Library Guides: LGBTQIA+ Archival Resources: Personal &amp; Community Histories

Archival Collections

Jody Aliesan Papers, 1943-2012 Accession 2272. Jody Aliesan was an activist in the Seattle feminist movement and participated in numerous social justice and civil rights projects throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. In 1978, she was a member of the steering committee for the Citizens to Retain Fair Employment, an organization formed to defeat Initiative 13 which would have allowed discrimination in Seattle on the basis of sexual orientation.
Ruth Baetz papers, 1976-1999 Collection includes professional ephemera of her work related to Baetz's book Lesbian Crossroads. Also included is personal correspondence.
Stephen R. Blair Papers, 1919-1996 Accession 5172-001. Stephen Blair, discharged from the military in 1936 on suspicion of homosexuality, had a decade-spanning theater career, performing in the USO, the Seattle Men's Chorus, and Alice B. Theatre ensemble. He and his partner Frank McCormick were also involved with the National Union of Marine Cooks and Sewards (NUMCS), known for its early integration of African American and gay members.
Tamara Turner papers, 1931-2014 Materials on Tamara Turner's career as a librarian and gay rights activist.
Thomas William Monnahan Papers Accession 5231-001. Thomas Monnahan served as an assistant to a member of the Seattle City Council. His papers include a wedding invitation and program for a ceremony at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, celebrating the union of Monnahan and his partner, James Arthur Black.

Oral Histories

Karin Dalesky interview, 2019 Karin Dalesky talks about her 23-plus years of experience at UW Tacoma as both a student and staff member. She also discusses her queer identity and how it has shaped her experience.
Margaret Anderson Papers, 1968-2017 Accession 3753-001. Margaret Anderson is an educator, scholar, and writer who studied Sm'algyax, a First Nations language from Hartely Bay, Canada. The collection contains conversational and linguistic writings about Sm'algyax as well as audio files and transcriptions.
Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project oral histories, 1995-2015
Recorded interviews (on cassette tape and flash drive), with corresponding transcripts, release forms, and photographs, conducted between the mid-1990s and 2005 of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual narrators. The interviews focus on the conditions the narrators experienced before the activist period, the early homophile movement in Seattle, the founding or early days of activist and service organizations, and ongoing activism since those times. They span political, religious, and social aspects of GLBT community building. Also includes, newsletters and administrative documents.

Queer Seattleite and famous female impersonator Francis Hill presenting as male, c.1930, Francis Hill Photographs Albums

Photograph Collections

Francis Hill Photograph Albums, 1940s-1980s PH Collection 1028. Hill (1927-2001) was born in Spokane, Washington, where he worked making railroad tracks until his mid twenties, when he relocated to Seattle in the early 1950s. He became one of the first transvestites to attend parties at the Double Header in Pioneer Square, the oldest gay bar in Seattle. Two albums of photographs of Seattle transvestite Francis Hill, showing Hill as a child and as a soldier, but largely in his later female persona, Francine.
Stephen Blair Photograph Collection, 1916-1995 PH Collection 2004-083. Contains images of Stephen Blair's Hollywood career, service in the Merchant Marines, union activities, interest in alternative health, and involvement in the 1992 Alice B. Theatre production, "Hidden History."

Archived Websites

Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project The Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project (NWGLHMP, or The History Project), founded in 1994, is an organization which researches, interprets and communicates the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the Pacific Northwest for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment.

Video Collections

Terry Amidei audio and moving images, 1973-1995 Film, videotape, and audio elements for films created by Terry Amidei. Some of the productions are "The Sciences and Art," "Sometimes the Metro Bus Doesn't Stop for Me," (a film about paraplegics) and "AIDS and Death." Includes documentation of Northwest events such as the Gay Pride March and Rally, 1990.

Books and Dissertations

An evening at the Garden of Allah : a gay cabaret in Seattle by Don Paulson, 1996 An Evening at the Garden of Allah tells the story of the community of gays and lesbians that blossomed around the cabaret during an age before the Stonewall rebellion in New York and other uprisings made gay consciousness a public issue.
The Gay picture book by Dennis Sanders, 1978
Gay Seatte: stories of exile and belonging by Gary Atkins, 2013 Traces the evolution of Seattle's gay community from 1893, when the state first passed legislation making homosexuality a crime. Gary Atkins shows through a century of stories how gays and lesbians have sought to achieve a sense of belonging in Seattle.
Lesbian mothers: creating our families by Jan Jiles, 1999
Marie Equi: radical politics and outlaw passions by Michael Helquist, 2015 Biography about Marie Equi, a early American medical doctor, member of the radical labor movement, and lesbian.

Gay Seattle by Gary L. Atkins Winner of a 2004 Washington State Book Award Winner of a 2004 Alpha Sigma Nu (ASN) Jesuit Book Award In 1893, the Washington State legislature quietly began passing a set of laws that essentially made homosexuality, and eventually even the discussion of homosexuality, a crime. A century later Mike Lowry became the first governor of the state to address the annual lesbian and gay pride rally in Seattle. Gay Seattle traces the evolution of Seattle's gay community in those 100 turbulent years, telling through a century of stories how gays and lesbians have sought to achieve a sense of belonging in Seattle. Gary Atkins recounts the demonization of gays by social crusaders around the turn of the century, the earliest prosecutions for sodomy, the official harassment and discrimination through most of the twentieth century, and the medical discrimination and commitment to mental hospitals that continued into the 1970s as homosexuality was diagnosed as a disease that could be "cured." Places of refuge from this imposed social exile were created in underground theater and dance clubs: the Gold Rush-era burlesque shows, modern drag theater, and in mid-century the emergence of openly gay bars, from the Casino to Shelley's Leg. Many of these were subjected to steady exploitation by corrupt police - until bar owner MacIver Wells and two Seattle Times reporters exposed the racket. The increasingly public presence of gays in Seattle was accompanied by the gradual coalescence of social services and self-help organizations such as the Dorian Society, gay businesses and advocacy groups including the Greater Seattle Business Association, and the stormy relationship between the Vatican, Seattle's Catholic hierarchy, and gay worshippers. Atkins' narrative reveals the complex and often frustrating process of claiming a civic life, showing how gays and lesbians have engaged in a multilayered struggle for social acceptance against the forces of state and city politics, the police, the media, and public opinion. The emergence of mainstream political activism in the 1970s, and ultimately the election of Cal Anderson and other openly gay officials to the state legislature and city council, were momentous events, yet shadowed by the devastating rise of AIDS and its effect on the homosexual community as a whole. These stories of exile and belonging draw on numerous original interviews as well as case studies of individuals and organizations that played important roles in the history of Seattle's gay and lesbian community. Collectively, they are a powerful testament to the endurance and fortitude of this minority community, revealing the ways a previously hidden sexual minority "comes out" as a people and establishes a public presence in the face of challenges from within and without.
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Call Number: Special Collections Pacific NW HQ76.3.U52 S433 2013
ISBN: 9780295992822
Publication Date: 2013-03-01