Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed built cooperative housing units for Nova Scotia miners and Newfoundland fishermen and established consumer services for lobster fishermen along the Maine coast. Arnold also farmed in Maine, aided the Indians, and managed cafeterias.

Dolores Bargowski was the first member of her family to go to college, attending Monteith College in 1964 to study philosophy and the arts. By 1967 she was president of the Monteith student government and became involved in the civil rights movement. In response to the sexism exhibited by groups such as Students for a Democratic Society, Bargowski and Barbara Burris organized one of the first seminars on women's issues in the country. Offered in the fall of 1967 at Monteith College, it was called "Society in Women" and it led to the organization of the first college chapter of the National Organization for Women. Other actions included filing complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding the hiring of women, organizing teach-ins, and participating in the 1968 protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Bargowski was a member of the Furies, a collective that published a newspaper nationally, and a founder of Quest, a feminist journal (1973).

Robin Bernstein is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Bernstein's research focuses on childhood, theater and performance, and race in the United States. This collection includes newsletters, documents, and programs from lesbian organizations and queer theater productions, including a 1991 "Statement of Principles" from Lesbians for Lesbians, a Greenfield, Massachusetts, organization. It also includes audiotapes and phonograph records, primarily featuring lesbian comedians. Videocassettes and DVDs include several films of Marlon Riggs and taped copies of television episodes featuring gay and lesbian themes.

Bosworth grew up in Illinois, graduated from Wellesley College in 1907, and was a social worker. Bosworth worked for a number of settlement houses and participated in surveys of workers' living conditions, including the Women's Educational and Industrial Union survey (1907-1909) of incomes and expenditures of women workers, the results of which she published as The Living Wage of Women Workers; a survey (1911) of available housing in Philadelphia, which she later published as Housing Conditions in Main Line Towns; and an investigation (1914) of living costs, under the auspices of the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation.

An author, college professor, and transgender activist, Jennifer Finney Boylan graduated from Wesleyan University (1980) and then completed graduate work in English at Johns Hopkins University. She was on the faculty of Colby College (1988-2014) before moving to Barnard College at Columbia University. The author of a number of novels, short stories, and an autobiography, Boylan also writes regularly for the New York Times. Born James Boylan, Jennifer Finney Boylan began her male to female transition in 2000. Her autobiography, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. She appears regularly on television and has spoken across the country as an advocate for civil rights for LGBTQ people. Boylan served on the national board of directors of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) from 2011-2018, and was a member of the board of trustees of the Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

Breines was a member of Bread and Roses, a women's liberation organization founded in Cambridge, Mass., in 1969. She was a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Northeastern University and the author of Community and Organization in the New Left (1982), Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (1992), and The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (2006).

Author of Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (1996). A MacArthur Fellowship recipient in 1998, Brooten directs the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project in the Dept. of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and writes widely on the New Testament, Post-Biblical Judaism, and women and religion.

Active in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, Bunch taught courses on feminism at colleges and universities, participated in international conferences concerning women, peace, and Christianity, edited feminist books and journals, and worked to develop a lesbian/feminist ideology. See also Charlotte Bunch, Additional Papers.

Feminist and long-time activist, Virginia A. "Toni" Carabillo graduated with a BA in English and American literature from Middlebury College in 1948 and received an MA from Columbia University in 1949. Carabillo joined NOW in 1966 and one year later helped found the California chapters. Judith Kay Meuli received a BA in zoology and chemistry from the University of Minnesota and worked for ten years as a research scientist. An activist in NOW since 1967, she served the Los Angeles chapter and the national organization in a number of capacities. Meuli met Carabillo at a meeting of NOW in 1967. They were soon in a political partnership – and relationship – that lasted from 1968 until Carabillo’s death in 1997. Meuli and Carabillo's Los Angeles home was a gathering place for women's rights advocates and a center for feminist activities. In 1968, Meuli designed the women's movement signature symbol, "the Brassy": an equals sign within the gender symbol for woman, signifying women’s equality. In 1987, Carabillo and Meuli helped found the Feminist Majority Foundation with Eleanor Smeal, Peg Yorkin, and Katherine Spillar.

A feminist, lesbian, writer, consultant, and psychotherapist, Chernin's writings probe the modern woman's search for self-identity and range from poetry to fictionalized autobiography. Early works focus on women's eating disorders (The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness, 1985, and Reinventing Eve: Modern Woman in Search of Herself, 1987), and on the mother-daughter relationship (In My Mother's House, 1983). Other themes include Jewish identity, the female psyche, memory and storytelling, and women's sexuality (Sex and Other Sacred Games, 1989, and Crossing the Border, 1994).

