Forgotten Figures

An informative site about LGBTQ+ historical figures, for queer individuals and allies alike. Our project highlights the lives and identities of LGBTQ+ figures from various cultures and generations.

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Inspiration:

Many people think that gay people are a “new” phenomenon, but they could not be more wrong. LGBTQ+ people have been around for all of human history, and we wanted to highlight some notable queer people throughout history in our project. This is especially important to us, as a group consisting of queer women, who have been done a disservice by the lack of education about our demographics.

What It Does:

Forgotten Figures first has the list of featured people. When you click on one, it brings you to a page dedicated to the figure, with a picture of the figure, and/or a short blurb outlining their life accomplishments. It will recommend similar figures based on gender identity, time period, sexuality, country, job, or race.

How We Built It:

The back-end of our website was built with python and incorporated with the front-end with the module Flask. The class used the most within the class is the Fig class, which we coded to represent a historical figure. The class has instance variables including gender identity, sexuality, romantic orientation, and date of birth. Additionally, biographies were written for the figures for educational purposes, and these bios are displayed on the main page of the website to provide detailed information. Methods incorporated within the Fig class measure how similar one figure is to another and the top five are displayed within the website, allowing someone interested in one figure to look at similar figures.

Challenges We Ran Into:

We started with using HTML and CSS on the front side, and Python on the back-end. However, with the help of outside input, we discovered that the Python module Flask could be used to link front-end HTML and back-end Python, which we used to create our website. However, none of us had even heard of Flask before, let alone used it, so we read lots of documentation to try to figure out how to connect our website. In addition, none of the members of our team were that familiar with HTML or CSS, so we got to learn a lot about that too.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of:

We successfully managed to complete our first Hackathon! We are proud of having worked well as a team, since this is our first time coding something with a group– and especially since one of our members is relatively new to coding; she picked up on logic and syntax incredibly quickly. We also did a good job at managing our time. We’re also super proud of the design of the website, along with the connection of the two ends of our program, which took the longest.

What We Learned:

We learned how to use HTML for front-end website development, along with how to use CSS for aesthetic purposes. We learned how to integrate Python code into our website (for back-end) using Flask. None of us had ever attempted a coding project so big, nor had any of us ever designed our own website before.

What's Next for Forgotten Figures:

We hope to expand our database of historical figures to include wider representation, especially for people with lesser-known sexualities and more varied cultures. We would like to provide more well-rounded information on the community, including important LGBTQ+ landmarks, policies, laws, and links to other resources. Emergency hotlines, too, as many of those who identify suffer from increased rates of mental illness due to the prejudice they face. We also want to improve the design of the website to be more aesthetic and add functions to spotlight a random queer figure every day on the main page of our website.

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