In 1982, Rolling Stone Magazine included Lincoln, Nebraska, on a list of thriving lesbian communities.(2) Today, the comment is met with surprise and no small degree of skepticism: Lincoln? Nebraska??

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Yes, lesbians were thriving in Lincoln, Nebraska in the 80s, creating a hub of lesbian activism and culture with connections and throughout the country. Sinister Wisdom was part of it.

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We were there, and this is our story.(3)

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In the mid-1970s, Morgan Grey, then known as Bobby Lacy, was a painfully shy some-time student at the University of Nebraska (UNL) who couldn’t settle on a major because she didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up. While working as a telephone operator, she started coming out but didn’t know any lesbians, just a few gay men at work. She tried the gay rap group—mostly men—and the gay crisis line, again, mostly men. But that began to change when she found the Women’s Resource Center at UNL.

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Moni Usasz discovered feminism in the spring semester of 1971 when she found Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood is Powerful in the library. Her first feminist action was soliciting signatures for the Equal Rights Amendment outside a residence hall cafeteria. She worked with Nebraskans for Peace, an anti-Vietnam war group started in small town Nebraska. One of the regular conversations between the women was how to shift away from the “old boys” network. By the time she met Morgan, she’d already fallen in love with a straight married woman. She wrote great love letters to no avail. She didn’t know what to do, so she stayed in her marriage.

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Debbie Alicen likes to say that she and Sinister Wisdom came out at the same time. Literally. In 1976, Debbie was living in Charlotte, North Carolina and trying to figure out how to leave a bad marriage. She heard that some women were starting a lesbian-feminist literary journal. She showed up at the home of Catherine Nicholson and Harriet Desmoines—Sinister Wisdom’s founding editors—as they were unloading the hot-off-the-presses uncollated first issue of the magazine. She talked them into selling her the only collated copy—the printer’s sample. She returned a couple of weeks later with a blue plastic file box containing her journal and asked them to hold onto it for her because she didn't want to risk her husband finding it. About a year later, she was out of the marriage and out of the closet. Catherine and Harriet had become like family to her. And when they decided to move to Lincoln, Debbie decided she’d move, too.

 

The World We Lived In

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It can be hard to recall what life was like for women in general and lesbians in particular in the late 1970s and early ʼ80s. Most of us had grown up in the highly gendered world of the ʼ50s and ʼ60s. The early days of the women’s liberation movement had started to challenge gender roles, but change was slow, especially in conservative places like Nebraska. The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification in 1972. Nebraska initially ratified it but had second thoughts and rescinded that ratification the following year. Falling short of the required number of ratifications, the amendment died in 1979.

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Employment want ads were separated into men’s or women’s jobs until 1973.(4) Even when women did the same job as men, they were paid less. The rationale was often explicit: men had families to support, while women worked for “pin money,” even if they were single mothers. Women’s wages and pensions were less than men’s.(5) In Lincoln, a woman professor was asked to give up her tenure so it could be awarded to her newly-hired husband; they both left UNL for opportunities at other institutions.(6) Women often quit work or were forced out when they married or became pregnant. Quality childcare was hard to find. Few persons of authority were women.

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Until the 1974 passage of the Equal Opportunity Credit Act, women needed a male co-signer to open a bank account, get a credit card, or a mortgage.(7)

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We all graduated from high school before Title IX which meant that we had no opportunities for female sports in small schools, and very limited options in large schools.

 

Women could be denied housing or evicted if suspected of being lesbian. They could lose their job or be dishonorably discharged from the military if suspected of being lesbian. Women commonly lost custody of their children if they were suspected of being lesbian.

 

Lesbians could even be subjected to “deprogramming,” as in a case reported in the same Rolling Stone article.(8) A woman’s parents paid to have her kidnapped, locked in a room for a week and subjected to repeated rapes while her parents sat in the next room. The parents were granted immunity, and a jury found the deprogrammers innocent of assault and sexual battery.

