[LGBTQ][Gay Activism][Drag] "Miss Jessie" photo archive chronicling 30 years in the life of San Diego drag performer and gay community activist Edward “Jesse” Taylor. The archive documents 30 years of Taylor’s life, as well as images from his 1987 title as Empress XVI in the California Imperial Court, and his.....

TV Clip-Sheet gathered mainstream newspaper and magazine clippings on cross dressing, female impersonation, passing, theatrical performance, arrest and public scandal for readers already connected to Chevalier Publications’ transvestite print network. These six issues preserve the publication’s method of reprinting sensational press language, with headlines including “Princeton Lads Put Show On.....

U.S. Navy photo archive documenting the Mexican Patrol mission of USS Rainier, a Pacific Fleet auxiliary schooner,during World War I. This archive documents U.S. naval personnel moved between shipboard duty, shore stations, and regional exploration in Mexican and California waters. Taken by Lieutenant junior grade Dr. Louis Henry Clerf, the.....

[Mexico] [Photography] Vernacular photograph album documenting daily life, labor, and civic culture in Mexico and California, 1906–1908, with substantial visual material from the late Porfirian era preceding the Mexican Revolution. The album records markets, religious architecture, rural labor, and public spectacle across central Mexico, alongside views of communities in the.....

Stanford University Military Engineering Archive Documenting the First Army Ordnance Reserve Gauging Program, ca. 1930. Stanford University photo archive documenting the emergence of interwar military-industrial technical education, ordnance gauging instruction, and precision engineering research on campus during the early development of Stanford’s engineering and applied science programs. Rather than depicting.....

Cross dressing and female impersonation photo archive documenting gender masquerade in postcard portraiture, club entertainment, and informal social photography from the early twentieth century through 1939, with direct relevance to LGBTQ+ visual history and the history of gendered dress outside ordinary convention. Seventeen photographs by unidentified amateur and studio photographers.....

[Japanese Internment] [Law & Public Policy] Previously owned by Takako Saito; a documented Manzanar incarceree; this archive of three books titled National Defense Migration Hearings; intended for use by the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration; Parts 29–31; 1942; documents Congress’s investigation into the forced removal of Japanese Americans from.....

Finocchio’s nightclub in San Francisco became one of the most influential venues for female impersonation performance in the United States during the twentieth century and played a central role in the development of modern drag culture. Established in the mid 1930s, the club presented elaborate stage revues featuring performers known.....

United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve service documented in photographs produced during World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area. The images record the participation of women in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve program established in 1943, a wartime expansion of the U.S. armed forces that assigned women to.....

[Military][Americana] Military Equipments and Uniforms catalogue from 1895, presents an illustrated commercial record of American military dress and ceremonial regalia during the late nineteenth century when militia culture, fraternal organizations, and civic pageantry formed a visible part of urban public life. Issued in San Francisco by one of the leading.....

[Biker Subculture] Southern California biker community photo archive capturing everyday life, social gatherings, and riding culture among members of a regional motorcycle club identified in several images by jackets reading “Wheelers MC So. Cal.” 1981. The photographs record the developing American biker subculture in the post-Vietnam era. Motorcycle clubs in.....

[Cross-Dressing] [LGBTQ] Gender nonconforming performance and dress photo and letter archive in mid twentieth century America during a period when public expressions of gender variance were widely stigmatized and frequently criminalized. Including two identified drag performers in a personal letter and photo negative set. This collection captures individuals embracing gender.....

[WWII] Lt. Colonel Henry L. Hively, U.S. Army Air Forces correspondence and war archive, 1945, comprising medals, letters, documents, photographs, negatives, and ephemera, including Panama Canal Zone tourist booklet, wartime train-journey photo strips through France, namely Grenoble and Valence, aerial transport photographs, and extensive emotional correspondence from Oakland and San.....