Coit was Industrial Secretary and General Secretary for three New Jersey branches and one New York branch of the Young Women's Christian Association (1916-1925) before she became Industrial Secretary of the National YWCA in New York City (1926-1928). In 1928, Coit was appointed director of the Educational Department, the research arm of the Affiliated Schools for Women Workers in Industry (known later as the Affiliated Schools for Workers, 1929-1938, and the American Labor Education Service, 1938-1962). Coit served as director of ALES from 1934 until 1962, when the organization was disbanded. Coit lived for many years with her companion Amy Bruce. After retirement, Coit remained active in the Council of National Organizations for Adult Education, as well as in church, labor, and social work associations.

A feminist and professor, Andrée Collard grew up in a small village in Belgium. In 1950 she came to the United States on a Marshall Plan scholarship. She moved to Mexico City, where she received an M.A. in romance literature from Universidad Nacional de México (1955) and later worked as an interpreter and teacher. A founder of the Boston chapter of the National Organization for Women, Collard chaired the faculty committee to investigate the status of women at Brandeis. She was the author of Nueva Poesía: Conceptismo, Culturanismo en la Crítica Espanola (1967) and Rape of the Wild (1988).

Margaret Curtis worked for the Family Welfare Association and organized relief for French refugees in France (1916-1919). She remained active in relief work with the American Red Cross in Eastern Europe and Greece, served on the International Migration Service, and ran the Boston office of the War Production Office during World War II. Curtis worked in Europe and traveled frequently with her lifelong companion, Mabel Sturgis.

Feminist, musician, and activist Marcia Deihl was a founding member of New Harmony Sisterhood Band and played with other Boston-area groups including Bunker Mountain Fiddlers, Otis Grove, and The Oxymorons. A graduate of Boston University (B.A.), Cambridge-Goddard Graduate School for Social Change (M.A.), and Harvard Extension School (C.P.C.), Deihl is also a writer and editor who contributes regularly to works on feminism, homophobia, and bisexuality. She was co-editor of All Our Lives: A Women's Songbook (1976).

Author and activist Barbara Deming began her career writing theater and film reviews, poetry, short stories, and a novel. In 1959, inspired by Gandhi's writings, Deming became politically active, advocating nonviolence in all spheres of life. Periodicals such as The Nation and Liberation (for which she was an editor) published many of her political essays. She demonstrated for peace and civil rights and was jailed several times for acts of civil disobedience. In the early 1970s, she became a feminist and worked on women's and lesbian issues until her death in 1984.

At the Women's Educational and Industrial Union (Boston), Dewson studied ways to professionalize housework. She was the first head of the parole department (1900-1912) of the Massachusetts State Industrial School for Girls (Lancaster), and worked in Massachusetts and with the National Consumers’ League for the establishment of a minimum wage. She active in the fight for women’s suffrage and worked with the American Red Cross in France from 1917 to 1919. Believing she could best further social justice by strengthening women's activities in the Democratic Party, she organized women in the party from 1928 until she resigned as head of the Women's Division in 1936. She continued to advise the division until 1941. See also Molly Dewson (albums)

Dobkin began her career singing folk music in coffee houses, especially the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich. In 1972 Dobkin fell in love with Liza Cowan and the couple came out together. In 1973, Dobkin released Lavender Jane Loves Women, the first album specifically made by and for lesbians. Since then she has released six other albums of women's music and has performed widely in the United States and abroad. For many years Dobkin was an advocate of women-only spaces, and performed only for women. She appeared regularly at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival from the 1970s to the 1990s, as well as at other women's music and lesbian festivals.

Community organizer and founder and executive director of Hanarchy Now Productions, a group promoting progressive, socially-conscious entertainment. In 1996 she began an email calendar of events serving queer women, progressives, and artists. She also produced and promoted inclusive and diverse events including concerts, readings, gay pride parties, and multimedia programs. As part of the work of Hanarchy Now, she sought to form successful collaborations with companies owned and operated by women of color and to promote a community that was "inclusive, sex-positive, bi-positive, trans-positive, progressive and supportive of artists."

