The Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives
In her early twenties, the soon-to-be founder of the Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives, Lisa Lotus, befriended a group of women in their forties and fifties, who would regularly discuss lesbian organizations and publications from decades ago. Records of these groups could not be found in existing institutional archives; rather, they lived in women’s basements, closets, and garages. It was the 1990s, and Lotus had recently moved north to Seattle after graduating from Evergreen State College.
That same decade, Lisa attended a workshop at the Michigan Womyn’s Festival about “how to start your own lesbian archive.” Lesbian archives are archives run by and for lesbians to document their lives and organizations. There are several such archives around the United States. In the summer heat, she joined a crowd of lesbians under a canopy to hear from a panel of volunteers involved with the June Mazer L. Archives in West Hollywood and the Ohio Lesbian Archives of Cincinnati [1].
The idea of establishing a lesbian archive in Seattle stuck with her for years. Eventually, Lisa enrolled in a graduate program at Western Washington University to study archival management. A few years later, she returned to Seattle, eager to get her vision off the ground. She began the operation out of her garage in 2005.
Inspired by the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City, Lisa envisioned a permanent home for the archive that would function as a lesbian community center. There would be a comfy reading room for research, an events space, and a cafe that would fund the archive.
A Community Effort
Establishing the archive required getting more people involved.
To let lesbians in Seattle know about the fledgling archive, Lisa recalls printing shirts promoting the PNLA and going to Pride events with a mix of her lesbian and straight friends and their children. A growing group of volunteers set up tables at local events and collected sign-ups from women who were interested in the archive. Lesbians would need to know that the archive existed and have trust in the organization to steward donated collections.
After a period of consulting with local LGBT community leaders, Lisa decided that registering the archive as a nonprofit organization would provide necessary structure. This included establishing a board of directors to steer the group and obtaining tax-exempt status to support fundraising efforts.
One of the board members was Elizabeth Joffrion, an archivist and lesbian who served as a mentor to Lisa while studying at Western Washington University. Another was Rebecca Pixler, an archivist for King County who helped the archive get into contact with women involved with past lesbian organizations through her connections as a longtime member of Seattle’s lesbian community.
Fundraising was an ongoing challenge for the PNLA. Before it could save toward acquiring a permanent space, the group needed money to acquire supplies, such as archival-quality folders and containers, to properly organize and keep safe the items lesbians were giving to the archive. One of the primary ways the PNLA raised money was through events. Lisa recalls, for example, that they hosted a panel with Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, an activist who was discharged from the National Guard in the 1990s after coming out as a lesbian.
Local organizations partnered with the PNLA to raise funds for the archive. One such group was Dyke Community Activists, a group that was founded in the late 1980s initially to advocate for Palestinians. For the PNLA benefit night, Dyke Community Activists hosted a double feature of the documentaries No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and A Knock Out, followed by a meet-and-greet with professional boxer Tricia Turton [2].
News that the PNLA was accepting donations spread through word of mouth. Community elders would call Lisa when they were ready to sort through their attic or basement. Lisa and other PNLA members would come to their homes to help go through old papers and scrapbooks and bring back to the archive any materials they decided to donate.
During the PNLA’s years of active existence, several Seattle lesbian organizations shuttered. Most notably, the Lesbian Resource Center (LRC), the oldest lesbian community center in the country, closed its doors after thirty years. Lisa and many PNLA board members had been involved with the LRC at one point or another, so the closure hit close to home. The PNLA accessioned all of the Lesbian Resource Center’s organizational records, which became the largest set of materials in the archive. The PNLA also received the records of Verbena Health, a healthcare clinic providing care for queer women and trans people that was forced to close suddenly after its final director stole money from the clinic.
A Network of Lesbian Archives
In the United States, there are several physical lesbian archives and numerous lesbian archival projects, along with a broader network of LGBTQ archives and history projects. Lisa tapped into a network of support from lesbian archives and their members from across the country to support the founding of the Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives.
Lesbian Herstory Archives (New York City)
The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in Brooklyn, New York, has the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians. Based out of a brownstone home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, it is an all-volunteer organization. The archive was founded by Joan Nestle and Deb Edel out of their Manhattan apartment in 1975, six years after the Stonewall Riots. The LHA emerged from a lesbian consciousness-raising group composed of lesbians involved with gay liberation and lesbian feminist activism.
In the early 2000s, to learn more about the workings of the organization, Lisa interned with the Lesbian Herstory Archives under the supervision of Saskia Scheffer, a member of LHA’s collective of coordinators. Scheffer has been with the group for decades, managing their photography collections. When it was time to incorporate the PNLA as a non-profit organization, LHA founder Joan Nestle served as one of PNLA’s founding board members. The LHA became an enthusiastic supporter of the PNLA, as well as other fledgling lesbian archives. Lisa stayed in contact with members of the collective throughout the PNLA’s lifespan to seek advice and share successes. Today, internal records of the Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives can be found onsite at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in their organizational files.
June L. Mazer Archives (Southern California)
Members of the June L. Mazer Archives hosted the workshop that first inspired Lisa to establish a lesbian archive in Seattle. The Archives was founded in 1981 in Oakland and today is based in West Hollywood, California.
One Mazer Archives volunteer, Yolanda Retter, was a particularly supportive figure for Lisa’s efforts. Lisa called Yolanda one of her “archives angels.” She was a founding PNLA board member. Retter was a Chicana feminist activist who established the Lesbian Legacy Collection at the ONE Archives, an LGBTQ archive in Southern California. She served as a mentor until her death in 2007 [3].
Moving the Archives
For five years, the Pacific Northwest Lesbian Archives resided in Lisa’s garage. Without a foreseeable pathway toward funding an independent location for the archive, the PNLA transferred its collections to the Washington State Historical Society in 2009. While some expressed concern over the prospect of entrusting the PNLA’s collections to a mainstream archive, the board assessed that the PNLA could not sustain the resources necessary to ensure community access to the collections and that donating the collection to WSHS would be the safest pathway to preserving and providing access to the materials over the long term. With that decision, Lisa and some volunteers loaded a truck and moved the collection to Tacoma.
Footnotes
1. Liz Latham, “Lesbian Archive Seeks a Home in the Pacific Northwest,” Seattle Gay News, October 20, 2006, 8.
2. Tina Gianoulis, "Valentine film benefit to salute Lesbian 'Herstory'," Seattle Gay News, February 10, 2006, 21.
3. Elain Woo, "Yolanda Retter, 59; controversial activist for lesbian, minority rights," Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2007.