Alphabetical List of Interviews and Feature Articles

Maria Cristina Moroles, known now by her ceremonial name Águila, is an Indigenous curandera, shaman, and landyke who has lived at Santuario Arco Iris, rugged women’s land in the Ozark Mountains near Ponca, Arkansas, since 1974. The land offers over a hundred acres of sanctuary for women and children, especially women and children of color. In 2000, she founded the Arco Iris Earth Care Project, a nonprofit that preserves 400 acres of neighboring wilderness land.

Maria Cristina Moroles, Águila (eagle), has lived at Santuario Arco Iris in the Ozark mountains since 1976. It is one of the few women’s land communities in the United States founded by women of color. An Indigenous Mexican American curandera (healer), Águila turned this very, very rugged mountain land into a sanctuary for women and girls.

Alexis has described herself as “a queer Black troublemaker, a Black feminist love evangelist, and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings.”

Barbara “Bobbie” Reaux gives us a fascinating glimpse of her courage and life struggles. She begins her story with her search for her natal mother.

Barbara Esrig, a founding member of Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project, describes her work as a midwife, and her recovery from a near-fatal car accident.

My feminism began in college. I started a women’s lib group, organized the first Earth Day in Richmond, and got in jail for antiwar and civil rights actions.

Susan Robinson writes about her then partner Betty Bird, and tells the story of how she and others began a system for recording feminist journals like *Sinister Wisdom* and distributing those recordings through services for the blind.

From a rooftop garden in New York City to Maat Dompim Womyn of Color Land Project in Virginia and beyond, Blanche has offered support and empowerment to women of color throughout the country.

The very best years of my life were the years that I lived on the water, on the boat. I think of those years as the best, the best I ever lived.

“Black people are my people, gay folk are my people, and church people are my people.”

May and June 2024 are multiple anniversaries for the SLFA Herstory Project. It’s the fifteenth anniversary of our first Herstory Project planning workshop at Womonwrites. It’s the tenth anniversary of our first special issue of Sinister Wisdom. And it’s the second anniversary of the launching of this website.

We celebrated the publication of our sixth and final Sinister Wisdom volume two years ago. The six special volumes contain a treasure trove of collected stories, interviews, timelines, and photographs from three decades of twentieth-century, lesbian-feminist activism in Southern states. Now, we are focusing on making these edited interviews available online as we continue to add new interviews.

The herstory of lesbian-feminist activism in the South was rapidly being lost as these stories of unsung sheroes were not being reported in any of the memoirs and histories of the women’s liberation movement in the twentieth century.

Corky Culver joins the Gainesville Women’s Peace Walk, an act of courageous defiance, a 41-day journey down the east coast of Florida, from Gainesville to Key West.

Divorced and alone in 1972, Diana Rivers paddled her way from New York to Arkansas with an unbridled fever that turned the local landscape upside down.

Diana Rivers goes from atheist to pagan while serving cakes for the Queen of Heaven.

My passion has always been to be a part of the solution, whether it is activism through preserving our neighborhoods or marching in the streets.

Dore Rotundo, an original, broke barriers in architecture, created community, loved women, and always found ways to spread joy.

After finding feminism and feminist spirituality while living in Florida, Ellen Spangler founded a teaching and healing center in rural South Carolina.

By E.R. Anderson, on behalf of Charis Books and More, and Charis Circle Shay Youngblood, novelist, playwright, artist, and poet, died on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, after an extended illness. She was surrounded by loved ones sending her to meet …

Epicurean of the Heart: In Memory of Shay Youngblood Read More »

There’s nothing about me that’s masculine. Every aspect of me, at the cellular level, is female. I was born female; I live female. Butch women like me embody the full spectrum of womanhood.

Shewolf said that it was a miracle that her directory happened at all. It was important to document this movement, to show how widespread it was….

Psychic, astrologer, healer, feminist activist; gifted musician and singer, spiritually connected to animals, blazing through life with her red hair bold as her character.

Gareth Fenley, a writer, dedicated lesbian, and woman of many talents, wrote a guide for lesbians visiting or moving to Atlanta, Georgia. This guide is her gift to all lesbians who may find it useful. A lot of this information would otherwise be lost to herstory, and for that, we greatly appreciate Gareth Fenley for submitting this to the Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project.

