Gender Studies

This collection documents the activist and professional activities of Donald S. Lucas; there also are a limited number ofdocuments of a personal nature. The period covered ranges from 1941 to 1998. The vast majority of the collection, however, dates from 1953 to 1969. The strength of the collection lies in the administrative and work files of the Mattachine Society, the Mattachine Review, Pan-Graphic Press, and the Central City Target Area of the San Francisco EOC. The collection includes: correspondence, meeting minutes, constitutions and by-laws, newsletters, manuscripts, financial documents, reports, statistics, legal decisions, surveys, counseling records, funding proposals, and subject files. The Lucas collection contains an abundance of material relating to the early homosexual civil rights movement (the homophile movement) and the San Francisco manifestation of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Within the Mattachine Society records, researchers may want to pay attention to the complete series of Board and Coordinating Council meeting minutes, the files related to annual conventions, and the remaining correspondence files. Also of interest are the files relating to the main activity of the Mattachine Society, "education"; these include: publication records, counseling/ social service records, and research data and findings. Because Lucas served on the boards of both CRH and SIR, researchers will find important records pertaining to those organizations. The antipoverty program files document the process by which Central City came to be designated an official Target Area and the administration of that Target Area, especially in regards to the establishment of the Multi-Service Center and its related activities.

The National Commission on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was an independent body created in 1989 by federal statute (Public Law 100-607). The mission of the National Commission was to advise Congress and the President on the development of "a consistent national policy" concerning the HIV epidemic. The statute created the Commission for a period of up to four years, which expired on September 3, 1993.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are famous for founding, in 1955, the most important early organization for lesbians, the Daughters of Bilitis. Their political influence and activism shaped many other organizations and related movements. Part 2 of this collection documents many decades of their work for, and leadership of, the LGBT movement and the women's rights movement in both in San Francisco and nationally. Included are minutes, correspondence, and notes related to their work with the ACLU, the San Francisco Coalition for Human Rights, the Commission on Crime Control and Violence Protection, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. These organizations and municipal commissions set the pace not only for California but for the nation on the issues police violence against gay youth, discrimination against LGBT persons in employment, enlightened responses to the victims of the AIDS crisis, and the backlash against affirmative action. Lyon and Martin were also central to the struggle that pushed the National Organization for Women to an understanding of the centrality of the freedom to sexual expression. Of particular interest to students of the LGBT and women's rights movements will be the range of materials that Lyon and Martin collected while researching and promoting their important book, Battered Wives.

As outspoken lesbian organizers for civil rights, civil liberties, and human dignity whose personal relationship fueled decades of political activism, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin created and helped shape the modern gay and feminist movements. They are stellar examples of engaged citizens: women of extraordinary courage, persistence, intelligence, humor, and decency, who refused to be silenced by fear. Not only were they founders in 1955 of the first lesbian rights organization in U.S. history, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), but they also were instrumental in the formation and growth of other related social movements, including the contemporary women's rights movement.

This collection of periodicals focuses on newsletters issued by gay and lesbian political and social activist organizations throughout the country and on periodicals devoted to gay and lesbian political and social activist agendas-he "public" face of gay and lesbian activism. In addition, this collection includes serial literature on its "private" face, exploring the challenges and complexities of building gay and lesbian communities inside and outside of a "straight" world, the need for psychological reinforcement through support groups in an effort combat an often hostile environment, and the yearning for spiritual confirmation of one's identity and life choices. Carefully selected for rarity from the thousands of titles in the GLBT Historical Society archives, the collection features more than 200 newsletter and periodical titles totaling nearly 8,000 issues. This product is strong in newsletters from organizations that began their work during the formative years of the gay and lesbian movement. Most of these organizations are now defunct and their newsletters are the only record of their history and contribution to the movement.