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Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights, 1964-1999

Overview of the Collection

Collector
Mayhew, Tim
Title
Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights
Dates
1964-1999 (inclusive)
Quantity
9.15 cubic feet (21 boxes, 1 vertical file and 1 oversize folder)
Collection Number
4440
Summary
A collection documenting Gay activism in Seattle
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

The collection is open to all users.

Request at UW

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was partially provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Biographical Note

Tim Mayhew was a gay community activist in Seattle throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He became an archivist of the gay community, collecting materials related to gay activism from Seattle groups he was involved in and from many other organizations. Mayhew donated his collections (see Related Collections) to the University of Washington Special Collections in the 1990s. Maxwell Timothy Mayhew was born in Detroit on January 1, 1941 to Maxwell and Jeanne Mayhew. His family lived in Denver, then Salt Lake City, and Salmon, Idaho before moving to Spokane, Washington where Mayhew attended high school. He played flute and piccolo in his high school marching band and in the Husky Marching Band at the University of Washington. He majored in Russian language and linguistics, but interrupted his studies to volunteer in the Army, where he served as a medic stationed at Fort Lewis. After his honorable discharge, he returned to the UW, where he earned a BA and completed graduate studies.

Mayhew was a member of the Seattle Gay Alliance (SGA) in the early 1970s. He served as the chair of the SGA Education Committee circa 1972-1975 and as SGA's first lobbyist in Olympia, Washington in 1973. He helped found Seattle's first Gay Community Center in 1971 and was also involved with the Gay Liberation Front. For several years in the 1970s he served as Seattle editor of the Northwest Gay Review, a newspaper based in Portland, Oregon. He was a member of the ACLU of Washington and served on its Sexual Minorities Committee around 1977 to 1980. Among his many public testimonies and statements are the Position Statement on Homosexual Civil Liberties and Position Statement on Marriage for the ACLU of Washington in 1971. He lobbied in Olympia again circa 1981. In 1993 he helped found the Harvey Muggy Lesbian/Gay Democratic Organization.

Mayhew died on April 30, 2017 in Seattle.

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Historical Background

In the years following World War II, Seattle developed a reputation for being tolerant of homosexuality (by standards of the day). Nevertheless, most gay men and women in Seattle remained closeted and lived with the fear of harassment and discrimination. The Dorian Society, organized in 1967, was Seattle's first documented gay organization. It was part of a national "homophile" movement that emerged in the 1950s and continued to develop through the 1960s. The group sought to promote acceptance of gays in the larger society and to serve as a social organization for gays.

In the period following the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, gay liberation organizations sprang up in cities across the country, including Seattle. Students at the University of Washington organized the Gay Student Association and the more radical Gay Liberation Front. The first Gay Community Center in Seattle was founded in 1971. Other organizations born in the 1970s include the Gay Women’s Alliance; the Gay Women’s Resource Center (now the Lesbian Resource Center); Seattle Gay Alliance; Union of Sexual Minorities; Stonewall Recovery Center; Lesbian Mother’s National Defense Fund; the Metropolitan Community Church; Parents, Families, Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); and the Seattle Municipal Elections Committee.

In 1978, Initiative 13 attempted to repeal the Seattle ordinances protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in housing and employment. It came on the heels of a national spate of successful anti-gay measures. The campaign galvanized the political voices of Seattle's gay community, and the measure was soundly defeated.

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Content Description

The Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights documents a broad range of gay organizations in Seattle from the 1960s through the 1980s. The material includes organizational papers such as by-laws, minutes, and correspondence, as well as fliers, newsletters, brochures, programs, and other ephemera.

Mayhew collected much of the material himself in the course of actively participating in the various organizations represented, but he also collected material from groups he was not directly involved in. Some material was given to him by people who wanted to add to his informal archive or sent to him in his capacity as Seattle editor of the Northwest Gay Review . Unfortunately, it is not always possible to determine the original source of the material or the extent of Mayhew's own involvement with a given organization.

Mayhew focused his collecting on political and civil rights organizations. There is some material on Seattle's gay social organizations, businesses, and cultural activities (in the Directories and Ephemera series), but in general these areas are not covered very extensively. Most of the material pre-dates AIDS awareness; thus, AIDS organizations are not represented particularly well. There is some material on lesbian organizations, but the collection is heavily weighted toward male groups.

The collection is arranged primarily by organization. The Subject Series contains fliers, mailings, and newsletters from many local and national gay organizations, arranged alphabetically by organization or topic. Both national and local organizations are represented. Subgroups represent local organizations that are covered in greater depth, with minutes, agendas, correspondence, and other materials. There is also a smaller amount of material organized into general categories such as Directories of gay organizations and businesses, Ephemera related to various topics, Broadcast Editorials from local radio and television stations, Clippings, and Newsletters. Box 18 contains oversized materials from various series and subgroups.