Gerry Green cofounded a feminist counseling service and established Amelia’s, a feminist bookstore, both in Gainesville, Florida, in the 1970s.

Mother’s Brew bar, managed by Jade River, was a lesbian-feminist cultural center for the Louisville, Kentucky region, and a safe space for lesbians.

Jaye Vaughn started Cedar Chest, an organization for lesbians of African descent in 1994, and later a Center for Non-White Lesbians, both in Durham, NC.

Interview by Rose Norman by telephone on April 12, 2013 Rose Norman:  What made you a social justice activist? Mandy Carter talked about getting turned on by an American Friends Service Committee speaker in high school. What was your “aha” …

Joan P. Garner: Fostering Social Change Read More »

In 1999, Kecia Cunningham was the South’s first, openly lesbian African American elected to office, winning a seat on Decatur, Georgia, City Commission.

A believer in the power of community-oriented periodicals, Laurel Ferejohn helped create the The Newsletter, a vital, lesbian underground publication.

In the 1970s, Lenny Lasater was a trailblazer for women, first in the Birmingham coal mines, then, in the trade union for electricians, The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, when she was in Nashville, Tennessee, and later, in Atlanta, Georgia. She formed her own business, Lenny Lasater Electrical, in Atlanta, where she also got clean and sober. Also, she started a band that is now called “Just Roxie.” Throughout, she has been out and proud of who she is, “a very butch lesbian.”

Check out these interviews with women who started or participated in lesbian-feminist land groups, safe places to develop new lesbian culture in the South.

My environmental activist side has never gone away. It’s just that for a number of years, feminist activism took precedence. I feel as if I’m coming home now, coming back these last fifteen years or so, to farming, studying, research, and growing things.

Lorelei Esser discusses her unconventional life, her art, and many fascinating adventures in other countries.

It’s a very complex thing that I’ve taken very seriously as a sacred responsibility. Our mission now is to heal our community, our local community, our Ozark community, and our indigenous community; and to bring all the colors into sacred union again.

Marie Steinwachs’s activism confronted authority and educated on environmental issues and sustainability practices, earning awards for her pioneering work.

Martine’s Pagoda memories: the ocean, carpentry, and collaboration with lesbians there, which “got me on my feet and gave a direction to my life.” 

In mid-career, Mary Alice Stout left a successful professional job in Tennessee to follow her heart to rural South Carolina and off-the-grid Alabama.

A dedicated woman’s journey, making her way from the segregated south, through the civil rights movement, into today’s complex lesbian feminist environment.

I ain’t no radicallesbianmanhatincastratinballbustinbulldyke. But I love womyn.

At one point, I thought I’d realized my dream of meeting every lesbian in Virginia.

Mary Sims describes the powerful activism of Miami’s Lesbian Task Force of the National Organization for Women (NOW) during the 1970s when focused on creating positive images of lesbians.

Mendy Knott lives in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Her work reflects her experiences as a former police officer, military veteran, and Southern preacher’s kid. She is an award-winning, screenplay writer and poet.

Merril Mushroom provides the herstorical context from the 1950s and 1960s out of which Miami lesbian activism grows.

Mindy Dyke sought out the dykes when she moved from the Bronx to Miami when she was twenty-two, and did she ever find them!

Carolyn Mobley has seen the racism in the LGBT movement. She works from within to make concrete change, which motivates her as a Black, lesbian preacher.

Roberta Arnold writes about her mother, June Arnold, novelist and founder of Daughters, Inc. publishing company. Julia Penelope once said that June filled out a form stating her religion as “Women,” and this was true. She was fierce in her devotion to the Women’s Movement. 

It is my goal to fight harder for human rights than individual rights; and to leave a legacy of love and of the value of community service for my family.

​Frances Pici, Mickey Alberts and three others started Red Dyke Theatre in Atlanta in 1974 with a New Year’s Eve show at their home, Tacky Towers.

