Lesbian Herstory Archives

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Lesbian Herstory Archives

484 14th St museum jeh.jpg
Archive type Lesbian archive
place Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York
Visitor address 484 14th St.
founding 1974
Website https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/

The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) is a New York City- based archive , community center, and museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history and is located in Park Slope, Brooklyn . The archive contains the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians.

The archive was founded in 1974 by lesbian members of the Gay Academic Union who had organized a group to discuss sexism within that organization. Co-founders Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallo, Pamela Oline, and Julia Penelope Stanley wanted to ensure that the stories of the lesbian community are protected for future generations. Until the 1990s, the archive was housed in Nestle's apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. The collection eventually grew beyond the space and was relocated to a sandstone building the group acquired in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. The archive holds all sorts of historical artifacts related to lesbian and lesbian organizations and has now grown to include around 11,000 books and 1,300 magazine titles and an unknown number of photographs.

story

Foundation and early years

After the Stonewall Riots of 1969, many groups were formed devoted to the liberation of homosexuals. Joan Nestle attributes the founding of the Lesbian Herstory Archive to the Stonewall riots "and the courage that found its voice in the streets". The Gay Academic Union was founded in 1973 by gay and lesbian academics interested in contributing to the movement. Lesbian members of the union set up an awareness-raising group to discuss sexism within the GAU . The women were concerned about how easily lesbian history was lost and did not want their story to be told by patriarchal historians. Joan Nestle later responded to the impetus for the archive and wrote: “The roots of the archive lie in the silent voices, the destroyed love letters, the changed pronouns, the carefully edited diaries, the pictures never taken, the glossed over distortions that patriarchy created let through ”. The motto of the Lesbian Herstory Archives is: “In memory of the voices we have lost”.

The already since 1970 demonstrable term Herstory makes this criticism of the patriarchal history, and replaced as part of a word game which in English history masculine contained (= history) possessive pronoun his by the female possessive ago and thus signals the right to its own history.

The original purpose of the organization was that the collection should never be bartered or sold, that it should be placed in a lesbian-occupied room in the lesbian community, and that all women should have access to it.

The founding members of the Lesbian Herstory Archive had backgrounds in lesbian feminism and political lesbianism and included Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallo, Pamela Oline, and Julia Penelope Stanley. Mabel Hampton, a lesbian activist who had worked as a housekeeper for the Nestlé family when Nestlé was growing up, was also an early contributor. The founders began collecting and preserving documents and artifacts related to lesbian history. They were interested in the social history of the community and collected all kinds of materials on lesbian history, regardless of whether the lesbian was famous or part of a marginalized group. Edel later jokingly said that if an object was touched by a lesbian, they would collect it. The archive debuted in 1974 and was housed in the pantry of an apartment on Nestle's Upper West Side. The location of the original archive was recognized by the Manhattan District as a Women's Rights Historic Site in 2008.

The LHA began producing a newsletter, the Lesbian Herstory Archives News, in June 1975 and opened its archives to the community in 1976. In 1979, the LHA became one of the first queer nonprofits in New York when it was formed as the Lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation.

Moved to Park Slope

The archive eventually took over a large part of Nestlé's apartment, and it was necessary to find a new home for the materials. After years of fundraising that began in 1985, the LHA acquired a four-story, sandstone building at 484 14th Street in Park Slope in 1990. The archive was moved to its new home in 1992, and an official opening took place in June 1993. The December 1996 issue of the 16th issue of the Lesbian Herstory Archives Newsletter announced that the mortgage on the building had been paid off. Today the inventory includes around 11,000 books and 1,300 magazine titles as well as an unknown number of photographs.

Organization and exhibitions

Women marching in the 2007 New York City LGBT Pride March hold a banner for the Lesbian Herstory Archives that is signed, "In Memory of the Voices We Lost."

The Lesbian Herstory Archives are run by a coordinating committee that determines which items will be included in the archives. The archive is managed exclusively by volunteers and interns. The LHA hosts events on its premises, including courses, speakers, marathon poetry readings, and an annual Valentine's Day event. LHA archivists march regularly on the New York City Dyke March and until 2014 on the LGBT Pride March.

