Wanda Henson in “Passings”
Unsigned obit in Lesbian Connection, Sept/Oct 2025, Passings, p. 47
WANDA REEVES HENSON: one of our lesbian sheroes, died at age 70 after a long, hard-fought battle with health issues – she did not go gently into that good night! Following a bone marrow transplant in 2024, Wanda endured numerous hospitalizations and procedures until she finally succumbed to infection and myelodysplastic syndrome on May 22.
A Mississippi native, Wanda was born on November 21, 1954. She earned two degrees in nursing and one in adult education from the University of Southern Mississippi, and she had a career as a nurse practitioner.
In the mid-1980s, Wanda and her wife, Brenda Henson, went to the first Southern Women’s Music and Comedy Festival. The couple were later interÂviewed for the powerful 88-minute documentary about women’s music, “Radical Harmonies” (2002), which can be seen for free at www.womanvision.org or on YouTube. Wanda said that before going to Southern, she had been thinking about suicide, but the festival changed her life forever. “It was better than a baptism. I walked out of that festival a new woman – a woman with purpose. I needed to do something to help people. And by working and doing, I was healing myself.”
Soon after, Wanda and Brenda opened the Southern Wild Sisters Unlimited Bookstore in Gulfport, MS, and they also started a newsletter, The Hericane. Then in 1989, they put on the first Gulf Coast Women’s Music Festival, introducing women’s music artists to more women in the Deep South. After several years of repeatedly having to find a new location for the festival, they were finally able to raise enough money to buy 120 acres in Ovett, MS, in 1993.
They wanted their new place, Camp Sister Spirit, to be a wonderful safe space where lesbians could live on the land and create lesbian culture and do all sorts of good works for the local commuÂnity, like a food pantry bank. Brenda said, “It would be festival all year long.” However, after a copy of their newsletter was circulated among local residents, rumors spread about an invasion of lesbians, and in November 1993, the harassment, intimidation and death threats began. Someone even shot and killed a dog and hung it on their mailbox along with sanitary pads. The situation in Ovett gained national attention, and it was featured on both “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and on “20/20.” Attorney General Janet Reno got involved, sending mediators to Ovett to try to calm the situation. Through it all, the Hensons and a band of supportive lesbians remained there and proÂtected the land. Thankfully, the harassment eventually died down.
Brenda died in 2008 from colon cancer (a passing for Brenda was in the May/June 2008 LC), and the final Gulf Coast Festival was held the following year. Even after the festival ended, Wanda continued organizing in the local community. She described herself as a “recovering Pentacostal” who believed “whatever comes into your space, you take care of.” Wanda is survived by her son, Arthur; four grandchildren; two siblings; and countless women in Lesbian Nation who will never forget her courage and impact.