The woman on the phone was desperate. She had been lying to her children, she said, telling them she was going to play mah-jongg, but really she was going to a lesbian bar. She couldn’t stop, and she wanted to know: What do I do? It was a Friday night in 1972, and the newly minted hotline she was calling, the Lesbian Switchboard, had just planted itself at the Women’s Liberation Center in New York’s Greenwich Village. According to archives — including detailed call logs — at New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, a single volunteer answered calls such as these every weeknight between 6 p.m. and midnight, offering resources, support and advice.

The hotline was inaugurated by 15 lesbian feminists who, called together by Naomi Goodhart, an activist in New York’s nascent lesbian feminist scene, crammed into a modest office to answer a literal and figurative call. Their purpose: to unite and embolden gay women across the country. Their tool: one touch-tone phone sitting atop an industrial metal desk. Volunteers distributed little chartreuse calling cards at lesbian events and spaces, and ran ads in gay publications. The network of callers grew as women found these notices and passed the digits along.