@ MICA’s Main Zero Gallery on March 17th 2025 until April 12th 2025

In 1993, when Wanda and Brenda Henson bought their property in central Mississippi, it seemed their vision of Eden had finally been realized—a land battle won after years of broken rent agreements and outside pressure to abandon the region altogether for a more welcoming environment. But they stayed, finding their land lush with elms and creeks that reflected their prospering mission of queer Southern solidarity—one they had been embarking on their entire lives as mobilizing lesbians from the Deep South.

It was through an understanding of the community’s needs and grassroots funding that the couple purchased a 120-acre plot of land in Ovett, which would come to house a community crisis center, feminist education programs, a food bank, and one of the largest libraries in the county. The hope was to protect women by bringing them together.

But communing was not simple; in a matter of weeks they were targeted—tacks sprinkled on their roads, bomb threats called into their office, and a dog slaughtered and stuffed with sanitary pads draped over their mailbox. The message was as clear as it was expected: they were unwelcome.

The Hensons were not the first to imagine a Southern refuge built by and for women. A century earlier, in Belton, Texas, another group sought self-sufficiency outside the confines of patriarchal systems. Led by Martha McWhirter, the Sanctificationists founded what is considered the first women’s shelter in the United States. They were daring and financially independent at a time when that promised violence. Though begun in Christian ideology, the systems of the group developed to democratically address the problems of the women, namely domestic violence.

Despite this, their history remains largely unknown—even in Belton, where only one Sanctificationist-occupied building still stands: Martha’s house, half-burnt, half-flooded, and listed online under her husband’s name. It’s an underwhelming archaeology and a quiet reminder of the fragile permanence of these spaces.

The misconception about stories like theirs is that estrangement is inherent to place—that the only option is a mass queer diaspora out of the South. But for generations, women and LGBTQ+ folk have carved out spaces for themselves, standing at the intersection of belonging and erasure.

My great-aunt Nook has lived in Birmingham, Alabama, since 1968. She moved from central Florida to pursue her education and stayed, in part, because of her duties as a public school teacher, but also because it was there that she found the ground to live with an openness about herself, to embrace her desire of community and of loving partnership.

Now, as she lives with dementia, it is her chosen family of women, most of whom are queer themselves, that look after her. In her home, I see the raw nerves of these past movements—not in the form of an official commune, camp, or separatist site, but in the evidence of choice, of gathering, of care.

Despite the violence, despite the burned and buried experiences, connection endures. A Queer South is a true history but not a relic; it’s a living, breathing thing.