De Colores: Lesbians of Color in Northampton

Project Directed by Erika Slocumb

The Lesbians of Color in Northampton Oral History Project is an exploration of the lives of women of the global majority who came to Northampton to live, work, and learn in the late 1970s and 80s. It was funded by Mass Humanities.  The De Colores banner (ID 2023.18.3) and photograph (ID 2022.30) are at Historic Northampton, part of the Lesbians of Color Northampton Collection.

Photograph of the famous ‘Lesbianville USA’ article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 14, 1992. Courtesy of Carol Lollis, Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Because of Second Wave Feminist and Lesbian Feminist activism in Northampton, the city early on became a nationally known destination for women seeking kindred souls, well before the national media imposed the term “Lesbianville, USA” on Northampton in the 1990s. The narrators of the Lesbians of Color story came to Northampton seeking an opportunity to be themselves. Some had not been “out” before they came to the city. Here, they found kinship bonds that would enable them to thrive in this predominately white space. 

The Lesbians of Color in Northampton project began in the summer of 2022, as an exploration of the lives of women of the global majority who came to Northampton to live, work and/or participate in the Lesbian culture beginning to form in the city during the 1970s and 80s. But as project director, Erika Slocumb, spoke with our narrators, and delved into the stories that they had about their experiences, it became a conversation about the ways by which Black and Brown women found each other, nurtured each other, and built a community through the organization, De Colores.

In 1985, three Black women, Toni Brown, Earline Robinson, and Pippa Fleming decided to create a way for lesbians of the global majority to commune with each other in Northampton. And so, De Colores was born. It was “a space where [they] could just exhale,” a safe, comforting space, according Marcel Walters.

Though this project began as a way to tell the history of lesbians of color, who felt unheard, but created a collective voice and space that not only nurtured the women in the 1980s but persisted long after many of them had left the area, it became the means to tell the broader history of women of color in Northampton. The spirit of De Colores is one that is alive today in Northampton, among elder lesbians that have a story to tell, and with those younger generations eager to learn and build community for themselves.  

This project is just the beginning of a deeper and more nuanced history of what it means to be a Black or Brown lesbian in “Lesbianville USA.” 

View this video by NEPM highlighting DeColores, with excerpts from the Lesbians of Color in Northampton oral histories.

The Lesbians of Color oral histories were donated to Historic Northampton and digital copies are available upon request. View catalog for more information.

View other LGBTQ+ collections at Historic Northampton.

See also the Northampton and Valley LGBTQ+ History Timeline.