Gay rights movement

In 1982, community historians in San Francisco established permanent archives documenting the Bay Area's gay and lesbian history. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society's collection now encompasses more than 3,000 issues of periodicals, newspapers, newsletters, and journals that trace the evolution of LGBT identities, pride, and politics from 1947 to 2004. Although materials from Northern California make up much of the collection, it also contains many LGBT publications from other US cities, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. The archive includes rare editions of some of the earliest publications pertaining to LGBT life. The documents included here focus on political and social activism of the early years of gay and lesbian journalism. The collection contains issues of Vice Versa, the first lesbian periodical in the United States, and newsletters and journals of the country's first lesbian rights group, the Daughters of Bilitis, and its first gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society. Scholars interested in the international gay rights movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s will find publications from France, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The archive contains materials from the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including many New York City periodicals; the newsletters of Democratic, Republican, and libertarian gay and lesbian groups; and a near-complete run of newsletters from the Alexander Hamilton Post of the American Legion that demonstrate the work of gay and lesbian veterans to end discrimination in the military.