HMI celebrates Women’s History Month
Hetrick-Martin Institute is recognizing LGBTQIA+ women, every Wednesday throughout the month of March, for their achievements and contributions to the community.
We are launching #WomensHistoryMonth by remembering social justice organizer and educator, Achebe (Betty) Powell, who recently transitioned from this world on February 21st. Many of us at HMI had the great fortune of knowing and working with her. Achebe served as an amazing anti-racism, equity and inclusion consultant and community leader for Hetrick-Martin Institute. We continue to mourn the loss of our wonderful friend and are deeply grateful for all she brought to us at HMI over the years.
Achebe was the first Black woman to have a leadership role in the lesbian and gay liberation movement in the 1970s, according to the National LGBTQ Task Force, where she served as board of directors co-chair for several years. In 1977, Achebe co-founded the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. The foundation began as a small group of women to address the lack of funding for women—specifically lesbians and women of color. She remained active with the organization for 45 years and discusses in this short video how Astraea came about and how it evolved to where it is today. Achebe’s visionary leadership early on was largely responsible for Astraea’s position as a major leader in the global-social-justice-feminist LGBTQIA+ movement.
The same year Astrea was founded, Achebe joined other lesbian and gay leaders at the White House for a historic meeting with the Carter administration, where they communicated grievances about discriminatory federal policies and offer recommendations to improve policies and services to the LGBTQ community. Achebe later served as director of the Kitchen Table Press—the first women’s press to focus specifically on the voices and stories of women of color. She was a founding member of the Salsa Soul Sisters collective, now the oldest Black lesbian and lesbians of color organization in the U.S.
In her earlier years, she spent her summers working with the Neighborhood Youth Corps in East Harlem, focusing on educating young people, particularly Black and Latino who had been dismissed by the system or had been dropped through the cracks. She says it was the nature of the adolescent youth’s lives she counseled, who were deemed “destined for prison and drugs”, but instead defied all obstacles and negative assessments of themselves, which ultimately “informed her politics”.
Achebe also founded a racial diversity consulting firm, Betty Powell Associates, assisting a broad range of organizations across the country—everything from universities and schools to health service providers and community agencies—to become more inclusive and highly functioning diverse institutions. She conducted diversity and social justice trainings for international feminist groups, often praised as a “dynamic consultant on diversity and multicultural development issues”. She was a true inspiration, with a knack for getting individuals to be open to sensitive issues and pledge a renewed commitment to the challenge of multicultural living.
Achebe was a pioneer in bringing together work on racial justice and intersectionality with transnational discussions of gender, race, and culture. She was featured in the award-winning documentary Word Is Out. In a 1979 interview with NPR, Achebe said she was initially shocked by the how much the filmmakers muted her feminism but when reviewers referred to her as “the militant lesbian”, she understood why they chose to downplay her politics.
Achebe celebrated being a lesbian, Black woman and what it meant in terms of freedom and the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality. She will be remembered as a trailblazer in social, multi-racial, multi-class, and feminist activism and a leader in the global women’s human rights movement in the U.S and abroad. Thank you for your remarkable and impactful contributions, Achebe.
Today we’re spotlighting Mercedes De Acosta as part of our #WomensHistoryMonth series. Although Mercedes had a series of talents including poet, novelist and playwright, to name a few; she is best known for her intimate relationships with some of the most famous women including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah Bankhead and more. Often labeled as an unapologetic and controversial lesbian at a time when same-sex love was considered taboo, Mercedes helped pave the way for lesbians and the queer community.
She was born in 1893 in New York City to wealthy parents, who often would entertain neighbors such as President Theodore Roosevelt and the Vanderbilts. She considered herself a boy until age 7, which was encouraged by her parents who dressed her in boys clothing and allowed her to participate in male-centric activities. It wasn’t until a male playmate exposed his genitalia to her that she realized she was not a boy. Her parents eventually tried to make her more feminine by sending her to convent school. She would eventually run away, telling the nuns she “will never fit in anywhere” and would be lonely her entire life because she didn’t know what gender she was.
