Black Lesbian Dreaming: Intergenerational Connection and Found Intimacy between Mabel Hampton and Me
Mabel Hampton’s favorite sweater was a cream, argyle v-neck. She would pair it with a plaid or checkered collared shirt underneath. Flipping through her photo collection, I imagine her standing in front of the mirror doing up all of the buttons on her collared shirt, pulling on her sweater, and heading out for the day. If it was an important event she had to attend, she would throw on her herringbone trench coat, a jauntily tipped fedora, and black sunglasses looking directly at the camera, staring off into the distance, or laughing heartily with loved ones. This was how I first came to know Mabel Hampton.
While I catalog her photo collection — taking them out of their sleeves and touching them — I look for her friends, her family, her community and try to piece together the fragmented histories swirling in my mind. History of Black women’s domestic labor, of being Black and poor in New York City, of migration and mourning, the Harlem renaissance, and Black lesbianism. I try to recall every academic lecture I've listened to, every article I read, every workshop I've attended and the only thing is this: I am awed.
“I’m Mabel Hampton. I was born on May the second 1902, Winston-Salem, North Carolina” (1).
Mabel Hampton was born in the South. She lived most of her adult life in New York City from 1927 to 1989. Mabel was a lover, a wife of 45 years, a community organizer, and a Black lesbian woman. There’s a hundred different articles talking about the larger historical narrative Mabel was embroiled within. Joan Nestle’s article titled “I Lift My Eyes to the Hill: The Life of Mabel Hampton as Told by a White Woman” as well as Mabel’s own oral histories. They do a better job than any biographical summary I could provide. No, that’s not the story I want to tell.
Instead of contextualizing Mabel’s life in the world she lived in and the oppressions she faced, my mind focuses on the little things. I am enthralled by the scenes of domesticity in Mabel Hampton’s later life. She seems to have always been surrounded by her family, her loved ones. I obsess over what Mabel was eating for dinner. I put on my glasses and bring the picture up close to my eyes. “Ah yes, those are pork chops! Or maybe it's collard greens and mashed potatoes…” What conversations floated around the dining table between Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, and Mabel Hampton? If she had a favorite sweater, she must have had a favorite color. What would it have been? I see the pictures of her wife, Lillian Foster, and can hear the swish of the fabric of her floral dress embracing Mabel as she stands next to her. I can feel their love, one that lasted decades. I wonder what it felt like when they locked eyes for the first time in 1932, did they know they would never spend a day separated until death? (2)
I fill in gaps of perhaps meaningless information about favorite shirts, favorite hats, fabric qualities, books, recurring friends and family. A part of me needs to know what she was talking about with her friends Mel Cromwell, Rose, Aura, Arisa Reed, why her favorite sweater was her favorite sweater, and other mundane details about her otherwise legendary life.
Why am I so attached to the minutiae? Mabel Hampton was more than a historical figure or a relic of her time to me. She was a person—a person who I could easily recognize today. An elder who gifted us an intimate look into her everyday life that was painstakingly recorded in both photographic and other ephemera. As a younger Black lesbian working on Mabel Hampton’s photograph collection, I often feeling too many things at once to even write down. It is not every day that I can see myself reflected in the historical let alone archival record. Even the great legends of Black history are often men.
With Mabel, I can reach into the photo and see something I rarely get to see: possibilities.
Her life was made difficult by many things: being a poor, Black lesbian was at the intersection of many oppressive forces. But Mabel Hampton did not identify herself through these oppressions, and she did not remember herself only in relation to them. It’s house parties, gay liberation marches, her favorite sweater, her wife Lillian Foster, Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Denver the dog, and a host of friends and community events. It was moments with the people in her life that crafted her identity and brought her fulfillment. We often remove humanity from historical figures, especially those who are Black women, and turn them into figures of great achievement without knowing much of what made them people.
However, as someone who shared many aspects of my identity in common with Mabel Hampton, I want to help others know her as someone with a life full of love and community. Mabel Hampton was more than what she gave to history. In order to understand her historical significance, we must understand who she was — who she really was. The seemingly smaller details are not filler, they are points on a map that lead us around her world.
References:
- Mabel Hampton (Interviewee) and Joan Nestle (interviewer), “Mabel Hampton, Undated (Tape 1),” Lesbian Herstory Archives AudioVisual Collections, accessed September 1, 2022, http://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/items/show/95.
- Nestle, Joan. “I Lift My Eyes to the Hill.” Web log. Joan Nestle (blog). blogger.com, October 29, 2011. http://joannestle2.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-lift-my-eyes-to-hill-life-of-mabel_29.html.