One day visitors to the Old Red Museum will marvel at one of the rarest, ugliest signs ever posted in Dallas. An old real estate sign with the warning "No Queers" written on it has been donated to Dallas' Old Red Museum for inclusion in a diversity exhibition that will be scheduled in the future. The sign once stood in the yard of an Oak Lawn home that was for sale.

Sam Childers, communications manager for the museum that will officially open May 15, obtained the sign from an Oak Lawn couple who discovered the sign in the garage of their 1914-era home. Childers, who is a historian, said he immediately recognized the historical value of the sign when he read about it in the newspaper and asked the couple if they would be willing to donate it to the museum or some other historical facility.

"I just felt something like that should go to a library or an archive," Childers said. "I was really glad to get it. I just felt like it was important that it be preserved."

[...]

Childers said there is no more available space in the museum's exhibition cases at this time, but he plans to keep the sign in storage until there is a special exhibition on diversity. The sign reminded him of similar signs about African-Americans, Irish people and other ethnic groups that once were posted.

The "No Queers" sign is the first he has ever seen addressing homosexuality, Childers said. "It's a much rarer thing," Childers said. "I'm so happy they were willing to donate it to us. I didn't want it to just sit in some garage. At some point we will be able to exhibit it."

Childers said he believes the sign probably was from the 1970s era because that was when gay and lesbian people first started becoming more visible. There probably were not more anti-gay signs posted because people had started becoming more reluctant to reveal their prejudices after anti-discrimination laws began to be passed.