To collect our own histories: community archiving in the Lesbian and Gay History Movement

To Collect Our Own Histories studies how a collective archival impulse emerged during the Lesbian and Gay History Movement and led to a wave of community archives being founded across North America from 1973 to 1985. The work of the Gay Liberation Movement was inextricably linked to historical work with community members seeking historical legitimacy and visibility while actively working to share and preserve the history that they were making and uncovering. To delve into this historical moment and understand the power of a LGBTQ community archives in both their local and national contexts, I use the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives in Chicago, IL as a case study.

By studying one of the dozens of queer community archives founded during the Lesbian and Gay History Movement, we can better understand how and why an archival impulse emerged within individuals in a local community, how that led to the formation of historically oriented community groups, and how these local actors operated within a broader network of fellow community archivists throughout North America. Drawn from archival research in the papers of queer community archives that still operate today, To Collect Our Own Histories demonstrates how and why lesbian and gay people in Chicago founded Gerber/Hart in the late 1970s, while placing their archival activism in a national context among the founding of other queer archives. Each chapter centers a different founder of Geber/Hart to uncover how their local and professional ties as historians or librarians shaped their community archiving work in Chicago.