Terry Beswick papers

Title: Terry Beswick papers

Dates: 1980s-2020

Collection Number: 2022-22

Creator/Collector: Beswick, Terry

Extent: 3 linear feet (1 carton, 1 medium oversize box)

Repository: GLBT Historical Society

Abstract: Terry Beswick is an activist and journalist, best known for his work with ACT UP Golden Gate, Project Inform, and the Human Rights Campaign, as well as his reporting for the Bay Area Reporter. He is the former executive director of the Castro Country Club and the GLBT Historical Society. The collection contains materials documenting Beswick’s activist career, with particular emphasis on his time working for the Human Rights Campaign between 1992 and 1996.

Language of Material: English

Collection is open for research.

Copyright to material has been transferred to the GLBT Historical Society. All requests for reproductions and/or permission to publish or quote from material must be submitted in writing to the GLBT Historical Society Archivist.

[Identification of item]. Terry Beswick papers. Collection Number: 2022-22. GLBT Historical Society

Gift of Terry Beswick, September 2021.

Terry Beswick is an activist and journalist, best known for his work with ACT UP Golden Gate, Project Inform, and the Human Rights Campaign, as well as his reporting for the Bay Area Reporter. He is the former executive director of the Castro Country Club and the GLBT Historical Society.

The collection contains materials documenting Beswick’s activist career, with particular emphasis on his time working for the Human Rights Campaign between 1992 and 1996. Its two boxes break down as follows. Box 1 contains extensive materials from the Human Rights Campaign, including correspondence, reports, notes, clippings, and ephemera, presenting a detailed picture of the life of an AIDS activist working in the nonprofit/lobbying world at this time; a folder of Beswick’s articles (1991-1966); photographs (circa 1990s-2000s); materials from the 1993 Future Directions in AIDS Research conference (1993); various clippings, correspondence, and ephemera (1988-2020); an extensive collection of buttons, stamps, and patches, on political and other gay topics (1980s-2010s); various t-shirts, including two ACT UP t-shirts, a Clinton/Gore campaign shirt, and two shirts from the HIV+ cyclist organization Positive Pedalers (1980s-1990s); computer backup floppy disks (1980s-1990s); an audiotape labeled “Shrink/Slasher Victim,” kept in a Barbra Streisand tape case (circa 1980s); and a copy of Trouble at the Disco, a board game created to honor DJ Neil Lewis, made by a fan known only as “Gert.” Oversize Box 1 contains floppy disks dating from the ACT UP years as well as the Washington period (1986-1995); interview cassettes and microcasettes, likely all related to Beswick’s journalistic work, with microcasette recorder (1990s-2000s); VHS tapes of the 1995 White House AIDS conference and Momentum TV, Volume 3, issue 6, “Federal AIDS Policy”; large photographs, posters, and certificates of recognition; and t-shirts, including assorted AIDS activist shirts, a Gay American Indians shirt, Castro Country Club, and Clinton/Gore shirts (1980s-2000s).