She Who Will Be Remembered
In 2022, Sinister Wisdom posted a slide show of lesbians that our project has interviewed and who have died since we interviewed them. In that spirit, we collect here links to Southern, lesbian-feminist activists whose interviews or stories we have published on this website and who have died.
The SLFA Herstory Project began and was nurtured at Womonwrites: the Southeast Lesbian Writers Conference. At the annual and then semiannual conferences (1979-2019) of Womonwrites, we often found ways to remember women attendees who had since died. Continuing that tradition, we also pay tribute to Womonwriters, found on our dedicated page, Womonwriters Remembrances. We do not have interviews for most of them, but the tributes bear witness to their extraordinary lives.
If you would like to write a remembrance of a Womonwriter — or of any Southern, lesbian-feminist activist — to post here, please send it to us:
Contact SLFAHP
Barbara Esrig (1947-1923) was a writer, oral historian, nurse, and cook extraordinaire.
Betty Bird (1942-2022) was an artist and activist with a vision for accessibility.Betty Bird
Blue Lunden (1936-1999) was a lifelong butch, activist, and builder of community.
Dore Rotundo (1935-2021) was an architect and landyke in Florida.
doris davenport (1949-2024) was a poet and activist from Georgia.
Dorothy Allison (1949-2024) was a bestselling novelist, poet, and nonfiction author.
Ellen Spangler (1934-2021) was a feminist activist and spiritual healer.
Flash Silvermoon (1950-2017) was a spiritual renaissance feminist.
Jade River (1950-2020) cofounded a lesbian-feminist cultural center serving Louisville, Kentucky, and cofounded the Re-formed Congregation of the Goddess-International.
Jan Gibson, (1954-2025) was a poet, artist, and cofounder of the band Moral Hazard.
Joan Garner (1951-2017) was a social justice activist, and a founding member of SONG, Southerners on New Ground.
Julia Penelope (1941-2013) was a fat, white, working class, butch lesbian separatist who lived her revolution.
June Arnold (1926-1982) was a novelist, publisher, lesbian feminist activist, and more.
Lorelei Esser (1949-2020) was an artist and cultural activist from Florida.
Margaret Parrish (1943-2013) was a feminist activist who cofounded the Gainesville Women’s Health Center in Gainesville, Florida.
Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024) was a poet born in Tennessee and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Knoxville, Tennessee. She is a major figure in the Black Arts Movement.
Rainbow Williams (1934-2022) was a feminist artist and an original member of Fairy Godmothers Incorporated, who attempted to save the Pagoda-Temple of Love, in Florida.
Shay Youngblood (1959-2024) was a novelist, playwright, artist, and poet in Atlanta, Georgia.
Shewolf, Dr. Jean Boudreaux (1932-2020) was dedicated to lesbian lands.
Terri Lynn Jewell (1954-1995) was a poet from Kentucky.