Other U.S. Archives

A select list of U.S. archives with important collections on the history of sexuality

Additional Information

The Society of American Archivists

Website: http://www2.archivists.org/groups/lesbian-and-gay-archives-roundtable-lagar/lave...

The Society of American Archivists maintains a comprehensive directory of both large and smaller archives with important LGBT-related holdings, including regional archives such as the Atlanta History Center, the Rainbow History Project (Washington D.C.), the Williams-Nichols Collection at the University of Louisville, the Ozarks Lesbian and Gay Archives (Springfield, MO), the Gulf Coast Archives and Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History (Houston), and the Las Vegas Gay Archives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

California

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives

Address:

909 West Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90007

Phone: (213) 741-0094
Email: askone@onearchives.org
Website: http://www.onearchives.org/

The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives has an extraordinarily rich collection documenting the history of the early homophile movement in the United States.  ONE Incorporated was founded in 1952 to publish ONE magazine, the first national homophile magazine in the US, and beginning in 1956 it offered the nation’s first courses in homophile studies.  The complete records of ONE and an extensive collection of early Mattachine Society records form the core of the collection, which also includes the national records of Dignity, the gay Catholic organization (1969-); the Metropolitan Community Church (1969-); and the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.  Other highlights of the collection include the voluminous personal papers of activists Harry Hay (1912-2002), W. Dorr Legg (1904-1994), James Kepner (1923-1997), Harold Call (1917-2000), Morris Kight (1919-2003), Barbara Gittings (1932-2007), Kay Tobin Lahusen (b. 1930), Jeanne Córdova (b. 1948), and Reed L. Erickson (1916-1994); the female impersonator Charles Pierce (1926-1999); filmmaker Pat Rocco (b. 1934); and sociologist Laud Humphreys (1930-1988); and a large collection of scripts for plays, movies, and television shows featuring LGBT characters.    The Archives also holds rare issues of early American queer publications such as the lesbian newsletter Vice Versa (Los Angeles, 1947-1948) and complete runs of ONE (Los Angeles, 1953-1972) and the Mattachine Review (Los Angeles/San Francisco, 1955-1966), as well as some of the earliest gay European publications, including Arcadie (Paris, 1954-1972) and Der Kreis (Zürich, Switzerland 1938-1967).

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

Address:

657 Mission St. #300
San Francisco, CA 94105

Phone: (415) 777-5455
Fax: (415) 777-5576
Email: archives@glbthistory.org
Website: http://www.glbthistory.org

The GLBT Historical Society, founded in 1985, holds records of several of the earliest homophile organizations, including the Mattachine Society, Daughters of Bilitis, and the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, as well as the records of later groups such as Community United Against Violence, the San Francisco Women’s Building, and several AIDS and queer activist groups. The Society also holds the personal papers of Daughters of Bilitis founders Del Martin (1921-2008) and Phyllis Lyon (b. 1924), homophile activist Don Lucas (b. 1926), U.S. Air Force veteran Leonard Matlovich (1943-1988), and photographer Crawford Barton (1943-1993). The Society is an important collector of GLBT oral histories, including interviews with trans activists such as Elliot Blackstone (1924-2006) and Suzan Cooke (b. 1947). A limited number of processed manuscript collections are on deposit at the San Francisco Public Library, including transsexual activist Louis Sullivan’s (1951-1991) papers.

James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center

Address:

San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Phone: (415) 557-4400
Fax: (415) 437-4831
Email: info@spfl.org
Website: http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=0200002401

The James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center opened in 1996 as part of the San Francisco Public Library. It maintains a collection of books, periodicals, videos, sound recordings, photographs, posters, ephemera, memorabilia, and manuscript collections documenting LGBT history, with a focus on San Francisco and Northern California, especially since 1969. The Hormel Center holds the personal papers of San Francisco supervisor and gay activist Harvey Milk (1930-1978), journalist Randy Shilts (1951-1994), gay activist Aaron Fricke (b. 1962), performance artist and feminist activist Lynn Lonidier (1937-1993), writer Paul Reed (1956-2002), conservative lobbyist Marvin Liebman (1923-1997), and Naiad Press founder Barbara Grier (b. 1933) as well as the organizational records of the Federation of Gay Games (1982-) and business records of Trannyshack (1996-2008).