A 1969 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Ariel Dougherty was the co-founder, with Sheila Page, of Women Make Movies, Inc., an organization that sought to give women the training and equipment necessary to make movies. One of WMM's early productions was Healthcaring from Our End of the Speculum, produced by Dougherty in 1976. Dougherty worked on films made by and about women, mainly as a producer, and advocated for gender equity in the media at large. See also Ariel Dougherty (Audiovisual collection)

A labor reformer and suffragist, Dreier was active in the New York Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) throughout its existence (1903-1950), serving as president from 1906 to 1914. Her sisters were Margaret Dreier Robins, a founder and president of the National WTUL, and Dorothea and Katherine, both artists. Katherine was best known as a patron of modern art.

An author, critic, lesbian, and radical feminist, Dworkin wrote a number of books, including Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981). In 1983, with lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, Dworkin drafted a controversial civil rights ordinance defining pornography as sex discrimination, which was later overruled in 1986 as a violation of the First Amendment. Dworkin lectured widely and contributed to numerous periodicals and anthologies. Dworkin worked on behalf of many causes, including abortion rights, rape, battery, pornography, and incest in the United States and abroad. Beginning in 1974 she made her home with author, activist, and feminist John Stoltenberg.

Dyke was a separatist lesbian periodical published quarterly by Tomato Publications (New York, NY) between the winter of 1975 and the summer of 1978. Liza Cowan and Penny House were its editors.

An artist, feminist, and lesbian during her college years, Susan B. Echo was active in the women's movement, serving on Washington University's Women's Studies Steering Committee (1977-1978), volunteering at the Women's Eye, a local feminist bookstore, and working at the Women's Resource Center at Webster College. From 1986 to 1991 she served on the Coalition Council of the United Church of Christ Coalition for Lesbian/Gay Concerns, and during the early 1990s she worked for the Colorado AIDS Project.

A civil rights, peace, feminist, and lesbian activist, Vicki (Levins) Gabriner is a graduate of Cornell (B.A. 1963), University of Wisconsin (M.A. 1966), and Union Institute and University (Ph.D. 2009). In 1968, she moved to New York City to teach, joined the Weathermen, traveled to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, and became a feminist. In 1970, Gabriner moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where she came out as a lesbian and helped to found the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance. While in Georgia she co-founded Georgians for the ERA and ATTHIS, which offered workshops in lesbian sexuality; she was also the project director for the Human Sexuality--Family Life Skills Program for the Northwest Georgia Girl Scout Council. In 1973, Gabriner was arrested for her participation in a Weathermen action. She was convicted in 1977 but exonerated upon appeal in 1978. In 1979, she moved to Boston, Mass., where she wrote for Sojourner and Gay Community News. Gabriner is the author of Sleeping Beauty: A Lesbian Fairy Tale (1971, 1976), among other works. She is married to Rochelle Ruthchild.

Founded in 1992 by Nancy Pleasant, Girlfriends is based in Cambridge, Mass., and began as a peer support group for lesbians and bisexual women of African descent. It meets weekly, providing a safe haven and facilitating discussions around various topics. It also publishes a newsletter and has sponsored a number of events, including a book group, film festival, and talent show.

In 1932, Anna Spicer Gladding began a 42-year association with the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, Mass., where she was involved in the mother-child program and served as prison librarian, organist and choir director, and leader of the literary and nature study clubs. Her partner, Miriam Van Waters, was superintendent of the Reformatory for Women (1932-1957). Van Waters’s liberal views on penal reform brought her both praise and condemnation. See also Miriam Van Waters

Peace and women's rights activist. In 1983, Goldenbirch joined the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, where she served as office coordinator. She served as caretaker for the farm owned by the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice in Hampton from 1994-1995. In 1996, Goldenbirch became part of a group of women known as the North 40 Community in Melrose, Florida.

A graduate of Radcliffe College (A.B. 1955) and the University of Virginia (M.Ed. 1962), Gregory was active in the Lesbian Alumnae of Radcliffe College (LARC), and involved with eco-feminism. Gregory later moved to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where she set up a pottery business and a permaculture center.

A classicist (Bryn Mawr College, A.B. and A.M., 1894), Hamilton was headmistress of the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore (1896-1922) and an author and translator of numerous books, including The Greek Way (1930) and The Roman Way (1932).

Hite is an author, sex educator, and feminist. In the 1970s, she became active in feminist circles and began her groundbreaking research relating to women’s sexuality. From 1972 to 1982, she directed the feminist sexuality project for the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women. In 1976, she published The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, which was based on anonymous responses to questionnaires in which women detailed their sexual experiences.

