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An Excerpt from Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History

Introduction Born in 1811 on a riverboat in Siam, Chang and Eng, the original Siamese Twins, were brought to America in 1829 for a touring exhibition as freaks. They soon...

Beyond Fairyland: Writing and Curating Queer Miami

Introduction Julio Capó, Jr. during a curator's guided tour of the exhibition Queer Miami: A History of LGBTQ Communities, Miami, Florida, June 6, 2019. Photograph by Michele Reese. Courtesy of...

Haiti and the Fear of Insurrection: A Review of The Slaveholding Crisis

Review Warning the governor of Kentucky that the white South stood on the brink of destruction in 1860, secession commissioner Stephen F. Hale wrote that Lincoln's election "inaugurates all the...

A Plague of Bulldozers: Celestine Sibley and Suburban Sprawl

Introduction Roswell development, 2008 In her 1995 murder mystery, A Plague of Kinfolks, journalist and fiction writer Celestine Sibley (1914–1999) made her feelings clear about Atlanta's sprawl into the area...

Call for Submissions: Remembering COVID-19

Call for Submissions Southern Spaces invites scholars, critics, writers, health care providers, public health practitioners, activists, media producers, community organizers, and patients to submit 1,000-word blog posts, as well as...

MARBL Presents Atlanta Intersections: Photographer Chip Simone on Atlanta and Photography

Atlanta Intersections features Atlantans in conversation with Randy Gue, curator of Modern Political and Historical Collections at Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL). In collaboration with Southern...

MARBL Presents Atlanta Intersections: Susannah Darrow on Arts Organizations in Atlanta

Climate Change & Coral Reefs: Global Challenges from a Caribbean Perspective

Presentation About the Speaker James W. Porter is the Meigs Distinguished Professor of Ecology at the University of Georgia and a faculty member in School of Marine Programs, Water Resources and Conservation Ecology. Porter has...

Atlanta's Charis Books and More: Histories of a Feminist Space

Introduction Atlanta's feminist bookstore, Charis Books and More, founded in November 1974, remains a central fixture of Atlanta's Little Five Points, a revitalized inner-city business district that spills over into...