San Francisco Public Library James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center

Address:

San Francisco Public Library
James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center
Location: 100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
 

Phone: (415) 557-4400
Fax: (415) 437-4831
Email: info@spfl.org
Website: http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=0200002401

San Francisco Public Library
James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center

The James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center opened in 1996 as part of the San Francisco Public Library. It maintains a collection of books, periodicals, videos, sound recordings, photographs, posters, ephemera, memorabilia, and manuscript collections documenting LGBT history, with a focus on San Francisco and Northern California, especially since 1969. The Hormel Center holds the personal papers of San Francisco supervisor and gay activist Harvey Milk (1930-1978), journalist Randy Shilts (1951-1994), gay activist Aaron Fricke (b. 1962), performance artist and feminist activist Lynn Lonidier (1937-1993), writer Paul Reed (1956-2002), conservative lobbyist Marvin Liebman (1923-1997), and Naiad Press founder Barbara Grier (b. 1933) as well as the organizational records of the Federation of Gay Games (1982-) and business records of Trannyshack (1996-2008).

Illinois

Leather Archives & Museum

Address:

6418 Greenview Ave.
Chicago, IL 60626

Phone: (773) 761-9200
Email: archives@leatherarchives.org
Website: http://www.leatherarchives.org

The Leather Archives & Museum was founded in 1992 to document the history of the Leather/SM/Fetish community, and in 1996 it opened a permanent public exhibit. It holds the organizational records of important federations such as Leather United-Chicago (1989-) and the National Leather Association (1986-), gay motorcycle clubs Entre Nous (Boston) and Blue Max (Los Angeles), and the personal papers and photographs of ordinary leathermen. It also hold extensive collections of visual and material culture artifacts, include club posters, drawings, photographs, t-shirts, club colors and pins, boots, vests, and sex toys from across the United States.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Religious Archives Network

Address:

Chicago Theological Seminary
5757 S. University Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637-1507

Phone: (773) 322-0290
Email: info@lgbtran.org
Website: http://www.lgbtran.org

Founded in 2001 as a project of the Chicago Theological Seminary, the LGBT Religious Archives Network is an online clearinghouse for LGBT religious archival collections. It offers a searchable database of LGBT religious collections in archives and libraries in the United States and internationally, as well as a list of religious archives with significant LGBT collections. The website also holds oral histories from important LGBT and allied religious leaders, including progressive imam Daayiee Abdullah (b. 1954), gay Reform rabbi Allen Bennett (b. 1946), Dianic Elder Priestess Jade River (b. 1950), and MCC elder Freda Smith (b. 1935).

Indiana

The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction

Address:

Indiana University
Morrison 313
Bloomington, IN 47405

Phone: (812) 855-7686
Fax: (812) 856-6063
Email: libknsy@indiana.edu
Website: http://www.kinseyinstitute.org

The institute was founded in 1947 by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who assembled what may be the world’s preeminent collection of research materials documenting sexual expression and organization across the globe, with special strength for the United States.  The Kinsey Institute Library holds Kinsey’s extensive correspondence with sex researchers, criminologists, and ordinary people; the sexual diaries and observations on sexual life he persuaded many people to prepare for him; virtually every scientific publication concerning sexuality since the nineteenth century; extensive collections of physique magazines, erotica, comic books, and obscure popular magazines reporting on sexual matters; and films, photographs, and drawings depicting sexual behavior or exploring it artistically.  It also holds the papers of other sex researchers such as Harry Benjamin (1885-1986), Robert Latou Dickinson (1861-1950), John Money (1926-2006) and Pepper Schwartz (b. 1945). It also has vertical files documenting everything from gay organizations to police anti-vice campaigns.

Massachusetts

Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America

Address:

Radcliffe College
10 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Phone: (617) 495-8647
Fax: (617) 496-8340
Email: slref@radcliffe.edu
Website: http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles/

The Schlesinger Library, founded in 1943, holds more than 50,000 books and hundreds of periodical titles, as well as thousands of shelf feet of manuscript collections documenting women’s lives, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notable individual collections include the papers of lesbian activist Charlotte Bunch (b. 1944); labor education expert Eleanor Coit (1894-1976); lesbian writer and activist Barbara Deming (1917-1984); birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947); sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908); photographer Bettye Lane (b. 1930); writer, lawyer, activist for African American and women’s rights, Episcopal Priest Pauli Murray (1910-1985); singer/songwriter Holly Near (b. 1949); lesbian writer Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), and Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967). Organizational papers include: Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE) (1973-); Daughters of Bilitis Cambridge (Mass.) (1969-); National Organization for Women (1966-); and Massachusetts Society for Social Health (1911-ca. 1965).