On June 11, 2024, Shay Youngblood died after an extended illness. Loved ones surrounded her as she went to meet her ancestors. Novelist, poet, and playwright, Shay Youngblood got her start at Charis Books & More in Decatur, Georgia, at the Charis Circle Young Women Writers Group. From reading her poetry at Charis to publishing her first book, Big Mama Stories (1989) with Firebrand Press, to producing her plays at Little 5 Points Horizon Theatre, she left us a rich legacy.

Terri Jewell (1954-95), Black, lesbian-feminist poet, lived in Lansing, Michigan, for the last twenty-plus years of her life, and we are happy to claim her for the South. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1984, Terri attended Womonwrites: the Southeast Lesbian Writers Conference in Georgia with the Louisville League of Lesbian Writers.

During her short life, Terri Jewell published one book of poetry, Succulent Heretic (Lansing, MI: Oral Tortuga Press, 1994), and the collection The Black Woman’s Gumbo Ya-Ya: Quotations by Black Women (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1993).

Terri’s book, Our Names Are Many: The Black Woman’s Book of Days (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1996), was published posthumously. Terri Jewell’s poems also appear in scores of journals and are anthologized in collections like A Fierce Brightness: 25 Years of Women’s Poetry, When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, and If I Had My Life to Live Over, I Would Pick More Daisies.

When our Herstory Project editors went looking for women who remembered Terri Jewell, we found her Louisville League of Lesbian Writers friends eager to participate.

Rose Norman, author, grew up in rural Alabama during the civil rights era. She finally found lesbian culture when she was forty, and it changed her life forever for the better.

Sandra has been involved in many kinds of activism, including anti-racism through the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance (ALFA); Lesbians for Empowerment, Action, and Politics (LEAP); and anti-nuclear protests and peace activism; and disability rights actions in South Carolina and Florida.

“ALFA’s lasting legacy is in women’s lives. The field of women’s studies was not just created by the feminist movement, but by the lesbian-feminist movement.”

Shewolf dedicated her adult life to the dream of lesbian community and in service of women. She worked to achieve equal pay for equal work at the University of Louisiana, at the Lafayette campus in southwest Louisiana. She started holding feminist potlucks that continued for 15 years. Shewolf wore a pants suit to her interview for her job at the University of Louisiana, which was quite revolutionary at the time.

Sonja Franeta, born in New York City of immigrant parents, ran for mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on the Socialist Party ticket in 1983.

We didn’t know squat about books. If we’d known what it was going to take, we wouldn’t have done it! You had to be passionate and crazy.

Southerners on New Ground (SONG) is an organization formed in 1992 to establish coalitions for social change. Interviews with all six founders are online.

Terrie Pendleton cofounded Lesbian Women of Color in Richmond, VA, in 1991 to provide “a sense of belonging, a safe place,” an alternative to isolation.

“Without communication there is no community.” – Rand Hall

The Pagoda was a lesbian residential community and cultural center on the beach near St. Augustine, Florida, from 1977 to 1999. Rose Norman interviewed founders, residents, and guests for the story of how it came to be and how it lasted so long.

Theresa “Terri” Barry came out in 1976 when she was in her early twenties and still in college. That same year, she met her then-partner Joan Mayfield, and they decided to start a feminist bookstore. From 1977 to about 1980, she and Joan ran Labrys Books in the living room of their Richmond, Virginia, home. They chose the name Labrys, after the double headed ritual axe found in ancient Minoan depictions of the Mother Goddess. The bookstore was run with the support of the Richmond Lesbian Feminists, an organization that still exists today.

Yer Girlfriend was a Louisville-based, lesbian band active from 1989 to 1996, with reunion concerts as recently as 2015. They recorded three albums: “We Won’t Be Silent!” (1989), “L-word Spoken Here” (1992), and “Not Afraid to Love” (1995), all published by Esther Records. In 2015, Rose Norman interviewed the two founders of the band, Carol Kraemer and Laura Shine. Four songs by Carol Kraemer are posted online at Sinister Wisdom (sinisterwisdom.org/YerGirlfriend), and Sinister Wisdom uses one of them, “The L-Word,” to begin and end Zoom readings from each new issue of this quarterly journal of lesbian arts and literature.