One Institute was founded in 1952 as ONE Inc. to publish the nation's first wide-circulated, national homosexual periodical, ONE Magazine. The idea for an organization dedicated to homosexuals emerged from a
Mattachine Society discussion meeting held on October 15, 1952. ONE Inc.'s Articles of Incorporation were signed by Antonio "Tony" Reyes, Martin Block, and
Dale Jennings on November 15, 1952. Other founders were Merton Bird,
W. Dorr Legg, Don Slater, Chuck Rowland, and
Harry Hay, “all of whom sought to unify homosexuals into social action.” The name was also a nod to referring to a gay person as "one of us". ONE was the first LGBT organization in the United States to have its own office, and as such its offices acted as a prototype LGBT community center. One became the first gay organization in the United States to open a public office (in
Downtown Los Angeles), and as such its offices acted as a prototype LGBT community center. One, Inc. readily admitted women, including—with their pseudonyms—Joan Corbin (as Eve Elloree), Irma Wolf (as Ann Carrl Reid),
Stella Rush (as Sten Russell),
Helen Sandoz (as Helen Sanders), and Betty Perdue (as Geraldine Jackson). They were vital to its early success. ONE and Mattachine in turn provided vital help to the
Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of their newsletter
The Ladder in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the organizations worked together on some campaigns and ran lecture series. Bilitis came under attack in the early 1960s for "siding" with Mattachine and ONE, rather than with the new
separatist feminists. In 1955, One held the ONE Midwinter Institute, the first in a series of conferences to bring together experts and community members to talk about gay and lesbian topics. In 1956, One created the ONE Institute, an academic institute for the study of homosexuality under the name of "Homophile Studies". In 1957, marking the first time the Supreme Court of the United States explicitly ruled on homosexuality, ONE Inc. fought to distribute its magazine by mail, and prevailed. The ruling in the case,
One, Inc. v. Olesen, not only allowed One to distribute its magazine, but also paved the way for other controversial publications to be sent through the U.S. mail. Also during the 1950s ONE Inc. became an ad hoc community center and began a library. As the burgeoning gay liberation movement took off and became more closely intertwined with the movements for civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s, ONE Inc., Jim Kepner and a growing group of activists were poised to collect original materials from that critical time period. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, ONE obtained crucial documents chronicling the establishment of the "gay community" and its established and increasingly diverse groups and organizations. In 1956, ONE established the ONE Institute of Homophile Studies which, in addition to organizing classes and annual conferences, also published the
ONE Institute Quarterly, a journal dedicated to the academic exploration of homosexuality. In 1965, One separated over irreconcilable differences between ONE's business manager Dorr Legg and
One magazine editor Don Slater. After a two-year court battle, Dorr Legg's faction retained the name "ONE, Inc." and Don Slater's faction retained most of the corporate library and archives. In 1968, Slater's group became the Homosexual Information Center or HIC, a non-profit corporation that continues to function. In 1996, One, Inc. merged with ISHR, the Institute for the Study of Human Resources, a non-profit organization created by transgender philanthropist
Reed Erickson, with ISHR being the surviving organization and ONE being the merging corporation. In 2005, the HIC donated many of its historic materials, including most of ONE Incorporated's Blanche M. Baker Memorial Library, to the
Vern and
Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender, a special collection within the
University Library at
California State University, Northridge. In October 2010, ONE transferred its archives to the
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the
University of Southern California for preservation. ONE, Inc. continues to exist to organize exhibits and gather new material. In 2014, the organization is renamed ONE Archives Foundation. In 2022, ONE Archives Foundation celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding, and in 2023 celebrated the 70th anniversary of the printing of ONE Magazine. In September 2023, the organization is renamed One Institute. The name is announced ahead of its inaugural Circa: Queer Histories Festival. ==Current programs==