LGBTQ Movement

LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Movement

The LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Movement, which gained significant traction in the 1960s and 1970s, advocates for the rights and dignity of individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or other sexual minorities. The movement began with key events such as the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York, which catalyzed a national push for LGBTQ+ rights. Over the following decades, activists fought for the decriminalization of homosexuality, marriage equality, workplace protections, and gender identity recognition. With organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, ACT UP, and others, the LGBTQ+ movement has made monumental strides in securing civil rights, though ongoing struggles persist, particularly for transgender individuals and those in marginalized communities.

Act Up Oral History Project : An archive of 187 interviews with members of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York.

Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony : Collects and makes available the oral histories of people who presently or at one time identified as same-sex and same-gender attracted women.

The ArQuives Digital Exhibitions : Highlights from the world's largest independent collection of LGBTQ2+ documentary heritage. 

The Deviants Archive : Explore the 100,000+ pages of archival documents that form the backbone of The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America.

❤️Digital Transgender Archive : Provides digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings.

Dyke TV, 1993-2005 | Smith College : The half-hour weekly, nation-wide cable tv show featured a five-minute news segment covering issues relevant to lesbian lives from a lesbian perspective; and in-depth stories including politics, popular culture, health, art, sports, and music.

Gay Activist Alliance | The Vault - FBI Records 

Gay Peoples Union Collection | University of Wisconsin-Madison : The Gay Peoples Union (GPU) was the most important gay and lesbian rights organization in Milwaukee during the 1970s.

GLBT Historical Society Museum & Archives : Digital collections, exhibitions, and primary sources.

❤️"Lavender Legacies: Guide to Sources in North America," a guide from the Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists : Provides state by state listings of collections

Lawrence v. Texas | JUSTIA U.S. Supreme Court : The Supreme Court of the United States struck down sodomy laws in fourteen states, making consensual homosexual sex legal in all 50 states (2003).

Lesbian Herstory Archives : The largest collections of materials about lesbians in the world. Our photo collection, which we are now starting to digitize, holds tens of thousands of images, and reflects the growth of the Archives since 1974.

LGBT materials in the NY Public Library : Primarily photographs illustrating LGBT history in NYC.

LGBTQ Religious Archives Network: Online Exhibitions : Each exhibition includes diverse artifacts, such as photos, articles, correspondence, documents and audio or video clips, that have been found in archives. 

Mattachine Society | The Vault - FBI Records : Begun in 1950, the Mattachine Society was an early homosexual rights advocacy organization. It became the subject of an FBI internal security investigation between 1953 and 1956.

NYC Pride March 1977: Photos : Shortly after coming out, photographer Meryl Meisler attended and shot her first Pride march.

Obergefell v. Hodges | OYEZ- free law project : The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live in the United States (2015).

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives | USC Libraries : The largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world.

Out History: It's About Time : Exhibit includes some primary sources.