan’s extraordinary career building collections, but the most overlooked piece of his career is his work building consciousness.
“Try to find a book written about Charleston in the last 30 or 40 years that does not acknowledge him or his work in its opening pages. It’s almost impossible. I can’t think of any other archivist who could say that. It’s an extraordinary legacy.”
A consummate scholar, author, archivist and lifelong learner, Greene has spent decades developing special collections within library systems, first at the Charleston County Pubic Library in the late 1990s, then at the Avery Institute for African American Studies in 2005 and finally as an archivist at the CofC.
In 1985, he published his first book, Why We Never Danced the Charleston, an account of closeted gay life in the 1920s. His most recent release, The Real Rainbow Row, out in 2023, pulls back the curtain entirely, functioning as a geographic and narrative tour through Charleston’s LGBTQ+ communities. The connective tissue running through these, and all of his books, is the idea that minor people can do major things, and that seemingly narrow topics can reflect much larger societal shifts.
Greene will tell you he fell in love with history and the nuanced lives of Charlestonians from marginalized communities as a student at the college in the 1970s. Back then, he began collecting papers, ephemera and general remnants of Charleston’s artistic and LGBTQ+ community. It was a preservation activity purely driven by his own pursuits.
Fast forward to 2013 when a chance discussion with a student initiated a fateful merger between this personal passion project and a nascent public repository the school was beginning to build. “This archive was just coming into being,” Greene said this month in an interview. “But it quickly transformed from a set of stories or documents from a disenfranchised group of people, a group of those left out, to a collection relevant not just to the new reality of the college’s student population but also to the history of the city at large.”
Greene’s legacy at the school lives on and continues to inform a fundamental focus of the school’s collecting efforts. Still, given how integral Greene was in the archive’s creation, donors and supporters wonder what shifts, if any, might occur under new direction. White is quick to offer reassurance. As the archives expanded under Greene’s purview, he said, so too will the scope of the work he initiated begin to delve into previously unmined territory, covering new topics and incorporating fresh materials and voices from the movement. And that’s important for student support and enrollment efforts, considering about 20% of CofC’s student/campus population reportedly self-identifies as LGBTQ+, according to the school’s latest demographic data. (For reference, the school has less than 10% each of Jewish and African American students.)
Both Greene and the school believe this effort of preserving the past — and its expansion down the road — benefits the greater community, which makes the mission feel not just inevitable but also essential.
“These stories, our efforts, the [Rainbow Row] book I wrote from many of these anecdotes — these have increased awareness, and now that awareness is evident in tangible things,” he said. “Today, tourists who walk down the street can see plaques representing moments and places significant in LGBTQ+ history here.
“That’s significant. It changes the map of Charleston, and also attracts that kind of new visitor who has a specific interest in the history we’re just beginning to uncover and share.”
And just as Greene’s work predates his involvement with the school, so, too, does his impact extend beyond campus borders. He is a scholar of Charleston itself. City dynamics, interpersonal relationships, civic achievements, grassroots organization and individual engagement — all color the behind-the-scenes stories that bring his subjects to life.
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