Your Love Stretches Across like a Long Black Wing
Your Love Stretches Across like a Long Black Wing by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
You opened the way to the future. Sometimes topless always eventually triumphant you opened the way. And in your vibration the miracles poured out. Jemima, Azalea, the Third World Conference of Lesbians and Gays, The Committee for the Visibility of the Other Black Woman, books, plays, ways of being all out of the sweet sound of yes. As historians we call it Salsa Soul.
I know you by the bright script on your t-shirts. I know you by the drums in your arms, the way you touch each other no matter what you are holding. I know you by your laughter when I see you in my dreams.
The sistering of the Salsa Soul Sisters started in 1974. Or maybe sometime before, whispered through a Riis Beach sea shell. Who knows? In 1974, African and Latin American countries were throwing off the chains of colonialism. In Boston, the Black Lesbian Feminist Socialist Combahee River Collective were coming together for the first time in someone’s living room and in the meantime in the fellowship hall of the Metropolitan Community Church, the women who would become the Salsa Soul Sisters were finding each other.
Reverend Dolores Jackson first brought together the group of women that named themselves after the most delicious aspects of their identities because she knew that she and women like her needed a space to gather other than the sometimes racist and exclusive gay bars. Carmen, Eva, Harriet, Maria, Merecedes, Millie, and Milta, were among the first to commit to this vision of a collective space where multifaceted lesbians of color could bring their spiritual, creative, intellectual and political selves. Or as one version of their logo and flyers said, “where it can all come together.” They decided to gather weekly. Their first outward show of power was their formation of a Third World Lesbian contingent for the 1974 Christopher Street Parade.
Over the decades to come one could say that the greatest achievements was their activist presence at protests. Or their years of Kwanzaa celebrations for Black Lesbian and Gay families that continue to this day thanks to Imani Rashid. Their retreats where they discussed everything from their relationships with their mothers to nuclear war. Their epic dances, like the 10th anniversary fete at Union Square. Or their records in the African Ancestral Lesbian papers at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Or the interventions, insights and beautiful artwork in their publication The Salsa Soul Third World Gayzette stewarded for many years by Candice Boyce. Or the model of collaboration that they created with their SalsaWorks Resource Manual. Some would say their greatest achievements are the babies they brought into the world. Or the mentees they have lifted up, myself and the team of younger people assisting with their exhibiitions and archival projects like this included. And all of those things are important.
Salsa Soul Sistren, I would say your greatest achievements were each other. Your lives. Your longevity. The fact that we will never forget their sisters who are no longer living. The permission you gave each other to say yes to your dreams. Your organization of yourselves in the audiences for Edwina Tyler’s performances, the attendees of Alexis DeVeaux and Gwendolyn Hardwick’s Flamboyant Ladies Salons, the authors of the poems in multiple literary magazines.
What did it take to wear a bright yellow t-shirt announcing a world of gay women in red letters in 1970’s New York? What did it take to show up at a majority white lesbian event, or an ostensibly straight Black feminist or Third World cultural event as a proudly identified Third World Lesbian? I can’t tell you. Only you can. Which is why we are still listening with love and gratitude always.
What do we do, those of us born after the world split open? What would we do to honor the drumcall of these brave warrior sisters. How do we answer your call with our lives?
Struggle with language? Show up and roll deep? Make matching t-shirts and then take them off? Queer trans non-binary we struggle with language with the spelling of womyn with the pronouns and boundaries solidarity protection a safe space to grow. The Salsa Soul Sisters had informal symposiums on whether to say lesbians or gay women. Which terms were too white, which terms would invite. And we still become poets just trying to name ourselves and find each other. Salsa Soul Sisters used the technology of gathering to create countless majority lesbian of color spaces. What do we do in the time of isolation of covid and corporate jobs, of climate crisis and capitalism on the move? We learn every technology, show up, roll deep. Prove the truth. You were never alone here. Make matching t-shirts in all the bright colors. So you don’t have to ask, is she one? Are you one. My superheroines don’t wear one big S on their chest. They wear three. Architects of visibility, learning how to make breathing public.
And then the hardest part, how in a world that will punish you for following heart can a sister of color feel safe enough to pull up her armor and bare her chest. How many conversations? How many cups of tea? How many times showing up for the break up or the moving in together, or the baby naming or the parents dying or the kicked out or the fired or the lost, how many cycles of funga and kuku did it take to create a vibration thick enough, a sisterhood quick enough that a Salsa Soul Sister could take off their shirts? Those of us still over here titanium plated with our digital boundaries might still be learning that one. But we’ll chant it until we get it. Struggle and speak. Show up and roll deep. Make a t-shirt to keep. Take it off.
Chirlane McCray’s words after one of her essays in the Third World Women’s Gayzette apply now to multiple generations of us, and I add my voice to those who must say:
“Don’t know where I’d be or who I’d be without you all. Many thanks to the beautiful sisters of Salsa Soul for having the strength and courage to be.”