She led a prominent and colorful life intermingling with Hollywood and Broadway personalities and maintaining friendships with prominent artists including Andy Warhol in her later years. She was married to painter Abram Poole from 1920 to 1935, during which time she had affairs with other women.
At the age of 67, Mercedes published her tell-all autobiography, Here Lies the Heart, which referenced her lesbian relationships without directly mentioning their names. Several of the women felt they had been outed including Greta Garbo, who never spoke to her again after 30 years of friendship.
For most of her life, Mercedes enjoyed wealth, glamour, and fame. Sadly, her health began to deteriorate in the 1960s. She died in poverty and obscurity in 1968. While many only knew one side of Mercedes, her biographer Robert Schanke referred to her as an “exceptionally lively, intelligent and dynamic person who had many devoted friends.” He labeled her a “brave lesbian of her times” and suggests that the degrading portrayals of her may be a result of “the deep homophobia of her generation.”
Mercedes was an ardent advocate for women’s rights and will be remembered for the mark she left, helping create a path forward for lesbians and the queer community.
Today, we celebrate the “Mother of the Blues”, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey for Women’s History Month. Born Gertrude Pridgett in 1886, she would later become known for being one of the most influential blues singers of all time, as well as a strong-headed businesswoman and liberated bisexual. According to historians, Ma led an intriguing and complicated life. She was well aware of what was what and how to get her way, even if it meant pushing both white and black people aside. Ma fought for respect and artistic independence.
And while she is considered the pioneering artist who blended traditional southern blues and vaudeville, influencing the greats like Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith, her legacy had been overlooked for many years. It was until 1982, when playwright August Wilson wrote “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, that she really began to get her due recognition. The play, chronicling the life of Ma Rainey and the exploitation of Black recording artists by white producers, won a New York Drama Critic’s Circle award in 1984 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. The success of the play led to two revivals in 2003 on Broadway and in 2016 on London’s West End, with Whoopi Goldberg playing the role of Ma Rainey in the 2003 revival. In 2020, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was released as a film, starring Viola Davis, which would go onto receive multiple nominations and wins at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and many other award ceremonies.
Her music and style influenced many successful artists such as Louis Armstrong who played with her on several recordings, Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt. It was also through her music that she helped shed light on the Black American woman. Her songs were about her personal experiences, as well as other Black women, revealing anguish, rage, love, and sexual desire. Author Kimberly Mack said, “Through storytelling in both the words that she sang and also her lifestyle, she fought against heteronormative ideas of what a woman should be.” Novelist and political activist, Alice Walker said Ma Rainey’s music was instrumental in helping shape the characters in The Color Purple. She said, “I loved the way they dealt with sexuality, with the relationships with men. They showed you had a whole self and you were not to succumb to being somebody else’s—as they would say—’play toy.’”
Ma Rainey was also unapologetic about her bisexuality. She didn’t hold back in hiding it and according to author, Sandra Lieb, would sing about “sissy men” and mannish women uninhibited and seemingly without judgment. When she was 18, she married William Rainey who she would later separate from 12 years later, after a decade of performing and touring together. Some claim she remarried although very little is known about her second husband. However, rumors about her relationships with other women began surfacing after she was arrested in 1925 for throwing an “intimate party” with some of her female dancers in Chicago. Bessie Smith, who was allegedly one of her lovers, was the person who bailed her out of jail. Her song, “Prove It On Me Blues” suggested her attraction to and affinity for women with lyrics, “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must’ve been women, ‘cause I don’t like no men. It’s true I wear a collar and tie.” Her record label, Paramount, later released an ad for the song with her wearing a men’s three-piece suit, mingling with two other women.
Ma Rainey was an immensely talented songwriter, who not only was one of the first recorded blues musicians, but recorded more than 100 singles. She would later be inducted into both the 1990 Blues Foundation and 1990 Rock & Roll Halls of Fameand four years later, be honored on a US postage stamp. In 2007, her Columbus, GA home was converted into a museum to honor her. Thank you, Ma Rainey, for shaping the way of music, paving the way for women, and inspiring the American dream.
HMI Awards Ball 2023