Courageous
Human Wrong Stoppers - Camp Sister Spirit
The
co-founders of Camp Sister Spirit, Brenda and Wanda
Henson a married couple, are full-time social change
and community enhancement activists, adult educators,
human rights defenders and courageous human wrong
stoppers who have initiated, developed and established
a food bank, escort service to reproductive clinics,
crisis line, counseling and referral services, displaced
homemakers’ refuge and a clothes closet program
at their safe space in Ovett, Mississippi. They
also produce and host the Gulf Coast Women’s
Music Festival and outreach their services to women
and children in San Salvador and Isla Mujeres, Mexico.
Mission
Statement
Camp
Sister Spirit is a feminist retreat and safe space
located in Ovett, Mississippi. The group was co-founded
by Brenda and Wanda Henson (Wanda changed her surname
to Henson, on December 16, 1988 to honour their
special love bond by sharing Brenda’s mother’s
surname). Sister Spirit Incorporated/Camp Sister
Spirit’s mission statement is to make available
information, referral, education, advocacy and meeting
space to address social issues including but NOT
LIMITED TO racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, looksism,
fat oppression, anti-Semitism, family abuse/violence,
sexual abuse/incest, housing, hunger, health care,
fair labor practices, animal rescue, economic justice,
and environmental issues. CSS Website: http://www.campsisterspirit.com.
Life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness for American lesbian
pioneers
Brenda
Henson M. Ed, is a former barmaid from Loveland,
Ohio. Wanda Henson MA, from Pascagoula, Jackson
County Mississippi is a former Southern Baptist
Sunday school teacher and presently a nurse. The
women first met in 1981, working at domestic violence
refuges and women’s clinics in Gulfport. Both
women served as escorts for teenagers running what
Brenda Henson once described to me as “a gauntlet
of abuse and terror”, while going to from abortion
clinics. Both women were married and mothers at
16 years old, both women have 2 children. Wanda
lost custody of her children after she handed them
to her ex husband, believing he was taking them
on holiday. However, he refused to return the children.
Wanda was in full time employment as a nurse; she
owned her own home but like many other mothers seeking
custodial rights in Mississippi, she lost her custodial
battle. Faced with the legal loss of her children,
it would be easy to predict what human wrong the
Hensons’ would seek to eradicate next. They
added advocating for women involved in custody disputes,
which might include mothers seeking custodial litigation
in progressive states. (In the mid-to-late 1980’s,
Mississippi mothers Karen Newsom and Dorrie Singley
were forced to ‘kidnap’ their daughters
and/or flee the state to rescue their (allegedly)
sexually abused children from court-awarded paternal
custody (After Newsom’s arrest, the Hensons
picketed the jail on her behalf). See: Sister,
Fear Has No Place Here by Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D
Southern
Wild Sisters Unlimited
In
1987 the Henson’s leased a much needed community
resource and base for their ever growing advocacy.
This ranged from gay and lesbian concerns, abortion
clinic escort provision, assisting mothers with
custodial rights, sexual abuse victims, HIV treatment
and food provision for those less fortunate. However,
the centre, the Southern Wild Sisters Unlimited
community bookshop, was forced to close down within
2 years. A forced closure attributed to prejudice
and ignorance surrounding HIV and for others within
the Gulfport community, the use of lavender paint
by the Hensons at the front of their shop was perceived
as strident or defiant. A step that would open flood
gates of vilification and further pave the way for
a “witch hunt” against the bookshop owners,
primarily from religious fundamentalists. This closure
prompted a search by the Hensons for a base they
could own outright and this opportunity arose in
a 120 acre pig farm site in Ovett, the present day
home of Camp Sister Spirit.
Jones
County Mississippi – a 1960’s Klu Klux
Klan Hot Bed
The
Mississippi Senate voted in February 1995 to abolish
slavery - 130 years after the rest of the country.
Mississippi is the only state that never ratified
the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865,
holding out because slave owners were not compensated
for freed slaves. (Center
for Democratic Renewal, 1996)
Despite
all, that has gone before, the Hensons’ journey
to right human wrongs remains unassuming in every
aspect. The Hensons are not always the “helpers”.