A lesbian feminist professor, consultant, and artist, Hodges taught French at the College of William and Mary (1966-1969) and English at Fort Hays Kansas State College (1969-1977). During the mid-1970s, she became increasingly involved in the feminist and lesbian movements, editing a special issue of Margins dedicated to lesbian feminist writing, which appeared in August 1975.

A clinical psychologist and activist for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, Barbara Rodamer Hoffman graduated from Radcliffe College (AB 1957), where she helped organize the Lesbian Alumnae of Radcliffe College, a precursor to the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus. She received a master's and doctorate from Boston University and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. Hoffman helped found and served on the board of The Open Gate, a nonprofit that funds sexual orientation scholarship, and was active with the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus as well as a number of Democratic Party organizations.

Sybil Holiday is a sex educator, professional dominatrix, and an image consultant for male-to-female transvestites. She has also worked as a burlesque performer and as a clinical hypnotherapist. She is the co-author of Consensual Sadomasochism: How to Talk About it and How to do it Safely (1996). The collection includes catalogs and mailings from companies specializing in clothing and accessories for cross-dressing. Most material appears to have been used by Holiday in her work with male-to-female transvestites and transgender individuals.

Hunt studied music at Pennsylvania State University (1970-1972) and Radcliffe College (A.B. 1976). While at Radcliffe she was a member of the Radcliffe Union of Students and the Radcliffe Women's Center Collective, and she advocated establishment of a women's studies concentration at Harvard. She was also a member of the Radcliffe Crew, active in gay and lesbian groups (including Radcliffe Lesbians), and a volunteer at Transition House, a battered women's shelter.

The International Foundation for Gender Education is a nonprofit transgender advocacy organization founded in November 1986 by Merissa Sherill Lynn. The mission of the organization is to promote understanding and acceptance of transgender people through advocacy and education initiatives. Since its founding, the IFGE has operated as both a communications medium and an outreach and educational tool for transgender people, professional communities, and the general public. IFGE is managed by a board of directors elected from the transgender community at large. The IFGE publishes Transgender Tapestry, which was originally titled The TV-TS Tapestry until 1995. They provide a speakers bureau and a library of publications on transgender issues, and since 1987, they have held an annual "coming together" convention.

Jordan was an award-winning author, poet, and social and political activist. Her writings address themes of discrimination, equality, economic and social disparities caused by race and gender, global poverty, religious intolerance, and American foreign policy. An outspoken bisexual, Jordan increasingly championed the rights of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. Over the course of her career she received many honors, including the Yaddo Fellowship (1979), an NEA grant in creative writing (1982), the National Association of Black Journalists Achievement Award (1984), and the PEN American Center's Freedom to Write Award (1991).

An artist, writer, and lesbian activist, Kady published articles in Big Mama Rag, the New Women's Times, and Off Our Backs, and studied design, painting, and graphic art at Greenfield (Massachusetts) Community College. She participated in the Women's Pentagon Action (1980-1981) and at the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace & Justice near Seneca Falls, New York (1983).

A sexologist and gerontologist, Ari Kane has worked in the transgender community since the early 1970s. As an administrator and counselor, Kane's primary focus was outreach: educating mental health professionals, the public, and individual members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. In 1975, Kane founded the Outreach Institute of Gender Studies, an organization devoted to providing programs that broaden understanding about the diversity of the gender experience, expression, and perception in daily life, and to facilitating research in all aspects of the phenomenon of human gender, particularly as it pertains to sexuality. The OIGS also sponsors Fantasia Fair, an annual event in Provincetown, Mass., offering practical, social, and educational programming for transgender individuals; contributing to the development of a "standards of care" document for professionals treating gender dysphoria; and offering newsletters and other publications about gender issues. OIGS has also developed GARP (Gender Attitude Reassessment Program), a workshop exploring gender diversity and gender identity issues.

As a young adult, Kennedy struggled with substance abuse, eating disorders, and family relationships. In the late 1970s, she founded a watchband business that was successful for a time, but by the early 1980s she began training as an auto mechanic in New Hampshire and at ITT Technical School in Chelsea, Mass., where she was one of three women in a class of 500. In 1984 she opened Chicago Auto, which she ran in Allston and Cambridge, Mass., until the late 1990s, when she moved to New Mexico. Kennedy was a volunteer in the buddy system program of the Boston AIDS Action Committee.

A contralto soloist and educator, Learned was also an editorial staff member of the New York Evening Post. She lived in New York City and in Brookhaven (on Long Island), where she purchased a house with fellow music teacher and probable lover Emilie A. Wagner.