The largest subgroup in the collection documents the Dorian Society, with major correspondence from Herb Lee, Mike Allen, and Ken Gilbert. Founded in 1969, the society was renamed the Seattle Gay Alliance in 1971, remaining under this name until it was dissolved in 1975. The group sought to educate gays and straights about homosexuality, to promote acceptance of gays in the larger society, and to serve as a social organization for gays. Its activities included public speaking, publishing a newsletter, organizing social events, and lobbying the state legislature. In 1969 the society opened Dorian House, home to one of the nation's first gay counseling services, and in 1971 it helped found Seattle's first Gay Community Center. Both Dorian House, later renamed the Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities, and the Gay Community Center went on to become independent organizations and are represented by subgroups in the collection.

The Dorian Group started as an informal meeting of gay businessmen who gathered for lunch in Seattle's Pioneer Square. Politicians, national gay figures, and local officials were invited to these meetings. The group incorporated in 1975 and revived the name of the earlier organization, the Dorian Society. The Dorian Group continued to work for gay rights through the early 1980s. Its emphasis on reform rather than revolution represented a new kind of gay activism that emerged across the country in the mid-1970s.

Several political and civil rights organizations are represented in the collection. The Seattle Municipal Elections Committee for Gays (SEAMEC) was founded in 1977 to evaluate candidates for public office and endorse those candidates who supported gay rights. Mayhew served on the Candidate Evaluation Committee, ca. 1977-1981. Citizens to Retain Fair Employment, the Seattle Committee Against Thirteen, and Women Against Thirteen were among the groups organized to fight Initiative 13 (which unsuccessfully attempted to delete the words "sexual orientation" from Seattle anti-discrimination ordinances for housing and employment). The Washington Sexual Minorities Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union worked to identify violations of gay persons' civil rights for the ACLU to pursue. The collection includes material on issues such as marriage law, sex and sodomy laws, gay prisoners rights, police harassment, and immigration law.

The collection also includes material from several gay religious organizations. The Metropolitan Community Church, founded in Los Angeles in the 1960s, formed a congregation in Seattle in 1972. Evangelicals Concerned, a group for gay Evangelical Christians, formed in 1976 and became the Grace Gospel Chapel in 1977.

Accession 4440-2 consists of handbills, fliers, and other ephemera related to gay activities and gay organizations, particularly in Seattle. The materials, which are unprocessed, span the years 1978 to 1998, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1995 to 1998.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

The creator's literary rights are in the public domain.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Organized into 3 accessions.

  • Accession No. 4440-001, Tim Mayhew collection on gay rights / Tim Mayhew papers, 1967-1985
  • Accession No. 4440-002, Tim Mayhew collection on gay rights / Tim Mayhew papers, 1994-1998
  • Accession No. 4440-003, Tim Mayhew Collection on Gay Rights, circa 1979-1988

Processing Note

Processing of Accession 4440-001 was completed in May of 1994. Accessions 4440-002 and 4440-003 are unprocessed.

A small number of photographs were relocated to the Tim Mayhew Photograph Collection in the division in 2004.

Separated Materials

A large number of newspapers were part of this donation. They included small runs of several Northwest gay publications and a smattering of gay publications from around the country. Publications that Mayhew had a role in creating and those that were part of the records of the issuing organzation were retained for this collection. Other Northwest publications were offered to the University of Washington Libraries Microform and Newspaper collection; after microfilming, some of these were added to the Libraries' collections, and some are available in the Pacific Northwest Collection in this division. Other materials, particularly single issues of non-Northwest publications, were transferred to other libraries that lacked those issues. These institutions include the International Gay Archives at the New York Public Library and the ONE Institute-International Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles.

Bibliography

Atkins, Gary, Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).

Related Materials

The Washington State Historical Society holds the records of the Northwest AIDS Foundation and the papers of gay activist Charlie Brydon and state Representative Cal Anderson, Washington's first openly gay legislator.

Martin Lee reminiscence of Tim Mayhew (Mss Coll 6340)

Tim Mayhew photograph collection (PH Coll 0705)

Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project oral histories (Mss Coll 5929)

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Detailed Description of the Collection

 

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Gay liberation movement--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Gay men--Legal status, laws, etc.--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Gay men--Social conditions
  • Gay men--Societies and clubs
  • Gay men--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Gay rights--Religious aspects
  • Gay rights--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Personal Papers/Corporate Records (University of Washington)

Personal Names

  • Allen, Mike
  • Gilbert, Ken
  • Lee, Herbert
  • Mayhew, Tim

Corporate Names

  • American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. Committee on Sexual Minorities
  • Dorian Group
  • Dorian Society of Seattle
  • Evangelicals Concerned
  • Gay Community Center (Seattle, Wash.)
  • Harvey Muggy Democrats
  • Seattle Gay Alliance
  • Seattle Municipal Elections Committee for Gays

Geographical Names

  • Seattle (Wash.)--Social conditions


2005 (Last modified: 6/11/2021)

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