Smith College Archives

Address:

Smith College, Alumnae Gymnasium, 88 Green Street
Northampton, MA 01063

Phone: 413-585-2970
Fax: 413-585-2970
Contact: Finding Aids: http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/smitharchives/list
Email: archives@library.smith.edu
Website: http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/archives

The Smith College Archives holds the papers of college administrators, faculty, students, student organizations, and alumnae.  Student letters, journals, diaries, and publications describe crushes, smashes, female friendships, and LBT activity on campus. Faculty papers document female friendships, Boston marriages, and lesbian relationships.  Administrative records and college publications document administration policies, practices, and public discussion of LBT issues. Student organizational records include the Lesbian Bisexual Alliance (1976-).

Sophia Smith Collection

Address:

Smith College, Alumnae Gymnasium, 88 Green Street
Northampton, MA 01063

Phone: (413) 585-2970
Fax: Fax: (413) 585-2886
Email: ssc-wmhist@smith.edu
Website: http://libraries.smith.edu/ssc

Founded in 1942 as a collection of works by women writers, the Sophia Smith Collection later expanded to document the lives and activities of women in the U.S., especially New England, since the 1860s.  Collections document reproductive rights and birth control, women’s rights, the contemporary women’s movement, lesbian culture, U.S. women working abroad, working women, and women in the labor movement, as well as the lives of lesbians and women who partnered with other women. Significant individual collections include the papers of social welfare and public health specialist Louise Stevens Bryant (1885-1956); architect, artist, and lesbian feminist activist Noel Phyllis Birkby (1932-1994); social workers Florence Hollis and Rosemary Reynolds (1907-1987); and author, editor, and social settlement worker Vida Scudder (1861-1954). Organizational and vertical file collections include: The Lesbian Calendar (1987-2001); Ms. Foundation for Women (1973-); and the Women’s Liberation Collection (1959-2006). The periodicals collection includes significant runs of Amazon Quarterly (Boston Area, 1972-1975), The Ladder (San Francisco (1956-1970), The Furies (Washington D.C., 1972-1973), and Sinister Wisdom (North Carolina/California, 1976-).

New York

Cornell University Human Sexuality Collection

Address:

Cornell University
Rare and Manuscript Collections
2B Carl A. Kroch Library
Ithaca, NY 14853-5302

Phone: (607) 255-3530
Fax: (607) 255-9524
Contact: Brenda J. Marston
Email: bjm4@cornell.edu
Website: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HSC/

Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection (HSC) holds an impressive collection of organizational records and personal papers documenting LGBT history, especially since the 1960s.  Organizational records include those of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (1973-); National Lesbian and Gay Health Association (1977-2002); Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, national office (1972-); Gay Media Task Force (1972-1988); Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association (1993-); National Socialist League (1974-1985) printed miscellany; PWA Health Group (1987-); American Psychological Association’s Division 44 (1973-,); New York State Lesbian and Gay Lobby (1981-1989); and AIDS Work of Tompkins County, New York (1985-).  Significant individual collections include the papers of: James M. Foster (1934-1990); publisher and gay mail order catalog owner H. Lynn Womack (1923-1985); journalist and filmmaker Phil Zwickler (1954-1991); filmmaker Rosa Von Praunheim (b. 1942); AIDS activist Brent Nicholson Earle (b. 1951); Quaker historian Robert J. Leach (1916-ca. 2000); Advocate publisher David B. Goodstein (1932-1985); GAA president and NGTF founder Bruce R. Voeller (1934-1994); lawyer and traveller Robert Lynch (1947-1989); LGBT activist Alice Reynolds; gay veteran and activist Richard Schlegel, as well as Don Bachardy’s (b. 1934) Mariposa Portrait Series (1980), Kristin Esterberg’s oral history project on lesbian and bisexual women in Ithaca, New York (1989-1992), Roey Thorpe’s Detroit lesbian oral history project (1992-1995), and the films of Joseph Albertson (ca. 1960-1970). Other collections document AIDS activism; families of LGBT people; LGBT people of color; pro- and anti-pornography activism; LGBT erotica and pornography, and LGBT publishing.

