As the title suggests, 45 years ago movements of liberation made possible the birth of a new project in the world: the Lesbian Herstory Archives. A grassroots collection, the Archives was intentional about engaging with all facets and complexities of lesbian life, inclusive of diversity in race and gender-identity, from the bar life of the fifties and before, to the lesbian-feminist cultural richness of the mid-twentieth century and beyond, to the gender richness of the twenty-first. This issue honors an Archives that articulates the complexities of how lesbians make our way in the world.