MABEL HAMPTON (SHE/HER) 1902-1989

“I have been a lesbian all my life, for eighty-two years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this world, my gay people and my black people.”

Mabel Hampton was born in Winston-Salem in North Carolina and had a tough upbringing. Her mother died when she was two. She lived with her grandmother until she died when Mabel was nine. She then came to live with other relatives who abused her sexually and violently.

Mabel came to New York around 1920 where she worked as a dancer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Other prominent LGBT black Americans such as Ethel Waters and Ethel Williams (whom she called ‘the two Ethels’), and Gladys Bentley. In her later life she talked warm-heartedly in interviews about the thriving lives of queer and lesbian people during her younger years in Harlem.

She was also an LGBT rights and black liberation activist. Mabel was a prominent contributor and volunteer to the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Fun fact is that she named her dog Liberation. In 1932 she met the love of her life Lillian Foster, whom she lived with until Foster’s death in 1978.

FOR MORE INFO:

Listen to the podcast Making Gay History, Season 15 here.

It includes an interview with Mabel Hampton by longtime friend and activist Joan Nestle.