ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives

In November of nineteen fifty-two, a small group of activists gathered in Los Angeles and formed ONE, Incorporated, with the goal of publishing the first nationally circulated magazine in America written for and by gay people. The first issue of ONE Magazine appeared in January of nineteen fifty-three. Within a year the United States Post Office was confiscating copies, calling them obscene.

ONE fought back, and in nineteen fifty-eight the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor, a landmark press-freedom ruling that helped lay the legal groundwork for the movement that followed. The organization never stopped collecting. Today the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California holds over two million items, making it one of the largest LGBTQ archives in the world and the oldest surviving gay organization in the United States.