Levey grew up in New Jersey and attended Brown University, where she studied women's history. She worked for four years as an assistant in the publicity department at Yale University Press before entering the doctoral program in American Studies at Yale in 1989. During this period she began the process of coming out as a lesbian. In 1996 she moved to Somerville, Mass., and continued to teach at Yale while working on her dissertation.

Mary-Helen Mautner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1982, and in 1989 died from the disease at the age of forty-four. Three weeks before her death, she envisioned an organization that could extend to other lesbians the support and assistance she had received from her partner and friends. In January 1990, a few months after her death, her partner Susan Hester and a group of friends and supporters founded the Mary-Helen Mautner Project for Lesbians with Cancer. The Mautner Project is a nonprofit organization located in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to provide direct services to lesbians with cancer, as well as to their partners and caregivers; to inform the lesbian community about cancer; to educate the health care community about the special concerns of lesbians with cancer and their families; and to advocate for lesbian health issues in national and local arenas.

Meredith was a photographer, artist, filmmaker, and performance artist. Most of her career in photography was spent documenting the lives of women, gay and lesbian life, and her family. See also Ann P. Meredith (Audiovisual collection)

Miller (Milwaukee-Downer College, A.B., 1911) was a labor administrator and official. She was appointed director of the Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage at the New York State Dept. of Labor in 1929. In 1938 she was appointed Industrial Commissioner of New York, from 1943 to 1944 she was Special Assistant on Labor to the U.S. ambassador in London, and from 1944 to 1953 she was director of the Women's Bureau. She then worked for the International Labour Organisation conducting surveys of working conditions and opportunities for women and children in Asia and the Middle East, represented the International Alliance of Women at the United Nations from 1957 to 1958, and was United Nations representative in the International Union for Child Welfare, a European organization, until 1967. Miller adopted a daughter in 1923 and for many years lived in New York City with labor union official Pauline Newman. See also Frieda S. Miller (Additional papers)

Monroe is an African American minister. She served as assistant pastor at United Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Mass. (1990-1992), and as Christian education minister at Old Cambridge Baptist Church (1993-1996). A board member of CLOUT (Christian Lesbians Out Together), Monroe is a columnist for In Newsweekly and has contributed essays to a number of publications.

Moore attended Radcliffe College (BA 1967) and the Yale School of Drama (1967-1969). After Yale she moved to New York City, where she worked in theater, wrote poetry, and was active in the women’s liberation movement. She has taught writing widely and has served on the boards of directors of PEN American Center, Feminist Art Institute, and Chrysalis, among others.

A faculty member in Women's Studies at Georgetown University, Bonnie Morris is the author of The High School Scene in the Fifties: Voices from West L.A. (1997), Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era (1998), Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women's Music Festivals (1999), and Girl Reel: A Lesbian Remembers Growing Up at the Movies (2000).

The Moving Violations Motorcycle Club was founded in 1985 by a small group of Boston-area women who enjoyed riding together and sharing information about motorcycling. The club sponsors maintenance clinics and safety courses, and members participate in parades, feminist fundraisers, camping trips, and group rides. A newsletter, later named The Summons, has been published regularly since 1985.

Murray was an African American activist. She married briefly in the 1930s, but her most important and lasting relationships were with women. Murray held a variety of jobs; employers included the Works Progress Administration and the Workers' Defense League. In the early 1970s, Murray had a calling to the Episcopal priesthood; in 1976 she received a Master of Divinity degree from General Theological Seminary in New York City. She was the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest; her ordination took place in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on January 8, 1977. Before her retirement in 1984, she served as priest at the Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., and at the Church of the Holy Nativity in Baltimore, MD.

Singer, composer, and political activist Holly Near grew up on a farm in northern California and began performing as a singer at an early age. As a student at UCLA, she became involved in the anti-Vietnam war movement, touring with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in the Free the Army show (1971-1973). She has concertized widely as part of her struggle against nuclear weapons and for equal rights for all people. See also Holly Near (Additional papers)

A labor organizer, union official, and socialist, Newman (ca.1890-1986) was an immigrant from Lithuania and a factory worker at a very young age. She was the first woman organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Director of Health Education at its Union Health Center, and an active member of the National and New York Women's Trade Union League. She represented the ILGWU and the WTUL at numerous committees and conferences on the state, national, and international levels. After 1924 she usually lived with Frieda S. Miller; together they raised Miller's adopted daughter. See also Pauline Newman (Additional papers)