In the early years of the Lesbian Herstory Archive, samples of material were brought from the archives to lecture events. To preserve them, a traveling slide show was developed.

collection

The Lesbian Herstory Archives started with personal materials donated by the founders. It contains everything that founder Joan Nestle wrote. The founders also called for material donations and gradually expanded their collection over the years. Today the collection includes all kinds of historical artifacts, including papers, diaries, magazines, photos, tapes, posters, buttons, magazines, zines, t-shirts and videos. Copies of films are available for viewing in the archive and the originals are stored outside the archive in an air-conditioned storage facility.

In the course of its history, the LHA has accepted material donations for the archive. Mabel Hampton donated her extensive lesbian pulp fiction collection to the archive in 1976 . Records from the New York Historical Society for Lesbians and Gays and the Lesbian History Project were donated to the archive after these organizations were disbanded. The archive houses the “Red Dot” collection, which consists of the library of the New York section of the “ Daughters of Bilitis ”, the first national lesbian organization in the United States. The writer and activist Audre Lorde donated some of her manuscripts and personal papers to the archive. The Marge MacDonald Special Collection consists of the books, papers, and magazines owned by Marge MacDonald, who left the LHA materials in her will about the objection of her family that she wanted to destroy. The L-Word production donated their press materials in 2010.

The LHA website, which opened in 1997, has grown into a digital collection with a virtual tour of the archives. The digital collection is hosted by the Pratt Institute's School of Information. The LHA is in the process of digitizing its audio and newsprint collections as well as the oral video stories of the Daughters of Bilitis . The LHA maintains over 1500 specialist files on various topics, which it has microfilmed on 175 rolls with the help of primary source microfilm .

literature

  • Noble, Deb. "The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Statement of Cultural Self-Determination."
  • Hodges, Beth. “An interview with Joan [Nestle] and Deb [Edel] of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. (Part 1). “ Sinister Wisdom . 11 (Fall 1979): 3-13
  • Hodges, Beth. "Preserving Our Words and Pictures. Part Two of Interview with Joan Nestle and Deb Edel. " Sinister Wisdom . 13 (Summer 1980): 101-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vanessa: The Lesbian Herstory Archives: A Constant Affirmation That You Exist . In: Autostraddle , June 19, 2012. 
  2. ↑ Winnie McCroy: Lesbian Herstory Archives turns 35 . In: Edge , February 5, 2009. 
  3. ↑ LaFrank, Kathleen (ed.) (January 1999). National Historic Landmark Nomination: Stonewall , US Department of the Interior: National Park Service.
  4. ↑ a b A Brief History . Lesbian Herstory Archives. Retrieved January 13, 2013.
  5. ↑ a b c Lesbian Herstory Archives . In the life . PBS. February 26, 2007. Accessed January 13, 2013.
  6. ↑ a b Polly Thistlethwaite: Lesbian Herstory Archives In: Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1. New York: Garland. pp. 459-460. ISBN 978-0-8153-1920-7
  7. ^ A b Joan Nestle: The Will to Remember: The Lesbian Herstory Archives of New York In: Feminist Review (34): 86-94, 1990
  8. ↑ academicworks.cuny.edu: "Building" A Home of Our Own: "The Construction of the Lesbian Herstory" by Polly Thistlethwaite , accessed November 23, 2020
  9. ^ Women's Rights, Historic Sites: A Manhattan Map of Milestones . Government of New York City . Retrieved January 10, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b Susan Porter Benson; Stephen Brier; Roy Rosenzweig: Presenting the past: essays on history and the public (=  Critical perspectives on the past ). Temple University Press, Philadelphia 2010, ISBN 978-0-87722-413-6 (English).
  11. ↑ Newsletters: The 90's . Lesbian Herstory Archives. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
  12. ^ A b Shawn (ta) D. Smith: Videos in the Kitchen: The Lesbian Herstory Archives as a Moving-Herstorical-Image . In: Signs . Summer 2010.
  13. ↑ Digital Collections . Lesbian Herstory Archives. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  14. ↑ Alisa Klinger: Resources for Lesbian Ethnographic Research in the Lavender Archives In: Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader. , 2005, Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. pp. 75-79. ISBN 978-0-470-77676-6 .
  15. ^ Joan Nestle: Nestle: Blog on History; The Kiss, 1950s-1990s . OutHistory.
  16. ↑ Not Just Passing Through . 1994. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  17. ^ Susan Freeman, "Review of the Lesbian Herstory Archives." Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000. 9 (3), September 2005
  18. ^ Subject Files . Lesbian Herstory Archives. Retrieved January 15, 2013.


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