The GLBT Historical Society (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society) (formerly Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California; San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California. The society also sponsors the GLBT Historical Society Museum, a stand-alone museum that has attracted international attention. The Swedish Exhibition Agency has cited the institution as one of just "three established museums dedicated to LGBTQ history in the world."
Referred to as San Francisco's "queer Smithsonian," the GLBT Historical Society is one of approximately 30 LGBT archives in the United States—and is among the handful of such organizations to benefit from a paid staff and to function as a full-fledged center for exhibitions, programming, research, and production of oral histories. It is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) educational association and is registered with the State of California as a nonprofit corporation.
The archives, reading room and administrative offices of the GLBT Historical Society are located at 989 Market St., Lower Level, in San Francisco's Mid-Market district. The GLBT Historical Society Museum, which serves as a separate center for exhibitions and programs, is located at 4127 18th St. in the city's Castro neighborhood.
The roots of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society extend to the early 1980s, when Willie Walker and Greg Pennington met and discovered that they shared an interest in gay and lesbian history. They joined forces to pool their personal collections of gay and lesbian periodicals, dubbing the ad hoc initiative the San Francisco Gay Periodical Archive.
At the same time, Walker was involved in a private study group, the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project; among its members were a number of individuals who would go on to make major cultural contributions, including historians Allan Bérubé and Estelle Freedman, independent scholar Jeffrey Escoffier, author and community organizer Amber Hollibaugh, and anthropologist and queer theorist Gayle Rubin.
Each member of the Lesbian and Gay History Project was asked to develop a major project for presentation to the group; as his contribution, Walker produced a proposal for a historical society to preserve the records of Bay Area gay and lesbian history and to make this history available to the community. Walker presented the concept at the History Project meeting on Sept. 5, 1984, and with encouragement from the project, Walker, Pennington, project member Eric Garber and several others held five working meetings before deciding that the plan would require a much larger and more diverse organizing group.
According to the GLBT Historical Society newsletter, "With this in mind, Walker sent a letter to 160 organizations and 100 individuals inviting them to what turned out to be the pivotal meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on March 16, 1985. There were 63 people at the library that Saturday afternoon. 'We made the decision that everyone at the meeting was a member,' Pennington remembers. 'And we chose the name, the San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. On May 18, we held a public membership meeting to adopt the bylaws and elect the first board of directors.'”
Over the course of its history, the Historical Society has renamed itself twice to better reflect the scope of its holdings and the range of identities and practices represented in its collections and programs. From San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society (1985), to the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California in 1990, thus clarifying the geographical reach of its primary collections; followed by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society in 1999, in response to concerns raised by bisexual and transgender community members and their allies, to more clearly state the inclusive mission the society had pursued since it was founded. In everyday usage, the institution generally employs a short form of its name: the GLBT Historical Society.
The archival collections of the Historical Society initially were housed in the living room of Walker's apartment at 3823 17th St. in San Francisco. In 1990, the society moved into its own space, in the basement of the Redstone Building on 16th Street near South Van Ness—a building which also housed the gay and lesbian theater company Theater Rhinoceros. The collections grew constantly, and by 1995 the Historical Society moved into a 3,700-square-foot (340 m2) space on the fourth floor of 973 Market St.
The society moved again in 2003 to a location on the third floor of a building at 657 Mission St. that also housed other cultural institutions: the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco Camerawork and the Catharine Clark Gallery. The 6,600-square-foot (610 m2) space included two dedicated exhibition galleries, a reading room, a large reserve for the archival collections, and several offices for staff and volunteers. The society regularly used one of the galleries for presentation of history talks and panel discussions, many of which were videotaped for posting on the Web. In November 2010, in anticipation of the opening of its new GLBT History Museum, the society closed its galleries and program space at 657 Mission St., while maintaining its archives, reading room and administrative offices at that location.
At the end of May 2016, the GLBT Historical Society closed its archives at 657 Mission St. in preparation for a move to an expanded space with improved facilities for researchers and staff at 989 Market St. in San Francisco. The archives reopened at the end of June 2016 at the new location, which offers 6,500 square feet devoted to archival and office space.
