Beverly Hickok is an author, retired librarian, and native Californian who came out as a lesbian during the 1940s. The papers includes a variety of personal and professional documents, photo albums, journals, travel notes, newspaper and magazine clippings, correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts, ephemera, lesbian pulp and popular fiction, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization materials. The collection reflects the life of a white, upper middle-class, college educated lesbian who came out during the decade of the forties and has since experienced a rich life in her senior years.

Beverly Hickok is an author, retired librarian, and native Californian who came out as a lesbian during the 1940s. Born in 1919, Hickok was a single child raised by her mother, Adelaide Hickok, a housewife who enjoyed painting, and Clifton Ewing Hickok, a former City Manager of Alameda. In 1937, Hickok and her family moved to Berkeley, after which she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. Before she graduated in 1941, Hickok began to explore her sexual attraction towards women, which eventually prompted her to leave the San Francisco Bay area. She enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned a teaching credential. Hickok taught for one year at a local Los Angeles high school before deciding that she no longer wanted to pursue a career in teaching. Following the advice of the renowned therapist, Evelyn Hooker, in combination with a desire to support the effort of World War II, Hickok became a riveter in the Douglas Aircraft defense plant and began to self-identify as a lesbian. In 1944, she enlisted as a member of the U.S Navy W.A.V.E.S., (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and served until 1946 while stationed in Washington, D.C. After her discharge, she used the G.I. Bill to return to the University of California, Berkeley and earned a degree in Library Science in 1947. That same year, Hickok met Cecil Davis, the partner with whom she maintained a romantic relationship for forty-one years.

65 document boxes (32 linear feet)

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