ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives is the oldest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBT materials in the world. Since 2010 ONE Archives has been a part of the University of Southern California Libraries.[1] ONE Archives collections contain over two million items. ONE Archives also operates a small gallery and museum space devoted to LGBT art and history in West Hollywood, California. Use of the collection is free during regular business hours.
ONE Archives originated from ONE, Inc., which began publishing the earliest national homosexual publication in 1952. In 1956, ONE Inc. created the ONE Institute, an academic institute for the study of homosexuality, utilizing the term “Homophile Studies.” In 1994, ONE, Inc. and the International Gay and Lesbian Archives run by Jim Kepner merged. Since 1994 the organization has operated solely as a LGBT archive.
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ONE Archives' mission statement reads as follows: “ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives Inc. promotes the collection, preservation, documentation and understanding of LGBTQA history and culture by providing support for ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries and by presenting events, exhibitions and other activities."[2]
The scope of the collections of ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives are international, with a special focus on LGBT history in the United States and Los Angeles.
ONE’s archival collections document the vast, collective history of the LGBT community through the records and personal papers of activists and ordinary citizens, as well as the records of its political, social, educational and cultural organizations. The collections include manuscripts, photographs, memorabilia, graphics, ephemera, and other historically significant materials. Many of the documents, diaries, organizational records and other archival material are available for use by researchers and students. Included are the records of ONE Magazine, the AIDS History Project, Morris Kight, Jim Kepner, James Fugaté (a.k.a. James Barr), Hal Call, Dorr Legg, Jeanne Cordova, Reed Erickson, Ivy Bottini, Dignity USA, Mattachine Society, Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and hundreds of other collections.
ONE’s collection of subject files comprises nearly 50,000 distinct files containing newspaper clippings, journal and magazine articles, brochures, and other printed materials relating to all aspects of the LGBT experience.
ONE’s collection of audiovisual materials includes over 1,500 films, over 3,000 videos (including 10 years of videotaped lectures from ONE, Inc.'s Lecture Series), and over 1,000 audiotapes. The International Gay and Lesbian Archives interviews with notable individuals from the LGBT community includes interviews with many pioneers activists from Los Angeles and around the country.
ONE’s main library comprises nearly 30,000 volumes, including 3,000 in the Special Collections. The collection includes many rare and unusual titles, some of which may be the only copies in existence. ONE Archives continues to acquire reference, non-fiction and fiction titles, and new books are added frequently.
ONE’s collection of periodicals comprises nearly 7,000 different titles, from rare issues of the earliest American queer publications, such as the lesbian newsletter Vice Versa (magazine) from the 1940s, and complete runs of ONE Magazine and the Mattachine Review from the early 1950s, to the most recent GLBT titles. The collection also includes over 500 foreign titles, in more than 25 different languages, from Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Italy, and other nations. The collection includes some of the earliest gay European publications, such as Arcadie (magazine) and Der Kreis (magazine), as well as significant runs of Gai Pied, SEK (magazine), Homologie (magazine), Gay Krant, Revolt (magazine), and Vennen.
ONE's extensive collection of HIV/AIDS related materials date back to the very beginning of the epidemic and were gathered from sources worldwide. At present the AIDS History Project has over 200,000 items.
ONE's Lesbian Legacy Collection locates, gathers, organizes, preserves and makes accessible materials in any medium, from any time, place and location, that are specific to or related to lesbian history. The LLC has a special commitment to gather lesbians of color materials and images of lesbian history, and to place our holdings and to help other collections place their holdings on the Internet as a way of promoting accessibility.
In addition to incorporating materials reflecting gay sensibility in film, theater, dance, performance art and music, the Performing Arts Collection is currently integrating the papers and memorabilia of a variety of individuals. These include the files of critic and activist Ken Dickmann, as well as material on James Carroll Pickett, Michael Kearns and composer Tom Wilson Weinberg.
Everything Gay / Lesbian / Bisexual / Transgender and Jewish - founded by the late Johnny Abush in Toronto Canada in 1991 and brought to Los Angeles in 2001.
ONE Archives' art collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, works on paper, and photographs, the majority of which date from the 1940s to the present. The collection includes numerous works by unknown individuals, as well as works by artists such as Steven F. Arnold, Don Bachardy, Claire Falkenstein, Anthony Friedkin, Rudi Gernreich, Gronk, Robert Legorreta (Cyclona), Sister Corita Kent, Kate Millett, Tomata du Plenty, Herb Ritts, and Arthur Tress.
ONE, Inc. was founded in 1952 by Dorr Legg and Don Slater, in part to produce the nation’s first national homosexual periodical, ONE magazine. In 1953, ONE Inc. became the first gay organization to open a public office.
In 1956, ONE Inc. created the ONE Institute, an academic institute for the study of homosexuality under the then guise of “Homophile Studies.”
In 1957, marking the first time the United States Supreme Court explicitly ruled on homosexuality, ONE Inc. fought to distribute its magazine by mail, and prevailed. The ruling in the case, One, Inc. v. Olesen, not only allowed ONE to distribute its magazine but paved the way for other controversial publications to be sent through the U.S. mail. The case also ensured that emerging gay issues would be covered in the national media.
Also during the 1950s ONE Inc. became an ad hoc community center and began a library. Jim Kepner was involved in adding material to this library.
As the burgeoning Gay Liberation movement took off and became more closely intertwined with the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, ONE Inc., Jim Kepner and a growing group of activists were poised to collect original materials from that critical time period. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, ONE obtained crucial documents chronicling the establishment of the “gay community” and its established and increasingly diverse groups and organizations.
Since the 1980s, the archival collections have grown substantially as gay issues and gay culture became more integrated into the mainstream culture of the United States.
The institutional history of ONE reveals a set of complex, overlapping and groundbreaking activities that provided a wide variety of pioneering services to LGBT Americans:
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