Gerber/Hart Library & Archives

The Gerber/Hart Library and Archives in Chicago, Illinois began as a partnership with the Chicago chapter of the Gay Academic Union and the Chicago Gay and Lesbian History Project. Originally it was named the Midwest Gay and Lesbian Archive and Library, and was housed in a room at the social service agency Horizons Community Services. In 1981, historian Gregory Sprague spearheaded the campaign for it to achieve independent status and move into its own space. It changed its name to the Henry Gerber-Pearl Hart Library: The Midwest Lesbian and Gay Resource Center, after Henry Gerber and Pearl M. Hart. 

Now known simply as Gerber/Hart, the library has had a number of homes since its inception. Its move to its current home in 2014 from a Granville Avenue storefront took nearly 18 months. Free and open to everyone, its intention is to preserve and make accessible the history and culture of the LGBTQ+ communities in both Chicago and the Midwest. 

Gerber/Hart’s namesakes, Henry Gerber and Pearl M. Hart, were both influential figures in the Chicago LGBTQ+ community during the 20th century. Henry Gerber was a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1913. After joining the army during WWI, he moved to Chicago where he started the Society of Human Rights (SHR). He published two issues of the society’s newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, before being arrested in 1925 and having to disband the SHR. Sadly no copies of Friendship and Freedom remain. 

Pearl M. Hart was a Chicago local and an attorney experienced with defending clients facing stigma, and pressure to conceal their “deviation”, including communists and prostitutes as well as gay rights activists. During the emergence of the homophile movement in the 1950s, she gave legal advice to many homophile activists, and passed information to organizers regarding where her incarcerated clients were being held. She devoted her life to advocating for Chicago’s most vulnerable residents. Called the “Guardian Angel of Chicago’s Gay Community”, she was inducted posthumously into Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992. 

Gerber/Hart believes knowledge is key to dispelling homophobia. The volunteers and directors acknowledge that minorities’ grasp on their own history is tenuous, and preserving and passing on that knowledge is important. Much of queer history has been lost either through malicious erasure or through fear of the repercussions should such knowledge about an individual be revealed. While mainstream libraries and archives often contain artifacts relating to LGBTQ+ history and culture, the creation of queer archives and libraries by members of the LGBTQ+ community themselves have served to not only protect such materials, but to catalog them using terminology used by the community itself. 

Terminology and culture are specific both to their community and to the region in which they are created. The history and culture of the LGBTQ+ movement in the Midwest is unique from that of movements in other regions. While police brutality was a key factor in gay liberation movements across the country, that catalyst was exacerbated in Chicago. Police raids persisted for much longer there than in other cities while the LGBTQ+ community was slower to mobilize. While the late-1970s saw San Francisco and New York City making efforts to hire gay police officers, Chicago’s police force was much slower to follow suit, perhaps because of its community’s deeply contentious relationship with the police. As late as 1990, the Chicago police force did not employ any openly gay police officers. 

The library houses a 27,000 volume circulating library, and the archive contains more than 150 collections of historically significant personal manuscripts, photographs, audiovisual recordings, and organizational records. These include letters, diaries, and scrapbooks as well as the records of many community organizations, businesses, and political campaigns. 

Additionally, Gerber/Hart offers some online resources, including clips from local LGBTQ+ shows, contemporary interviews related to Midwestern LGBTQ+ history and culture, digitized home recordings of Chicago Pride parades, and digitized documents from the Mattachine Midwest organization. 

Archives and Special Collections, Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. Accessed December 3rd 2020. https://www.gerberhart.org/archival-collection-guide/.

Kniffel, Leonard. You Gotta Have Gerber-Hart: A Gay and Lesbian Library for the Midwest. American Libraries. November 1st 1993. 958 - 960.

Free Access without Judgment. ILA Reporter. October 1st 2002. 1 - 6.

Liebenson, Donald. "Gerber/Hart Library reopens in Rogers Park." Chicago Tribune (Chicago) August 8th 2014. , Entertainment sec.

De la Croix, St Sukie. Chicago whispers : A history of LGBT chicago before stonewall. Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.

Stewart-Winter, Timothy. Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.