Alphabetical List of Interviews and Feature Articles

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 telephone by Rose Norman 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 »