August 31, 2013.
Continuing Stephanie Donald’s discussion from Aug. 29:
C. Todd White’s book, Pre-Gay L.A., explains most of the history.
ONE Archives is safe if the USC library is safe. There is no problem there.
If I am right, and ONE Archives and HIC both have the material of the original ONE, Inc. (and both parts built up their own collection of material after the separation), then I would even say we both should be sending copies to other community libraries/archives.
But if the material in made available online, that ends the whole issue. Neither archives makes money or gains power in that case. (There is much ONE material already online at I think Online California Archives—I forget the name.)
I know nothing of ONE Archives anymore. They wasted their effort trying to cause HIC legal trouble, obviously based on lies they were told. John was wrong legally and morally, but if he put the material at ONE and did not keep it for himself, then that makes a difference to me.
Hawkins is head of ONE Archives, and if Brandon Wolf is right, they applied and got the use legally of the name ONE, Inc. But that is as if I got your name if you let it go. The point, with implications good and bad, is that no one at ONE Archives was there when ONE existed, or when the founders were around, as far as I know, so they have no personal knowledge of the legal decisions. Like Dorr’s poor attorney, Hillel Chodos, they only heard Dorr’s version of the truth.
But in a sense they have our historical material—we both do, often duplicated, and if they and we do our job, and preserve and build on it and make it useful and used, then we all deserve support.
There can not be too many LGBT archives—we do not compete, and if for some sad reason one dies, then others will have some of the lost material since they will have shared it.