Lesbian Herstory Archives

Address:

Lesbian Herstory Archives
Address: LHEF, Inc.
484 14th St., Brooklyn, NY 11215

Phone: (718) 768-3953
Website: http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/

The Lesbian Herstory Archives, established in 1973, houses the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. Beyond the Archives’ rich subject files, which Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library holds in microform, the Herstory Archives is home to geographical files with newspaper clippings, local guides, maps, flyers, and local newsletters organized by U.S. state or country beyond the U.S. Audio-Visual materials include large collections of spoken word cassette tapes and CDs, readings, oral histories, and videos of dyke marches, as well as early 1970s videos from Lesbians Organized for Video Experience and unedited cuts of DYKE TV episodes (1993-). Important organization files include the Lesbian Resource Center (Seattle, 1971-), the Salsa Soul Sisters (1974-), ACT UP New York (1987-), and Lesbian Avengers, NY (1992). The Archives also holds over 11,000 books and monographs, including a substantial collection of small press poetry anthologies and lesbian pulp novels, as well as issues of over 1,300 periodicals, including the Lesbian News (Los Angeles, 1974-) and the Lesbian Inciter/Insider (Minneapolis, 1980-1986).

The New York Public Library Center for the Humanities Manuscripts and Archives Division

Address:

Room 328 (reading room)
Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street, Room 328
New York, NY 10018-2788
Curator: 212-930-0804  wstingone@nypl.org 

Phone: 212-930-0801
Fax: (212) 302-4815
Contact: http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/36/node/138008
Email: mssref@nypl.org
Website: http://www.nypl.org

In 1988 the New York Public Library acquired the International Gay Information Center Archives, a community based archive which held the records of several major New York activist organizations, including the Mattachine Society of New York (1955-1987), Gay Activists Alliance (1969-1981), and Gay Switchboard (1971-1997), as well as the many rare books and periodicals collected by those organizations.  Since then, the Library has acquired the records of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (1982-), Gran Fury (1988-1994), ACT UP/NY (1987-), People With AIDS Coalition (1985-1993), Women’s Action Coalition (1992-1995), literary journals such as Thirteenth Moon (1973-) and Christopher Street That New Magazine (1976-1982), and flyers, newsletters, and mailings from approximately 400 organizations worldwide; posters and artwork; postcards, comic books and artifacts; and t-shirts, banners, and buttons.  The collection includes thousands of issues of hard-to-find LGBT periodicals from more than 27 countries, as well as the personal papers of AIDS activists David Feinberg (1956-1994) and Lawrence Mass (b. 1940), novelist and Harlem Renaissance promoter Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), gay bookstore owner Craig Rodwell (1940-1993), writer and literary critic Doris Grumbach (b. 1918), playwright Walter Porczak (1935-1984), Women’s Army Corps member Dorothee Gore (1908-1982), historians Jonathan Ned Katz (b. 1938) and Martin Duberman (b. 1930), film critic Vito Russo (1946-1990), and dramatist and writer Donald Vining (1917-1998). 

National Archive of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History

Address:

208 West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011                                                                                                                 

 

Phone: 212-620-7310
Email: archive@gaycenter.org
Website: http://www.gaycenter.org/community/archive

Founded in 1990, the Archive holds extensive collections documenting LGBT culture and politics, especially in 20th centuryNew York City. Organizational records include the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1979), Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York (1970-1990), Chelsea Gay Association (1977-1984), Lesbian Switchboard of New York City (1972-1997), Greater Gotham Business Council (1976-), Heritage of Pride (1969-), Imperial Court of New York (1965-), Lesbian and Gay Teacher’s Association of New York (1974-), and Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1977-1994). The Archive holds personal papers from LGBT rights activists such as Joyce Hunter, Marc Rubin (1932-2007), Pam Elam, Marty Robinson (d. 1992), Michael Callen (1955-1994), and Richard Burns, as well as personal photographs, promotional posters, party invitations and other ephemera documenting LGBT life in New York.

North Carolina

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Address:

Duke University
411 Chapel Drive
Durham, NC 27708-0185

Phone: (919) 660-5822
Fax: (919) 660-5934
Email: cwhc@duke.edu
Website: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/

The Duke University Library collects material relating to LGBT history and culture, with a primary emphasis on LGBT activism and literature in the American South. Significant individual collections include the papers of the homosexual Victorian-era classicist John Addington Symonds (1870-1894); Loreen Weeks and Fred Klasse (1892-1937); feminist linguist Julia Penelope (b. 1941); activist Milo Guthrie (1962-1990); educator James T. Sears (b. 1951); gay pulp author and illustrator Carl Corley (b. 1921); and historian William Cannicott Olson (1956-1985); as well as the journals of businessman and Church of England clergyman Charles Baker (1859-1904, 25 volumes) and photographs and writings of William Gedney (1932-1989).  Organizational records include the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance Archives and Periodicals Collection (1972-1994) and the North Carolina Lesbian and Gay Health Project Records (1982-1996).  Significant book collections include the Lesbian Pulp Novel Collection and the Reevy Collection of Books on the History of Sexuality.