WeHo TV, "Mazer Tour", Angela Brinskele, 2013/01/23
Brinskele: We were founded originally in Oakland in 1981 but eventually the archive was moved down here by June Mazer and her partner Bunny MacCulloch [music plays] and after June Mazer died of cancer, the archive which was then called The West Coast Lesbian Collections [caption: Angela Brinskele, Director of Communications, Mazer Lesbian Archives] was then changed to June Mazer Lesbian Archives. And Bunny MacCulloch, June’s partner, got this space in the Werle Building in West Hollywood and we’ve been here ever since 1988.
Thousands and thousands of different collections and different artifacts are in these archives. It’s the–really–some of the everyday things that were just really important in a woman’s life.
We have baseball uniforms–baseball and softball uniforms of women from as far back as 1946. So we actually have some of those uniforms from what you would know as like A League of Their Own.
Thousands of periodicals, which is one of our most organized things because we have somebody who has come for decades and kept them organized. So they’re all in order and they’re all in the right place and researchers come here and often will be looking through periodicals. But we also have personal collections, so you’ll see boxes with a woman’s name on them.
We have a really eclectic collection because it was grassroots and when we first opened they collected anything a lesbian ever touched.
When young women come here especially, they see some of the history and they hear things like the first women’s Olympic marathon was in LA in 1984 and why? Because they said we couldn’t run marathons; we weren’t capable of it before 1984. And so this history is here [caption: Angela Brinskele, Director of Communications, Mazer Lesbian Archives] for exactly that reason. So people don’t have to reinvent the wheel and they can go from that progress forward.
[END OF VIDEO]
Quick tour of the Mazer Archives 2013.
The June Mazer Lesbian Archives of Los Angeles and Southern California houses almost a century of lesbian and feminist artwork, manuscripts, books, records, newspapers, magazines, photographs, games, organizational papers, tapes, letters, scrapbooks, clothing, and flyers.
Interviewee: Angela Brinskele
Interviewer: None
Transcriber: Renusha I.
Formatter: Serena R.
Recording Date: January 2013
Release Date: January 21, 2013
Location: June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood, California
Interview Length: 00:02:10