Sometimes, they are the recipients and likewise
they are not always the educators, they are the
pupils. Their camp, a 120 acre site in Ovett, Jones
county Mississippi was purchased in July 1993, for
$60,000 and by all outward appearance the location
was a perfect, idyllic and isolated rural safe space
setting. However, any sister spirit euphoria was
short lived, because what followed shaped the “camp
sister” dream into an intense 2 year nightmare
and struggle, rife with fear, akin to the Mississippi
Ku Klux Klan lynching era, 30 years previous, when
Ovett’s townsfolk and leaders learned that
their new neighbours, the Hensons, were Lesbians.
“Die
Bitch”
The
Hensons’ puppy had been shot, stuffed with
sanitary napkins, then draped over the camp mailbox
with the note “Die Bitch.” See Southern
Success Story by Bonnie J. Morris.
Ovett’s opposition against the Lesbian humanitarians
manifested itself in Camp shoot- bys, burnings,
intimidation, violence, bigotry, hate, smear, the
killing of the Henson’s pet puppy, law suits
and television talk show appearances and intervention
by federal mediators from the Justice Department’s
Community Relations Service on the instruction of
US Attorney General, Janet Reno. The public opposition
against Camp Sister Spirit was headed up by about
18 Southern Baptist Ministers and the Mississippians
for Family Values Group. A campaign the “Sisters”
countered with their gentle but permeating humility
and a determined desire to remain true at all costs,
as visible humanitarian women, feminists and lesbians.
It was this deep determination within the liberated
American women, (who also, happened to be in love
with each other), that emerged from the “Old
South” style violent confrontation strongest
and indeed, steadfast in the “post Jim Crow”
state described by Wanda Henson when speaking to
a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, July
6, 1994 as a state where, “The traditional
Southern standard that lesbians and gay Americans
are sub-human must end.” A minuscule beginning
to this long end arrived in July 1995, when Judge
Frank Mac Kenzie ruled against a nuisance suit,
filed by the Ovett, Mississippians for Family Values’
and when Mac Kenzie declared camp Sister Spirit
a legal retreat.
Wedding Day
“The
Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and
equality of all individuals,” wrote Chief Justice
Margaret Marshall. “It forbids the creation
of second-class citizens.” 18/11/2004
The
Hensons are a loving, human, lesbian, long term
(more than 20 years) couple, who were recently legally
married in April 2004. Ironically, their same sex
legal marriage occurred in Massachusetts and not
their home state of Mississippi. Therefore, if Justice
Marshall’s logic is followed through and applied
to Mississippi and 16 other American states which
ban same sex marriages. Could this mean, 17 US states
including President Bush, who has placed federal
anti-gay marriage amendment as a priority, are indignant,
disproportionate and potentially confirming “the
creation of second class citizens.” (Gays
thankful for acceptance one year after Mass. marriage
ruling)
Humanitarians
During
my short time around the Hensons in 2001, it became
clear for me that the “Sisters” are acutely
attuned to the pain of others and fully committed
to alleviating the cause of suffering. I quickly
recognized an incredible sister spirit empathy which
emanated with ease from Brenda and Wanda Hensons’
extraordinary love of people and their assured spirit
to triumph over adversity. The “Sisters”
are determined to be a provider of safe “Sister
Spirit” refuge for hurt and oppressed people.
They have a dream and they want not only to fulfill
it but to deliver it. Their dream is borne from
years of hurting, isolation, loneliness and scorn.
It is from such experience that they can instinctively
derive a position of knowing exactly what they don’t
want and immediately set out to stop it happening.
Worldwide
Sister Spirit
More
than 4000 volunteers, gay, lesbian and other, from
around the globe have traveled to serve at Camp
Sister Spirit. This bears testimony to Camp Sister
Spirit’s ever growing success and popularity.
Furthermore, a recent promotional Camp Sister Spirit
tour of Ireland in 2001 was initially inspired by
a male lecturer and subsequently spearheaded by
heterosexual male students attending the University
of Ulster at Jordanstown. The proposal of a Camp
Sister Spirit tour endorsed and financed by the
University was delayed then disregarded as “too
controversial” by the campus vice chancellor
(a female). Similar soundings, implicit disapproval,
lack of support and at best only feigned interest
followed from many student representatives and national
officers, leaving the Jordanstown students and its
campus union representatives standing alone within
the Irish Universities and Students’ Union
sector in relation to a Camp Sister Spirit, Irish
tour.
Next Issue - Camp Sister Spirit Irish Tour 2001