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Note the repeated refrain of “suspected.” Allegations of lesbianism didn’t have to be proven for the penalties to be applied.

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That was the world we lived in.

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But we were young, and passionate, and we believed we could change the world.

 

So, we did.

 

The Birth of a Radical Community

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Around 1975, Sarah Lucia Hoagland came to Lincoln as a philosophy professor at UNL, followed by musician Deidre McCalla who developed a following at several local bars.(9) Deidre recounted that when one bar’s management requested a sing-along song, her coded selection, Margy Adams’ “Best Friend (The Unicorn Song),” became a tradition. In 1976, Deidre opened for the lesbian comedy duo Harrison and Tyler when they played at UNL.(10)

 

Julia Penelope (Stanley) arrived in the fall of 1976 as a professor of English and linguistics at UNL. Julia wrote and published widely in the lesbian press, including the first three issues of Sinister Wisdom, and developed connections with lesbians throughout the country. Lesbian writers, artists, musicians, and thinkers were traveling around the country giving concerts and readings. With Lincoln’s central location, it was convenient for these lesbians to stop off at Julia’s for a few days or weeks.

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Morgan was a total baby dyke who didn’t have much of a clue right then. She was silently agog every time she went over to Julia’s house: amazing lesbians were always there. It was like salons in the traditional Parisian style á la Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein. Morgan felt like she had died and gone to lesbian intellectual heaven. Debbie found the same heady atmosphere at Harriet and Catherine’s house in Charlotte.

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Events converged in 1977, a pivotal year for the birth of a radical lesbian community in Lincoln.

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In March, Morgan came across a brief newspaper announcement that Holly Near and Meg Christian were performing two concerts in Omaha—one for the general public, one for women only. She’d heard of Holly Near but wasn’t familiar with her music. As it happened, the woman-only concert (Morgan had no idea what “woman only” implied) fit her schedule. She didn’t know any lesbians, so convinced a coworker (straight, feminist, and Christian) to go with her. Once there, both realized that “woman only” meant LESBIAN. Morgan was in heaven—she’d never seen so many lesbians in one place—and chose to ignore her friend’s growing discomfort. They drove home afterwards in relative silence and never discussed the event beyond the friend saying she didn’t approve of having children at such an event, even with their mothers.

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There were mailing list sign-up sheets in the lobby, and Morgan signed up for all of them. For the next year, she regularly commuted to Omaha for evening and weekend events. One of the first was a Kay Gardner concert at the Orielle, a new lesbian-run women’s center. During the intermission, Julia made a request for volunteers in Lincoln to help organize an event to raise money to oppose Anita Bryant’s Save the Children campaign in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Morgan introduced herself and volunteered. As she got to know Julia and Sarah, she found out about the first Midwest Feminist Conference, organized by WomanSpace, a lesbian group in Omaha.

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Moni found out about the conference through Deirdre McCalla. Moni and her then-husband loved Deidre’s music and regularly attended her gigs around town. She suspects that Deidre, Sarah, and Julia thought she was a dyke wanna be. Of course, they were right. Moni knew she wanted to find other lesbians, so when she heard about the conference, she had to get there somehow. Lacking a car, Moni needed a ride, so Julia put her in touch with Morgan. She bicycled to Morgan’s apartment, and they had the first conversation of what was to become a lifelong friendship as they drove to the conference at a camp in Iowa.

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The organizers provided a list of recommended readings to conference registrants. Morgan immediately read two books, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will and Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born. Those books formed the foundation of her budding lesbian-feminist consciousness.

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Perhaps twenty women—most from Omaha—attended the conference, held over a weekend in late May or early June. Aside from their casual acquaintance with Julia and Sarah, Moni and Morgan were new to this lesbian community. Morgan was thrilled to know so many lesbians by name. By the end of the conference, Moni had decided to leave her husband.