Outrageous Women: A Journal of Woman-to-Woman S/M was a magazine by and for lesbians interested in sadomasochism (S/M), published in Somerville, Mass., between winter 1984 and June 1988. The magazine included news and announcements, advertisements for stores and mail-order catalogs selling S/M and leather devices, short stories, erotica, poetry, letters, an advice column, personal advertisements, photographs, and comic strips. Outrageous Women also published a number of articles discussing the relationship between feminism and S/M (including one in the first issue written by founder Betsy Duren); the anti-pornography activism of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin; and controversies surrounding the refusal of some feminist bookstores to sell Outrageous Women and other sex-positive magazines. One review of the magazine noted the novelty of its multi-racial photography.

Founded in 1976 in Watertown, Massachusetts, by a lesbian-feminist collective called Pomegranate Productions. Its first publication, The Feminist Tarot, helped subsidize the first National Women's Spirituality Conference, Through the Looking Glass, held in Boston in April 1976. The goal of Persephone Press was to produce innovative material to foster lesbian sensibility and to effect social change by building a successful publishing company and communications network.

A support group for Asian gay men and lesbians in Massachusetts and the surrounding New England states, the Queer Asian Pacific Alliance was formed in 1979 by Siong-Huat Chua. It was known as the Boston Asian Gay Men and Lesbians (BAGMAL) until 1988 and then as the Alliance of Massachusetts Asian Lesbians and Gay Men. It holds social events and discussion sessions, issues newsletters, organizes special events, and coordinates with gay/lesbian organizations nationally and internationally in order to raise awareness and understanding in Asian communities about gay people.

Radical lesbian activist, professor, and author Janice G. Raymond received a BA in English literature from Salve Regina College in 1965, an MA in religious studies from Andover Newton Theological School (1971), and a PhD in ethics and society from Boston College (1977). She joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1978, retiring as Professor of Women's Studies and Medical Ethics in 2002. From 2000 to 2007, she served as adjunct professor of International Health at Boston University's School of Public Health. From 1994 to 2007, Raymond was the Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), and continues to serve on their board of directors. This collection includes correspondence, writings, talks, reports, etc., documenting Raymond's work as an author and advocate. Some materials document Raymond's views on transsexuality and reproductive technologies, but the majority of materials represent her work as a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), often in close collaboration with Dorchen Leidholdt and H. Patricia Hynes, lobbying for legislation and mounting public awareness campaigns in an effort to end sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

Vocalist, performance artist, feminist, and lesbian. She has performed with the all-women jazz ensemble Alive!, Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra, and WeBe3, an a cappella ensemble with fellow Voicestra members. For 35 years she has taught her own vocal improvisation process in conservatories, universities, and master classes. Rhiannon studies the relationship between music and healing and has participated in programs for refugees both in the Balkans and in hospitals and hospices in California.

A poet, author, feminist, and teacher (Radcliffe College, B.A., 1951), Rich, who won the Yale Younger Poets Award with the publication of her first book in 1951, has published eleven books of poetry and four of prose. She has received many additional awards, taught writing and women's studies at a number of colleges, and lectured on feminism at conferences and universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Rich and Macdonald were writers, activists in lesbian feminist politics, and partners for 26 years. Rich met Macdonald, a retired social worker, at the Goddard Cambridge Graduate School. A graduate of Radcliffe College (A.B. 1956, A.M. 1958), Rich taught writing at Harvard for ten years beginning in the late 1960s, her courses focusing on sexism, homophobia, and racism. She was active in the peace and social justice movements as president of Voice of Women--New England. An internationally recognized speaker, Macdonald lectured widely on ageism and feminism, including at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. Rich and Macdonald co-authored Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism in 1983, a groundbreaking examination of ageism from a feminist perspective. Moving west in the 1980s, they helped organize protests of the Miss California pageants, worked to end apartheid in South Africa, and worked in support of the United Farm Workers' 1989 grape boycott. In 1987 they served on the planning committee of the First West Coast Conference of Old Lesbians.

A sex counselor, bisexual activist, and sexual freedom advocate, Mary Ann "Margo" Rila received a BA in social work from the University of New Mexico in 1963 and an EdD from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in 1977. In 1967, she co-founded the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League with her partner, Frank Esposito Rila (1938-1974). She was a founding member of the San Francisco Bisexual Center and San Francisco Sex Information, serving as SFSI's training coordinator for several years. In the 1990s, Rila became an American Board of Sexology Certified Sex Counselor. This collection includes correspondence, flyers, questionnaires, clippings, t-shirts, photographs, etc., documenting her involvement with the San Francisco Sexual Freedom League, San Francisco Sex Information, and the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, as well as her work as a bisexual activist. Photographs include color slides of events during San Francisco's Summer of Love (1967) taken by Frank Esposito Rila.

