Atlanta - Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project

Celebrating the Anniversary of the Herstory Project

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.

Joan P. Garner: Fostering Social Change

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” moment? Joan Garner: I grew up in Washington, D.C., during the 1950s and 1960s, the height of the civil rights movement. I was in the eleventh grade when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. That event was the aha for me. That very weekend, I was attending the annual conference of my high school sorority. Girls from several surrounding states were meeting in Washington, D.C., the weekend of April 4, at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Dr. King was assassinated, and a curfew was put on the city. We couldn’t leave the hotel. We were about 150 African American girls, and the rest of the hotel was completely white, except for some of the maids and other service staff. We were petrified about the assassination and the curfew; and we didn’t know what was happening. We could look out of our hotel window and see U Street starting to burn. Our sponsors decided …

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Posted on December 15, 2023 Posted in Social and Political Groups Tagged with advocacy, African American lesbian woman, Atlanta, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, civil rights movement, Creating Change conference, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, first Black mayor of Atlanta, Fund for Southern Communities, Funding Exchange Network, Human Rights Campaign, Jewell Gomez, Joan Garner, lesbian and gay movement, lesbian feminists, Mab Segrest, Mandy Carter, Mayor Maynard Jackson, North Carolina, out Black radical dykes, Pam McMichael, Simone de Beauvoir, Sinister Wisdom, social justice, SONG, South Carolina Georgia, Southerners on New Ground, Suzanne Pharr, Washington DC, Washington Hilton Hotel, women’s movement

Sandra Gail Lambert: Becoming A Writer

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.

Bonnie Netherton: Traveling a Winding Path to Women’s Community

Bonnie Netherton in the rowboat she used to travel back and forth to her Chinese junk, Ming Meng

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.

Tag: Atlanta

Celebrating the Anniversary of the Herstory Project

Joan P. Garner: Fostering Social Change

Sandra Gail Lambert: Becoming A Writer

Bonnie Netherton: Traveling a Winding Path to Women’s Community