The Historical Society has had six executive directors during the course of its history. The organization was run directly by the Board of Directors from 1985 to 1998. In 1998, the board hired the first paid executive director, Susan Stryker, Ph.D. Stryker was succeeded in 2003 by an acting interim executive director, Daniel Bao, who served until the board hired Terence Kissack, Ph.D., in 2004. Kissack served until the end of 2006. Paul Boneberg took over the post at the beginning of January 2007, serving until May 2015. An acting executive director, Daryl Carr, then headed the society on an interim basis. The institution's board of directors appointed Terry Beswick as the new permanent executive director starting February 2, 2016; Beswick's experience includes nonprofit leadership, fundraising, government affairs and activism.
From November 2008 through October 2009, the GLBT Historical Society sponsored a pop-up museum in the Castro District at the corner of 18th and Castro streets; the space featured an exhibition, "Passionate Struggle: Dynamics of San Francisco's GLBT History", that traced more than a century of the city's LGBT history using documents and artifacts from the society's collections. The exhibition was curated by Don Romesburg, assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Sonoma State University, and Amy Sueyoshi, associate professor of race and resistance studies and sexuality studies at San Francisco State University, with assistance from a curatorial committee of academics and independent scholars.
Among the objects displayed were a preliminary study for the MaestraPeace mural on the façade of the San Francisco Women's Building, the sewing machine used by designer Gilbert Baker to create the first rainbow flag, and the suit worn by openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk when he was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978. Approximately 25,000 people from throughout the United States and around the world visited the exhibition during its 11-month run.
The GLBT Historical Society is home to one of the largest LGBT historical archives in the United States, with more than 500 manuscript collections and nearly 200 non-manuscript collections; 70 linear feet of ephemera; approximately 4,000 periodical titles; approximately 80,000 photographs; approximately 3,000 imprinted T-shirts; approximately 5,000 posters; nearly 500 oral histories; approximately 1,000 hours of recorded sound; and approximately 1,000 hours of film and video. The archives also has extensive holdings of historic textiles, works of fine and graphic arts, and artifacts.
Among the noteworthy manuscript collections are more than 200 boxes of material donated by early lesbian activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. Lyon and Martin were cofounders of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the United States, and their papers at the society include the complete surviving office records of the organization. The society's holdings also include a substantial group of administrative records from the Mattachine Society, the first enduring homosexual rights organization in the United States. The records form part of the papers of Donald S. Lucas, who served as secretary of the Mattachine Society during much of its history. In addition, the society's archives house the records of José Sarria, who as a candidate in the race for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961 was the first openly gay person known to have run for elected office anywhere in the world.
The society likewise holds numerous manuscript collections documenting the history of transgender individuals and movements in Northern California, including the complete papers of Lou Sullivan, founder of the pioneering female-to-male transsexual organization FTM International. Holdings focused on the history of bisexuality include the typescript and research files for "Bisexuality and Androgyny: An Analysis," the 1975 master's thesis in psychology by Maggi Rubenstein, cofounder of San Francisco Sex Information and the San Francisco Bisexual Center.
The GLBT Historical Society's artifacts collection includes the personal effects of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Milk's executors preserved a significant selection of his belongings after he was assassinated in 1978; they ultimately were inherited by the mother of Milk's former partner, Scott Smith, who donated them to the GLBT Historical Society. The collection includes everyday objects such the battered, gold-painted kitchen table from Milk's apartment and several antique cameras that had been displayed at Castro Camera, his shop in San Francisco's Castro District. The collection also includes the suit, shirt, belt and shoes Milk was wearing when he was shot to death by assassin Dan White.
Searchable catalogs of the society's manuscript collections, periodicals holdings and oral histories are available on the institution's website, and complete finding aids for the ephemera collections and many of the manuscript collections are available through the Online Archive of California (a project of the California Digital Library).
From June 1985 through November 2007, the GLBT Historical Society published 50 issues of a print newsletter. Produced at various points in its run as a bimonthly, a quarterly and an irregularly issued periodical, the publication appeared under several titles: San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society Newsletter, Newsletter of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California, Our Stories and It's About Time. In February 2008, the print newsletter was succeeded by an ongoing electronic newsletter, History Happens, published monthly until 2014, then bimonthly, before returning to a monthly schedule in late 2015. Links to the current issue and several years of back issues are available on the GLBT Historical Society website. In addition, the society published three issues of a twice-yearly print journal, Fabulas, which appeared in 2008–2009.
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