Rock against Sexism was a group of artists, musicians, and others that sought to fight sexism and heterosexism in rock culture by promoting women musicians and alternatives to mainstream rock music. The Boston group was founded in 1982, inspired by a similar movement in England. In addition to publicizing women's and nonsexist rock bands, RAS held meetings and seminars, published a newsletter, and gave workshops to educate women about technology, equipment, and the music industry in general. It also held benefit concerts for local women's shelters, abortion rights groups, AIDS education, and other causes. RAS disbanded in December 1993.

Sargent and Carroll were professors of women's studies at Parkland College and the University of Illinois (respectively). In December 1981 they formed the Grassroots Group of Second Class Citizens to plan a series of direct actions in support of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. The group went on to organize Women Rising in Resistance to continue the work of mobilizing and connecting activists committed to direct action nationally. The group demonstrated for the rights of women and lesbians, for peace, and for other causes until 1992.

A playwright, novelist, and activist, Ana María Simo was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1943, and moved to Havana on the eve of the 1959 revolution. She began working as a journalist at age 15 and was 18 when her first book, The Fables, was published by Ediciones El Puente, a project co-directed by Simo (1961-1965) along with the poet José Mario Rodriguez. Simo moved to Paris in 1967, studying sociology and linguistics, and was active in Gouines Rouges (Red Dykes), the MLF (Mouvement de Libération des Femmes), and the FHAR (Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire). In the mid-1970s she settled in New York, where she began writing in English and was associated with Maria Irene Fornes' experimental theater workshop. Many of her plays (Ted and Edna, Going to New England, Exiles, and Alma) were produced in New York at the INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center and other venues. She was the co-founder of Medusa's Revenge theater, the direct action group Lesbian Avengers, the national cable program Dyke TV, and The Gully online magazine. A short feature film, How to Kill Her, was widely screened at festivals in the United States and abroad. The collection includes family and personal documents such as passports, school records, etc.; correspondence; files on her activism; writings; reviews; clippings; photographs; memorabilia; posters; and audiovisual material.

Abraham Bartlett Smith was born Phyllis Bartlett Smith. He had a troubled childhood and worked at the Springfield Armory during World War II. In the 1950s, he was hospitalized at Connecticut State Hospital and converted to Roman Catholicism, though he left the church in the 1970s. He had a son in 1963. In 1970 he underwent gender confirmation surgery and legally changed his gender to male, and in 1972 he officially changed his name to Abraham Bartlett Smith. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Smith lived in Winsted and Norfolk, Conn., and East Longmeadow, Mass. In October 1992 he moved to Jonesboro, and later Machias, Me. In 1998 he returned to Massachusetts to be nearer his family. Smith was an avid reader, music lover, and civil libertarian, and identified as a student of the planet's biological diversity.

Heather Smith is the female name of a person who lived as a man but dressed in female clothing in private. Smith served in the United States Army during World War II and was married to a Women's Army Corps veteran after the war. The couple settled in Oakland, California, where Smith worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. They had two daughters, and divorced in 1979. Smith cross-dressed on occasion when his children were young but was able to dress in female clothes more often after the divorce, largely remaining inside the home while doing so. Smith's daughter says Smith always used masculine pronouns and suggests he would have thought of himself as "he in drag."

A biological female who lives as a person without regard to sex, Mark Ethan Smith was born Marcia Ellen Bazer on March 13, 1940. While in Afghanistan in the 1970s, Smith studied medicine and volunteered at a hospital in Kabul, and in 1979 earned a bachelor of science degree through the Regents External Degree program at the State University of New York in Albany. In 1982, Smith began work as an aircraft electrician apprentice at the Naval Air Rework Facility in Alameda, California. Smith was suspended without pay in January 1984 and discharged in September of the same year. Smith subsequently filed suit against the Navy and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging unlawful discrimination. By the mid-1990s, Smith had founded the Foundation for Role Equity Education and edited the organization’s newsletter, Nontraditional News.

