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Snapshot continues to persist on sapphic rage and Lesbian solidarity into 2023! Sinister Snapshot is Sinister Wisdom’s biweekly newsletter with a featurette and lots of links. If you have suggestions for future editions of Sinister Snapshot, send them to info@sinisterwisdom.org.
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Customize your email preferences to continue receiving Snapshot. Beginning in March, Sinister Wisdom will employ segmented email lists. To prompt the error message that allows you to change said preferences, you must first reenter your information. See below.
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America's First Biracial Lesbian Architect: Amaza Lee Meredith
by Sierra Earle
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Amazee Lee Meredith courtesy of the New York State Historic Preservation Office
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On the campus of Virginia State University, the state of Virginia's first land grant college for African Americans, stands a modular stucco building with curved edges, glass block windows, and cyan trim. Its doors face away from campus and its bedroom windows were once obscured by mature cedar trees. This building, named “Azurest South,” is one of the only examples of International Style and is unlike anything in the surrounding area. In the 1993 induction of “Azurest South” into the National Register of Historic Places, a second bedroom is listed as belonging to the architect’s “companion,” Dr. Edna Meade Colson.
This architect, Amaza Lee Meredith, was prohibited from receiving formal training or registering as an architect because of “both her sex and race.” Obscured and without formal recognition, this is the narrative of our Queer ancestors, especially our BIPOC Queer ancestors; yet Amaza Lee Meredith’s refusal to accept the prescribed hierarchy has left behind physical artifacts of a well-lived life despite the systemic oppression that writes such a narrative.
“Azurest South” was not the only building that Amaza Lee Meredith designed; she designed homes for friends and family, a luxury resort in Long Island, and was a real estate developer for a neighborhood of summer vacation homes for Black families in Sag Harbor, New York (with the help of her sister Maude Terry). Some of these buildings still stand today.
Amaza Lee’s dream of becoming an architect was cultivated by her father, a white carpenter, who taught her how to mock up blueprints and build models. After her father’s suicide, her mother would continue to work to provide for Amaza Lee and her siblings to ensure they would receive an education, as she thought education was what would reverse the racist opinions held by the majority.
Though Amaza Lee initially went to university to for a teaching certificate, she would later move to New York City in 1926 to attend and teach at Columbia University. There she furthered her education in a variety of topics including studies on modern interior design and continued to nurture her architectural ambitions. She also became more familiar with The New Negro Movement and identified as a member of The Talented Tenth.
Her partner (as she is now identified) was equally engaged; Dr. Edna Meade Colson was the Dean of Virginia State University and publicly fought for access to graduate education for Black Americans and for suffrage. Amaza Lee met Edna while she was pursuing her teaching certificate at Virginia State University. Amaza Lee Meredith would also later become a professor at Virginia State University and founded the University’s Fine Arts Department. The two would move into “Azurest South” upon its completion in 1939.
As a part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Where Woman Made History” campaign, “Azurest South” got a fresh coat of paint to preserve and resurface the history behind the home. Watch the panel discussing the project (Maria Chabot and the homes of other infamous lesbians were also included in this), “Preserving the Places Where Women Made Art.”
The story of Amaza Lee continues the conversation of what Lesbian art is, and how Lesbianism affects art. In the case of “Azurest South,” it is that Queerness of design that seems to reflect the Queerness of Amaza Lee’s lifestyle as a biracial woman.
There were far too many interesting facets of this woman’s life to list in this featurette, I hope you click some of the links and keep exploring for yourself!
Read about more Black Queer Historic Places. Also, read “Amaza Lee Meredith and the Art of Leisure” by Jasmine Weber.
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Azurest South, taken by Calder Loth
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Join Sinister Wisdom and Charis Books and More on March 2 at 7:30 P.M. E.T. for a discussion and reading of Drastic Dykes and Accidental Activists: Queer Women in the Urban South. Author La Shonda Mims will be in conversation with Julie R. Enszer. La Shonda Mims considers a constructed archive including feminist newsletters and queer bar guides to explore the complex nature of lesbian life in the South. Mims's work reveals significant differences between gay men's and lesbian women's lived experiences, with lesbians often missing out on the promises of prosperity that benefitted some members of gay communities. Register here.
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Join Sinister Wisdom book club on March 7 for a discussion of This Unlikely Soil, including a special thirty minutes with the author Andrea Routley! This Unlikely Soil is a quintet of linked novellas exploring the failures of kindness and connection among a rural west coast community of Queer women. Register here.
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The National Black Writers Conference Biennial Symposium on March 31 will celebrate the theme of Black Speculative. Sheree Renée Thomas and Jewell Parker Rhodes will receive the Octavia E. Butler Award. Writers such as Jewelle Gomez, Deirdre Hollman, Wayétu Moore, and L. Penelope will also be in attendance. The core program will be in-person in Brooklyn, New York, but presentations on the scholarship in the genre will be offered virtually. Register here.
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The Oakland-based publishing house Nomadic Press is closing. The 12-year-old press focused on the works of Queer BIPOC writers and cultivating local community. SFF/Nomadic Press will be awarding $50,000 to 10 writers in Alameda, Contra Costa, or San Francisco. If you missed Yeva Johnson read Analog Poet Blues, watch here (starting at 41:00).
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DJ Shineye pushed the limits of music in lesbian bars and created space for Queer BIPOC women in London. Read about her and the Sistermatic collective; which held monthly club nights that became pillars of their community here
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Pierre Louys’ Les Chanson de Bilitis (The Songs of Bilitis) is a collective of erotic poetry published in 1934. According to Pierre Louys, these poems were translations of found poems of one of Sappho's contemporaries. Flashbak, which resurfaces forgotten art histories, posted photos of the verses imagined by artist George Barbier and they are quite as fantastic as his mistranslations.
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Ronna Magy's poem "Long View" was published in Stone Poetry Quarterly.
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As a part of a residency honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Cheryl Clarke explores the concept of Martin Luther King Jr.'s concept of "beloved community" and how Black Queer folks must include themselves in that community.
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Pauli Murray is to be featured on U.S. quarters! The gender-fluid, socialist, civil rights activist and lawyer is amongst other feminist icons to be featured. Another is Civil War-era surgeon, women's rights advocate, and abolitionist Dr. Mary Edwards Walker.
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“Big Mama Thornton embodied a statuesque model of unapologetic Black queerness decades ahead of her time.” Pamela Sneed writes about her influence and what the recent Elvis movie got wrong about her in them.
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As a foreword to Akwugo Emejulu’s book Fugitive Feminism, Edna Bonhomme writes about "How Black feminist radicals have expanded what it means to be free."
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Blue Jean is about a closeted lesbian PE teacher in the late 1980s living under Margaret Thatcher's era of English Conservative government, which banned the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools. Read the reflections of the two women who inspired the film.
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If you would like to support Sinister Wisdom's thriving Lesbian community, please consider donating or subscribing. Your support is vital to our mission of profiling, supporting, and nurturing Lesbian culture as well as providing educational resources to women and Lesbians. Thank you to our sustainers for supporting the advancement of Lesbian art and culture!
Curated with community, history, and an understanding that every present moment is a nexus of many pasts. May these stories of Queer culture inspire, enthuse, and rouse you to Lesbian actions. We hope you've enjoyed this installment of Sinister Snapshot! Have a lovely weekend.
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