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The heat turned up a few weeks later at the Nebraska Conference for International Women’s Year (IWY). Every state held a similar conference, in which women’s issues were discussed, resolutions voted on, and delegates elected to the national IWY conference later that summer of 1977 in Houston, Texas.

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The lesbian contingent was highly organized. The first day of the weekend conference was devoted to a series of workshops to discuss issues such as abortion, childcare, marriage, work, lesbian rights, and domestic violence, and to propose resolutions to be voted on during the plenary session on the second day. We had representatives in each session and runners posted in the halls. If a session appeared to have a close vote coming up, the runners drafted participants from other workshops to come in and improve the odds. Tensions ran high. When Sarah accidentally bumped the light switch off, everyone froze until she apologetically turned it back on.

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We succeeded in creating a slate of pro-feminist and pro-lesbian proposals for the plenary session.

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That Sunday morning dawned hot and clear, and we returned to the conference center feeling confident and excited. The mood plummeted when we saw the parking lot full of buses bearing the names of conservative Christian churches. Sensing the danger posed by a bunch of radical dykes—for aren’t all feminists radical dykes?—ministers had excused their female members from religious services and bused them in to do their duty at the ungodly IWY conference.

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Morgan wasn’t yet out to her family. Although her mother had been saying, “Your friends are always welcome here,” her heart dropped when she walked into the conference hall and spotted her mother there standing up for her Christian beliefs.

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It was a rout. Every pro-feminist and pro-lesbian proposal was defeated. The elected delegates were 100% conservative. Most of the delegates and voters had not participated in the process on the first day. The saving factor was our staying power. The conference process allowed for proposals from the floor after the official ones had been voted on. Figuring their work was done, most of the conservative women left by mid-afternoon. At the end of the day, we began making new proposals to promote our agenda. They passed. The few conservatives remaining protested, but because the new proposals were different from those already rejected, they had no grounds. When the delegates were called to the stage to be introduced, they clustered together, knowing they were now outnumbered, as if expecting to be attacked. Instead, we formed a circle around the conference hall singing to a cassette tape of Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman.” It was a pathetic little tape, but a kindly sound tech guy plugged it into the center’s audio system, and we did indeed ROAR.

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There was a lot of anger, and a bit of paranoia, among the feminist and lesbian contingents following the Nebraska IWY conference. We had organized and worked hard to promote our platform. We felt the conference had been hijacked by conservatives who bused in, voted, and left without participating in the process. The paranoia, which might have been active on both sides, resulted in some undercover spy work. An Omaha lesbian donned nylon stockings and a skirt and attended right to life meetings until she was outed. Morgan’s mother wanted her to meet a friend from church, a young woman close to Morgan’s age who claimed to be interested in feminist activities. Morgan met with the woman once, and suspecting that she was being pumped for intel, gave only vague answers to the woman’s questions. Morgan’s mother didn’t mention the “friend” again.

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Moni attended the national IWY conference in Houston. As a non-delegate, she participated in a wide array of speakers, concerts, and workshops. The first night was a lesbian caucus at a nearby church. So many beautiful women: all those lesbians looking strong and powerful. This was the clan she wanted to belong to. They all wore orange buttons with a question mark—?—as the in-group identifier for lesbians. She would see those buttons everywhere—hotels, buses, workshops, concerts.

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The 1977 IWY conference was a wakeup call for Nebraska feminists and lesbians. We banded together to form the Nebraska Coalition for Women (NCW). We said, “women and lesbians.” The straight women just said “feminists,” lumping us altogether.

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While lesbians weren’t involved in NCW’s organizational meetings, we had crucial roles in the operation. Morgan edited the newsletter, and Moni edited the Alerts that focused on legislation. Alerts were mailed out every Friday during the legislative session with information on bills to oppose or support. We did much of NCW’s work, but worked independently with little credit.

