Hampton, Mabel

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HAMPTON, Mabel

HAMPTON, Mabel (b. 2 May 1902; d. 26 October 1989), entertainer, domestic worker, activist.

In 1984 Mabel Hampton addressed the rain-soaked crowd at New York's annual gay pride rally with these words: "I, Mabel Hampton, 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 country and all over the world, my gay people and my black people" (Nestle, p. 48). Orphaned at birth in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at age seven, Hampton was taken to live with her uncle and aunt in Greenwich Village after the sudden death of her beloved grandmother. Though she was to spend the rest of her life in New Jersey and New York City, Hampton never forgot the colors of those early southern days:

We had a backyard; I can see it right now, that backyard. It had red roses, white roses, roses that went upside the house. On Saturdays we go out hunting blackberries, strawberries, peaches. My girlfriends lived on each side of the street: Anna Lou Thomas, Hattie Harris, Lucille Crump. Oh-OOh-O Anna Lou Thomas, she was good lookin, she was a good lookin girl. (Nestle, p. 31)

As a seven-year-old, Hampton danced in the streets for the pennies thrown from Village windows. After mistreatment by her uncle, Hampton ran away to Hoboken, New Jersey, where she was taken in by the Whites, an African American family.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Hampton left her job as a domestic worker and joined an all-women's dance group performing in Coney Island. Appearing in all-black reviews at Harlem's Garden Of Joy and the Lafayette Theater in Harlem, she enjoyed herself at several of the pansexual parties thrown by A'lelia Walker, the famous flapper daughter of Madame Walker. Swept up by the free-swinging cultural life of the Harlem Renaissance, Hampton socialized with Gladys Bentley, Moms Mabely, Alberta Hunter, and the Waters, as she called Ethel Waters and her girlfriend.

After being falsely arrested on charges of prostitution during an all-women's party in Harlem, Hampton spent thirteen months in the Bedford Hills Prison for Women, where she found tenderness in the arms of other women. In 1927 Hampton was in the audience for a performance of the lesbian-themed play, The Captive (soon to be closed by the anti-vice police), and met Helen Menken, the leading lady who asked her, "Why did you like the show?" The twenty-five-year-old Miss Hampton replied, "Because it seems a part of my life and what I am and hope to be" (Nestle, p. 37).

In 1932 Hampton met Lillian Foster, the woman who would be her wife until Foster's death in 1978. They made their home in the Bronx, Foster working as a presser and Hampton as a domestic worker and matron at Jacobi Hospital. Hampton was an air raid warden during the war, heard Paul Robeson's concert at Carnegie Hall in 1940, followed the careers of Josephine Baker and Christine Jorgensen, and attended performances of the National Negro Opera Company. In her beloved study, Hampton organized her growing library of books on African American culture, LGBT culture, and mysticism, becoming a lifelong member of The Order of the Eastern Star and the Rosicrucians. For the next twenty years, the Bronx home of the two women was a gathering place for a community of Bronx lesbian women who held house parties, organized all-lesbian boat trips up the Hudson River, and attended Harlem's yearly drag balls, huge events that attracted hundreds of people.

In the 1960s Hampton, still working in the hospital, supported the civil rights movement and became involved in the early LGB rights movement. Lillian Foster died in 1978 and Hampton spent more time at the Upper West Side home of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, where she held court every Thursday night for adoring visitors from all over the world, answering questions about her life with her anthem, "What do you mean, when did I come out? I was never in!" (Nestle, p. 27). She appeared in the films Silent Pioneers (1984) and Before Stonewall (1985); gave interviews; became friends with Ann Allen Schockley, Jewelle Gomez, and Audre Lorde; and attended lesbian music festivals. She marched in the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on 14 October 1979 and participated throughout the 1980s in the yearly New York lesbian and gay pride marches. When she could no longer walk the distance, she took great pleasure in riding with the SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) contingent. Hampton died of a stroke on 26 October 1989. To the obituary written by her friends, the New York Times added the misleading ending line: she leaves no survivors.

Through her generosity in sharing her stories, Hampton changed the American historical record. In her many oral history tapes and video interviews, she brought alive the twentieth-century realities of a working-class, African American lesbian woman who stood her ground.

Bibliography

Hampton, Mabel. Special Collection. Lesbian Herstory Archives, Brooklyn, New York.

Hampton, Mabel. "I Didn't Go Back There Anymore: Mabel Hampton Talks about the South." Feminary 10 (1979): 7–17.

Nestle, Joan. "I Lift My Eyes to the Hill: The Life of Mabel Hampton As Told by a White Woman." In A Fragile Union: New and Selected Writings. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1998.

Joan Nestle