Faith Soloway graduated from Indiana University and has worked in the fields of comedy, folk music, and musical theater. Faith Soloway's rock opera productions include "Jesus Has Two Mommies." Joey Soloway worked in film and television production, then began writing for television shows, eventually writing and producing films and television series. In 2014, Joey Soloway created the Amazon Studios series Transparent, about a Jewish family in Los Angeles who discover their father is a transgender woman. Loosely based on their own experience, Joey and Faith Soloway wrote episodes for the 5 season show, and Joey Soloway directed episodes as well. Faith Soloway wrote the songs for Transparent's musical finale. The collection documents Joey and Faith Soloway's creative work as comedians, writers, and playwrights, and contains scripts, song lyrics, posters, drafts, television production files, photographs, awards, and audiovisual materials. The collection also includes drafts of Joey Soloway's memoir, She Wants It, and some records of Joey Soloway's production company, Topple Productions.

A Jewish lesbian feminist, Stein was active in the feminist fat liberation movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She took part in Boston Area Fat Liberation and in the First Feminist Fat Activists' Working Meeting in New Haven, Conn., in April 1980, among many other activities. Stein went on to found Bobbeh Meisehs Press which published her Jewish Lesbian Chanukah (1979) and A New Haggadah: A Jewish Lesbian Seder (1987).

During the 1930s, Tank worked as a waitress, mother's helper, cook, switchboard operator, speakeasy assistant, secretary, and finally as kennel-girl and chauffeur at Airlie Farm in Westchester County, New York. This farm, owned and run by women, raised cows, ponies, collies, and spaniels. In August 1939, Tank sailed to England, intending to spend a few days there and then visit other parts of Europe. The outbreak of World War II disrupted these plans, and Tank remained in England until May 1940, hiking through the country and working odd jobs. From 1960 until her retirement in 1971, she taught second and third grade in Coxsackie, New York. Although she was engaged once, Tank never married and identified as bisexual.

Mary Ross Taylor was an early supporter of Judy Chicago's artwork, founding the Texas Arts and Cultural Organization (TACO) to sponsor a showing of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at the University of Houston in 1980. Taylor was Executive Director of Through the Flower, the organization that administers and facilitates Judy Chicago's artwork, from 1985 to 1990. The collection contains letters from Judy Chicago to Mary Ross Taylor, tracking Taylor and Chicago's relationship, which began with the women as lovers in the early 1980s. The relationship changed as Chicago married Donald Woodman, Taylor became Chicago's landlord and Director of Through the Flower, and eventually became less involved in Chicago's daily art practice and life. Letters describe Chicago's feelings for Taylor, the developments of a number of her artworks, and operations of Through the Flower.

A pioneer in women's studies and feminist philosophy, Trebilcot attended University of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1955). Trebilcot was the first woman tenured in the Department of Philosophy and the co-founder of the women's studies program at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She retired as Professor Emerita of both Women's Studies and Philosophy in 1995. Trebilcot also wrote and edited several feminist, lesbian and philosophical publications.

Van Waters was superintendent of the Reformatory for Women in Framingham, Mass. (1932-1957). Her liberal views on penal reform brought her both praise and condemnation. In January 1949 she was fired because of alleged administrative failings, such as condoning lesbianism among the "students" (as she called the prisoners) and failing to supervise a work-release program properly. After a lengthy hearing process she was reinstated. Van Waters was the author of Youth in Conflict (1925) and Parents on Probation (1927). Van Waters also served as director of El Retiro (1919-1920), a school for delinquent girls in California, referee for the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court (1920-1930), consultant for the Wickersham Commission (1928-1931), and on a number of other boards and commissions. See also Anna Spicer Gladding and Miriam Van Waters

From 1950 to 1952, Wolfe was head of the physical education department at the Kimberley School, a private girls' school in Montclair, New Jersey. Although she enjoyed teaching physical education, Wolfe wanted to earn a living as an artist. She attended the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, earning her degree in medical illustration in 1955. From 1960 to 1985, she worked at the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as an instructor of medical art, specializing in ophthalmology. After leaving the Scheie Eye Institute in 1985, Wolfe struggled to make a living outside the professional world. Diagnosed with various medical conditions and severe depression, Wolfe battled alcoholism and an addiction to prescription drugs. A self-described "mid-century gentleman butch," Wolfe's lesbian relationships with women were often tumultuous.

Wygal was an author, theologian, and lecturer. She was a founding member of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians and active with the worldwide Student Christian Movement. She had a romantic relationship with Frances Perry that began in the 1910s and lasted into the 1940s and perhaps beyond.