50 years of the Lesbian Herstory Archives

The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in New York are celebrating 50 years since their foundation in 1974. The institution is one of the oldest LGBTQIA+ archives in the country and even in the world. But they are more than an archive about the Lesbian community. They have become a global reference in the documentation of Lesbian women lives and experiences; a museum; and a center of activism and intersectional solidarity and sisterhood that gather women of different ages and origins but with the same objective: to recover and to be inspired by the lives of the women that love and desire other women.

We can consider LHA as the first LGBTQIA+ archives with the explicit aim of documenting the reality of the community, especially from the past, but not exclusively. The initiative arises from the evidence of the passivity, if not negligence, of institutional archives when it comes to document and to preserve the memory of Lesbian women. It is the first time that an archive dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community has been founded without being linked to the activity of any association or the publication of a magazine or newsletter. LHA begins by hosting the materials personally collected by its founders and initially settles in the private homes of two of them. According to the LHA's website, at one meeting in 1974, Julia Stanley and Joan Nestle, who had come out before the Gay Liberation Movement, talked about the precariousness of Lesbian culture and how so much of our past culture was seen only through patriarchal eyes. Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallaro and Pamela Oline, with histories ranging from Lesbian-Feminism to political Lesbianism, joined in and, thus, a new concept was brn-a grassroots Lesbian archives.

The LHA began in Joan Nestle's Upper West Side Manhattan apartment on 92nd St and now they are located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. They count with a long and strong tradition in the past, but is also a very active and living entity in the present. As an example of this activity we can follow the events held to commemorate its 50th anniversary on its revamped website, as the Lez Craft Nights, but also their archival principles, and a section on accessible digital collections.

To learn more, we invite you to visit their website, but also the webinar held in 2023 by the Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The webinar, leaded by QAMRA's Ammel Sharon, is a warm, intergenerational online conversation with co-founder Joan Nestle, and includes a virtual tour with Saskia Scheffer and Olivia Newsome, and an open discussion and reflections by Jaya Sharma, Flavia Rando and Amy Beth, among others.

 

Thank you to all the women that have engaged during the last 50 years in this example of archival activism for their compromise, and long life to the LHA.