 |
Activist buttons surround a name badge for Denise C. Jones, member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
|
|
Processing the Denise C. Jones Papers
Contributed by kemisa kassa, Bingham Center Graduate Intern
When I was tasked with processing the Denise C. Jones collection I felt both excited and intimidated because this was a huge responsibility and wonderful opportunity to learn about a Black Lesbian Feminist I never knew about. Throughout the process I remained vigilant and focused on details because I didn’t want to miss anything. I followed the processing checklist I was given and independently parsed through the papers in the collections.
After earning a degree at Howard University, Denise C. Jones served as editor of the National Council for Negro Women’s SISTERS magazine, and freelance writer for the Afro-American Newspaper. Later she developed her career in journalism, as the Philadelphia correspondent for Democracy Now! and through the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). She co-founded the Philadelphia Women of Color Media Arts Collective, ImageWeavers, which brought together a community with many award-winning filmmakers. After returning to Washington, DC, and completing her master's degree, she began her journey as an out Black lesbian and engaged in work with Women in the Life, Mautner Project, Sisterspace and Books, and WPFW Pacifica Radio.For her master’s thesis Jones conducted interviews with Black feminist activists, including Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Dr. Allison Henderson, Ivy Young, Niani Kilkenny and Sandra Rattley.
In the first round of reviewing I noticed a lot of materials written by Denise Jones while she was working on her bachelor’s and master’s. I would stop to read over materials she’d written or received to understand the context of the documents. I read several of Jones’s academic papers and journal entries to gain a better understanding of the kind of person she was to her colleagues, friends and family. Her voice was distinct in everything she wrote with strength, passion and curiosity. When Jones wrote to friends, she spoke to them with care, and I sensed the vulnerability in her words with the people in her network.
Most of my experiences with archival description stem from theory and class discussion so I enjoyed getting hands on experience. This collection has eminent research value and references to prominent Black artists, writers, activists, and musicians. One of the challenges I faced while processing was learning to work with the audiovisual materials since that was new to me. Once I finished with processing, arranging, describing and rehousing all the materials it was still only a snapshot into the life of Denise C. Jones. This was a bittersweet experience because I learned so much, yet felt sad sending off the collection after working on the collection for two months.
| |
 |
An original illustration from Pharr's 1988 book Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism
|
|
Newly Processed MaterialsContributed by Ren Bickel, Processing Archivist
The joy of a repository like the Bingham Center is the wide range of women’s stories we preserve and make accessible through our collections. My technical services work over the last few months reflects the diversity of the Bingham Center’s holdings. The materials have ranged in scope from a single folder to 40 linear feet, manuscripts to t-shirts, institutional records to artwork, born-digital electronic records to rare analog audiovisual formats.
My largest project has been the papers of Black lesbian feminist writer-filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons. The collection documents her decades-long journey to create her powerful documentary No! The Rape Documentary as well as her other films, writings, and activism. We’re looking forward to opening this powerful collection to researchers soon.
Another significant project was incorporating new material into the papers of southern social justice activist and writer Suzanne Pharr, and updating the description to highlight Pharr’s work documenting the Christian nationalist movement in the United States.
I’ve also processed several small additions to existing collections. The most exciting for me consists of audio recordings from the Re-Imagining Conference, an intersectional conference of clergy, laypeople, and feminist theologians that created waves in the world of American Mainline Protestantism in 1993 and beyond. I’ve also added biographical comics to the Jenny Zervakis Papers; preserved the electronic records of philosopher, feminist theorist, and Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita, Elizabeth Grosz; and updated the Veteran Feminists of America Records.
| |
| Recent Publications and Happenings
| |
 |
A message of welcome posted on the door of the apartment shared by Minnie Bruce Pratt and Leslie Feinberg. Photo by Kelly Wooten.
|
|
Kelly Wooten, Bingham Center Research Services Librarian. recently published a reflection on acquiring the Leslie Feinberg Papers for a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies honoring Minnie Bruce Pratt, Feinberg's spouse.
Wooten, K. A. (2025). “Things People Gave Me”: the Leslie Feinberg Archives. Journal of Lesbian Studies.
Kimberly Lamm, Associate Professor in the Program of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke, published a piece drawing on correspondence from the Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick Papers.
Lamm, K. K. (2025). Caring sideways: Sedgwick’s queer siblings and feminism’s generational time. Feminist Theory, 26(3).
LitQuake, San Francisco's Literary Festival, hosted a marathon reading of Dorothy Allison's classic novel Bastard Out of Carolina in October. A recording of the program and a gallery of archival photos of Dorothy Allison from her papers are posted on the LitQuake website.
| |
 |
Protestors rally in support of Joan Little outside the NC Women's Prison in Raleigh, NC, November 1974. Nancy Blood Papers.
|
|
Save the Date: Freeing Joan Little
Thursday, January 29th, 2026, 5 - 6:00pm
Smith Warehouse, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4; 114 S Buchanan Blvd, Durham, NC
In 1974, a twenty-year-old Black woman named Joan Little faced the death penalty for killing a white guard who had tried to rape her in an eastern North Carolina prison. The folks who campaigned on Little’s behalf understood the webs of sexual, racial, and state violence that ensnared her, and they linked her trial to other sites of existential concern for Black women’s—and everyone’s—liberation. Her August 1975 acquittal spoke to the power and reach of their organizing. 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of this landmark case that still offers lessons in the struggle for justice.
Join historian Christina Greene, Ph.D. ’96, and death penalty lawyer Shelagh Kenney to discuss what Joan Little tells us about gender, incarceration, and state violence then and now. Adriane Lentz-Smith, Associate Professor of History and African & African American Studies at Duke University, will moderate.
| |
 |
The Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography, issue 2, 1982.
|
|
This fall Bingham Center staff acquired a number of rare periodicals, including:
Anarchist Feminist Notes [later Anarcha-Feminist Notes]. Ithaca, NY: 1976-1978. A complete run of this 4-issue newsletter. “Our purpose began as study, and for the first year and a half we read Anarchist theory together…later we put out a newsletter, sponsored an Anarcha-Feminist Conference and got involved in local political issues.”
The Blatant Image: A Magazine of Feminist Photography. Sunny Valley, OR: 1981-1983. A complete three-issue run of a pioneering photo magazine published by Rootworks, a womyn’s land community in Oregon.
Daily Breakthrough: Where Women Are News. Houston: Houston Breakthrough, 1977. A run of three issues of a newspaper published on Nov. 18, 19, and 20, 1977, during the National Women's Conference in Houston.
| |
The Bingham Center continues to have a strong presence in with undergraduate instruction across the disciplines. These are a few of the classes we supported this semester:
- Gender in the Economy
- Political Economy of Care
- Sex, Pleasure, and Justice: Reproductive Utopias
- To Boldly Go! Global Health and the Ethics of Engagement
- When Fiction Meets History
- Women, Purpose, Leadership (Baldwin Scholars Capstone)
- Writing 120: Writing Reproductive Justice
- Zines (Highschool Homeschool Cooperative)
| |
Harriet Desmoines, co-founder of the long-running lesbian literary magazine Sinister Wisdom, uses a manual guillotine to trim pages. This photograph is from materials related to Catherine Nicholson, Harriet's partner and co-founder, from the Allan Troxler Papers. Collections like Troxler's enhance our documentation of North Carolina's rich LGBTQ history and demonstrate the depth of community in Durham and beyond.
| |
|
