ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

ONE Archives is where the paper trail of the American gay-rights movement lives. Its lineage runs straight back to ONE, Inc., founded in November 1952, whose ONE Magazine (from January 1953) was the first widely circulated gay publication in the United States — sold openly on newsstands when that act alone invited prosecution. Prosecution came, and lost. When the Post Office declared the magazine obscene and unmailable, ONE fought to the Supreme Court and won: One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958) established that homosexual publications were not obscene per se — the movement's first victory at the highest court, achieved a decade before Stonewall. Today the collection numbers roughly two million items — periodicals, letters, photographs, protest ephemera, art — making it one of the largest LGBTQ repositories in the world, housed in a former fraternity house near the USC campus and administered by the USC Libraries since 2010. The affiliated One Institute (the direct descendant of the 1956 educational arm, and the oldest active LGBTQ organization in the country) runs public programming plus a free gallery in West Hollywood at 626 N Robertson Blvd. Visiting: free. Exhibitions and the reading room are open Tuesday through Saturday, roughly 10am-5pm (closed Sunday-Monday); research visits are best arranged ahead (askone@usc.edu, 213-821-2771), and hours can shift — check one.usc.edu before a special trip. For anyone who cares how the movement actually happened — mimeographs, mailing lists, court filings — this is the primary source.