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An Overview by Categories
A large part of our audiotape collection captures the words, activities, and opinions of lesbians who are not usually represented in published work, and whose lives, therefore, are that much more likely to be lost. Oral history interviews, donated by members of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay History Project, as well as interviews by Archives volunteers, let us eavesdrop on vivid personal experiences and create a fuller understanding of the lesbians from our past and present history.
Our videotape collection is extensive, including feature films and documentaries, as well as tapes of lesbian-oriented TV shows and lesbian events, both public and private. We also have outtakes from lesbian documentaries such as Last Call At Maud's.
Community events, political forums, and cultural performances constitute another important aspect of the tape series. We have complete interviews from In The Best Interests of Children (Iris Films); and an autobiographical and historical series about lesbian literature recorded in 1980. We have selections by West Coast writers from This Bridge Called My Back. Add to these our exciting radio shows from the major San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles stations, and you have a remarkable chronology of community issues and development.
Books:
Our books include both well-known and extremely rare literary works, from the 1895 Norma Trist through the lesbian feminist novels of the 1970s and 1980s. We also have a good number of the immensely popular "pulps" of the 1950s and early 1960s, including such classics as We Walk Alone and Carol of a Thousand Cities.
The non-fiction consists of psychological and sociological studies from the turn of the century when we were always defined by others, to current historical and anthropological analyses done by lesbian and gay scholars. There are biographies and autobiographies, historical overviews, erotica, poetry, the arts, religion -- in short, an eclectic selection representing all aspects of lesbian and feminist culture and life.
Included in the non-fiction books are essential reference works such as J.R. Roberts' Black Lesbians, Jeanette Fosters' Sex Variant Women in Literature, and Clare Potters' Lesbian Periodical Index
Nonprint Materials
This category includes buttons, matchbooks (The Duchess), mugs (Artemis Cafe), softball uniforms from the 1940s, games, T-shirts and more.
Besides the 250 or so specifically lesbian periodical titles, the Archives has another 300 feminist publications. Often, it was primarily lesbians that were involved in producing these important records of the women's liberation movement and feminism.
The periodicals collection consists of newspapers, magazines, literary journals from all parts of the United States; many from Canada and, indeed, from throughout the world. They represent a variety of philosophical and political points of view, but share a lively creativity -- Klondike Contact, Cuni-Linguist, Pearl Diver, Les'Beinformed.
Vice Versa is the earliest known lesbian periodical (1947-1948 Los Angeles) and the Archives has a complete set; it also has most of The Ladder (1950s and 60s), so famous among lesbians as to be almost mythic. Then in the 1970s "our news" began appearing all over the country -- more than 100 new titles in a decade!
In addition to the tapes, videos, snapshots and scrapbooks preserved in the archives, we also have a fine collection of sculptures, drawings, lithographs, fine art, and poster art. There are hundreds of postcard and greeting card art reproductions; tee shirts and softball uniforms; and slide documentation of the National Great American Lesbian Art Show. We are continually adding to our special collections as donations are made to the archives.
We are home to the entire photography files of Diana Press, tracing the history of the press and other lesbian printing and publishing companies; events, and personalities of the 1970s.
In informal snapshots, we have a 1920s scrapbook showing lesbian friends and lovers, with an engraved title on the cover: "No Man's Land". We have some 8×10s of San Francisco bar personalities of the 1940s; We have sets of "at-home" scrapbooks of ordinary couples and their friends -- from the 1950s to the present. Then there's the complete coverage of a lesbian wedding and the following reception; and there are conferences, parades, games, and many, many wonderful lesbian faces on film and in photographs to add to the montage of lesbian history captured and documented in the Mazer.
A large part of our record collection was donated in 1988 by Paradigm Music Distribution; so that in one fell swoop we received a good portion of the history of women's music. As with other parts of the Archives, over the years we have managed to attract some unusual things; Gertrude Stein reading her own poetry; Marlene Dietrich oozing through old war songs; then there are Pearl Bailey, Chris Connor, Doris Day, Ma Rainey, and Odetta. In addition, we have Beverly Shaw's "Tailored To Your Taste" album from the Club Laurel, one of the famous celebrity-attracting gay nightclubs in Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s.
Over the years the Archives has collected, organized and catalogued file drawers of newspaper clippings, flyers, conference programs, and other one-of-a-kind print materials.
Reading through personal and organizational papers is an experience many of us have never had in a library, and yet it is in these materials that we have found some of the most intimate and emotional way of researching the lesbian past. The letters between lovers, friends, and co-workers contained in these private resources give expression and complexity to the rich detail of lesbian life and adds another layer to the intellectual, social justice and historical materials that are present in other printed texts.
One of our special paper collections is the writings and photos of Ruth Reid, a Berkeley, California woman who died at age 78. Her papers recall her twenty-eight year relationship with Kent, her lover, who lived her public life passing as a man. Kent's death in the 1960s was a soul-searing blow to Ruth, who wrote so movingly about the experience. She records the moment when she looks at her ring, "K to R, March 28, 1939 - Forever" and writes, "I look down at the ring tonight, over the twenty-eight years it has worn very thin. It is almost impossible to read the inscription but I do hear the echo of the words."
Another of our many treasures in this genre are the Martin/Lyon papers, which include the Daughters of Bilitis files, correspondence about The Ladder and about the 1972 book Lesbian/Woman -- the first book that had a positive message for lesbians. Hundreds of readers wrote to Del and Phyllis to thank them and tell their own stories. There are also, besides letters of profound gratitude, letters of vitriolic hatred from bigots. Reading these letters, mostly in handwriting, gives them an immediacy and impact that is totally absorbing and an unforgettable part of our past.
We also were donated the Feminist Economic Network papers by Joanne Parrent. The dream was to link feminists together, feminist businesses and to generate economic support for the movement.
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