References
1.	This essay is adapted from Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda C. Gable's "'Women Ran It': Charis Books and More and Atlanta's Lesbian-Feminist Community, 1971–1981" in John Howard, (ed.) Carryin' On in the Lesbian and Gay South (New York: New York University Press, 1997): 241–284. Elizabeth Anderson contributed the epilogue to this updated version.
2.	Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1990.
3.	The term is taken from what is arguably the most-cited manifesto of lesbian feminism, "Women Identified Woman," written by the Radicalesbians, first distributed as a "position paper" at the second Congress to Unite Women in May 1970, and first published in the Ladder 11/12 (August/September 1970).
4.	A few members of this community were women of color or women from non-middle-class backgrounds. However, as Faderman notes with regard to young lesbians of this period who had been born into poor or working-class families, "the democratization of higher education in the 1960s meant that they might get an education (and the verbal and analytical skills that went with it) such as only women of middle-class backgrounds might have had earlier" (Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America [New York: Columbia University Press, 1991]: 197). This was the case in the Little Five Points lesbian-feminist community; most of the young women who were part of it, even if they had been raised poor or working-class, had been to college by the time they joined the community. Some were students at the time, most at nearby Emory University or Georgia State University. We might note also here the sense in which we use the term community: Susan Krieger notes that "some lesbian communities are geographically specific . . . ; some exist within institutions (e.g., prisons); some exist only in spirit; some are ideological (e.g., lesbian feminist); some primarily social. All are groups in which an individual may share her distinctively lesbian way of being with other lesbians" (Susan Krieger, "Review Essay: Lesbian Identity and Community: Recent Social Science Literature" in Estelle B. Freedman, Barbara C. Gelpi, Susan L. Johnson, and Kathleen M. Weston, (eds.) The Lesbian Issue: Essays from Signs [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985]: 224.) Using Krieger's typology, Atlanta's Little Five Points lesbian community was, during the 1970s, at once geographical, ideological, and social.
5.	Information about other communities is to be found in Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); and Becki Ross, The House That Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). Informal communications with lesbians who later moved to Atlanta from other parts of the country confirm these written sources with regard to the dates of emergence and the political and lifestyle characteristics of lesbian-feminist communities in other urban centers in the United States. It is worth noting that this information contradicts received wisdom about the South, which holds that "things happen later" here than in other parts of the country and often differ markedly in character.
6.	According to Tina McElroy Ansa, Little Five Points's decline had been caused by a combination of factors, including "the city's growth and suburban flight" as well as the "razing" of a number of houses "to prepare for expressways in that part of east Atlanta" (Tina McElroy Ansa, "Reborn: Shops and Businesses Popping Up" Atlanta Journal and Constitution, August 23, 1978, B1, B4.)
7.	Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1990.
8.	Atlanta's first Gay Pride march was held in June 1970, even before the GLF was founded; 125 people, mostly gay men, marched, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution refused to cover the event. The GLF did organize 1971's Gay Pride celebration.
9.	Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1990.
10.	Information about ALFA and related groups and activities is based on the ALFA Newsletter, renamed the Atalanta (ALFA Newsletter/Atalanta, newsletter of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance, vols. 1–8, Durham, NC: Duke University Library Special Collection, 1973–1980.), as well as on interviews with Anne, Jane, Chris Carroll, Lorraine Fontana, Jo Angela Hartsoe, Sonya Jones, and Elizabeth Knowlton. Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March, 22 1990; Chris Carroll, interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, May 24, 1990; Lorraine Fontana, interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, January 10, 1995; Jo Angela Hartsoe, interviewed by Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, May 10, 1990; Sonya Jones, interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1996; Elizabeth Knowlton, interview by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, January 14, 1995. The personal recollections of one of the authors, Saralyn Chesnut, also figure into this account. See also Vicki Gabriner and Susan Wells, "Nurturing a Lesbian Organization" in Ginny Vida, ed., Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978): 134–39. At its height ALFA had about 125 members; women who never joined the organization but participated in its activities and attended lesbian-feminist events numbered an additional two hundred to three hundred.
11.	Mev Miller, A Labor of Love: A Tribute to Twenty-five Years of Feminist and Lesbian Publishers and Bookstores, radio documentary (Minneapolis: Radio Studios of KFAI-FM, 1995). Although at first we found Charis's initial ties to a religious group surprising, it makes sense historically: religious groups and churches have often played important roles in social movements in the United States, perhaps more so in the South than in other regions. As Sara Evans documents (1979), the roots of women's liberation and New Left movements were in the civil rights movement, and the civil rights movement, for both blacks and whites, had deep roots in the southern church. Looked at in this light, Charis provides an unexpected but crucial continuity among social movements in the South—from civil rights to feminism to lesbian/gay/bisexual rights. For instance, Evans points out that white southern Protestantism provided a space for a radical critique of segregation in the 1950s and that in her interviews and research, every white southern women who joined the civil rights movement did so through her involvement I the church (Sara Evans,Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left [New York: Vintage Books, 1979]: 29–35). Linda's life fits this paradigm: She gained an analysis of racial oppression from a high school Young Life leader in Gainesville, Florida; was introduced to feminism through a Young Life feminist theology class; and became part of a consciousness-raising group started by her Young Life woman friends in Atlanta. Later, she came out as a lesbian. Barbara Borgman's life has also combined religion and social activism. In 1995, when we interviewed her, she had recently returned to the United States from teaching in Africa with her husband and children and was living in the Jubilee Partners community, a Christian-based community in Comer, Georgia, that in part helps refugees from countries such as Bosnia enter the United States, learn English, and find work (Barbara Borgman, interviewed by Amanda Gable and Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Comer, GA, February 2, 1995.)
12.	Linda remembers carrying Charis Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospels and books by Thomas Merton as well as women's novels by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Tillie Olsen, and Rosellen Brown.
13.	Later, in 1979, when Womanspirit Rising (edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow) was published, Linda and Barbara were pleased to discover that Charis was an early designation of the mother goddess recognized by the Gnostics.
14.	Barbara's husband worked with an arm of this group, Project Propinquity.
15.	The relationship with Exodus and the store's nonprofit status remained until 1980/81, when Exodus decided it was too difficult (even unwieldy) to maintain the necessary financial records for Charis's separate operation.
16.	Barbara Borgman, interviewed by Amanda Gable and Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Comer, GA, February 2, 1995.
17.	Ibid. Barbara couldn't remember the titles of the two gay books they stocked after the men requested them. She added in the interview that at that time that she didn't know very much about what to order for gay men or lesbians.
18.	Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1990.
19.	Jo Angela Hartsoe, interviewed by Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, May 10, 1990
20.	Jane and Anne [pseud.], interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, March 22, 1990.
21.	Chris Carroll, interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, May 24, 1990
22.	Linda Bryant, interviewed by Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda Gable, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, May 10, 1990.
23.	ALFA members were among the primary organizers of this conference. See Third Annual Southeastern Conference of Gay Men and Lesbians program, in possession of the authors.
24.	Julia Strong, interviewed by Amanda Gable and Saralyn Chesnut, tape recording, Atlanta, GA, June 22, 1995.
25.	Obviously, conflict is inevitable in all groups, although in hierarchical groups, those in authority typically decide how the conflict will be settled and enforce their views on the others involved. In a nonhierarchical group, the process to resolve a conflict can often be more creative but also more exhausting.
26.	In Lynette Eastland's 1991 study of a Utah feminist bookstore, serious conflict was created by the fact that women in the collective worked differing numbers of hours but retained equal say in the operation of the store (Lynette Eastland, Communication, Organization, and Change Within a Feminist Context: An Observation of a Feminist Collective [Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991].)
27.	Kathleen M. Weston and Lisa B. Rofel, "Sexuality, Class and Conflict in a Lesbian Workplace," in Estelle B. Freedman, Barbara C. Gelpi, Susan L. Johnson, and Kathleen M. Weston, eds., The Lesbian Issue: Essays from Signs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984): 199–222.
28.	Carol Seajay (founder, with her lover Paula Wallace, of Old Wives' Tales bookstore in San Francisco) commented at the 1993 Outwrite Conferece that someone should study how attractions and relationships have affected feminist projects.
29.	The collective consisted of Linda Bryant, Barbara Borgman, Julia Strong, Maya Smith, and Judy Sanderson.
30.	Linda Bryant, letter to the advisory board/collective of Charis Books and More, July 4, 1981, from store records in Linda Bryant's possession.
31.	When ALFA closed her doors in 1994, she was the oldest continuously operating lesbian organization in the country.
32.	This information comes from the Feminist Bookstore Network Newsletter.
33.	This is from Elizabeth Anderson's recent research, calling and emailing booksellers.
34.	Though she remains involved in numerous ways, Linda Bryant sold her share of Charis in 2006. The current owners are Sara Look and Angela Gabriel.
35.	Another small upstart gay bookstore, Christopher's Kind, opened, but it closed after a relatively short period of time.

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