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Lincoln’s National Organization for Women chapter had a mimeograph machine they weren’t using. Moni and Morgan wanted to use it to produce the NCW newsletter and the Alerts. NOW’s president, Karalyn Schmidt, told Morgan it should be housed with a NOW member. So, Moni paid her dues and Morgan arranged a heist. In one day, the dues were paid and the mimeograph machine hauled away to Moni’s apartment. We felt very clever and made good use of the machine. Karalyn was not amused.

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Morgan worked with NCW for two years from 1978 until 1979. Moni worked on the Alert only in 1978, from January through April. Friday nights were spent with lesbians at Moni’s house, folding Alerts, stapling, putting on labels, and sorting them into zip code piles for bulk mailing.

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While lesbians had eagerly contributed time and energy to NCW, we were disheartened when the straight leadership sought to minimize lesbian issues in the organization’s platform. This led to our leaving the organization and primed us to want one of our own.

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Amid the political drama, lesbians were busy with their own activities. The UNL Women’s Resource Center sponsored a weekly lesbian rap group, which was partly coordinated by C. Colette. Upwards of thirty lesbians attended, not all connected to the university. When we started telling our coming out stories, which were hilarious and poignant in turns, it took a year for everyone to tell her story. For one meeting, those of us in counseling invited our therapists. Four or five actually attended.

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Colette was surprised to take a call one day from a man with a thick accent who was inquiring about the lesbian support group. For his wife. Amazed at the man’s open-mindedness, but wanting to be sure, Colette asked questions until it finally became clear: He was looking for a Lebanese support group for his wife. Unfortunately, Colette had nothing to offer.

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Julia Penelope forged ahead at UNL, founding Matrices: A Lesbian-Feminist Research Newsletter in 1977. It was funded (almost certainly as a non-budgeted item) by the English Department. The department’s support staff typed, mimeographed, collated, and mailed the triannual issues. When the newsletter and its circulation grew, the office manager proposed creating a work-study position to it take over. It was done, and Morgan became the managing editor from 1978-1983, when it was transferred to Jacquelyn Zita at the University of Minnesota.

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Julia taught a class on 20th Century Lesbian Novelists in Spring, 1978. It was the first university class of its kind in the country.(11) For students nervous about being outed in their college transcripts, Julia allowed them to register under independent study codes. For what it’s worth, Morgan’s proud that her transcript bears the full name of the class.

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Another soon-to-be influential lesbian scholar arrived in Lincoln in 1978. Barbara DiBernard was hired to teach British literature at UNL; she went on to direct the women’s studies program and co-developed the LGBT/sexuality studies minor.(12) Barbara created the curriculum after an exhaustive search for materials from around the country. She also worked with Pat Tetreault and UNL students to create the LGBTQA+ Center in 2007; Pat became the founding director. The center merged with the Women’s Center in 2023 to become the Gender and Sexuality Center.

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Barbara and her partner Judy Gibson became part of history in 2000 when they joined the Nebraska chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in an unsuccessful challenge to a Nebraska constitutional amendment prohibiting same sex marriage. Later, they were the first LGBT couple to marry in Lancaster County when it became legal in 2015.(13) The University of Nebraska Press honored Barbara by naming a prize for LGBT fiction after her.(14) She died in 2023 and is remembered by colleagues and the many students whose lives she touched.(15)

 

Enter Sinister Wisdom

 

Debbie remembers that lesbians in Charlotte gave what help they could, but Catherine and Harriet's time and energy was being swallowed up by never-ending production matters, such as getting graphics screens right for the printer, doing word processing on a KayPro II computer (DOS anyone?), communicating with contributors regarding editing decisions, mail permits, etc., etc., etc. They longed for a collective that could relieve some of the pressures which were draining them. More and more, those pressures crowded out opportunities to just be lesbians among other lesbians, in ways that would feed their lives as they intended SW to feed other lesbian lives.

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There isn't any written documentation known to Morgan, Debbie, or Harriet about Julia's invitation to move Sinister Wisdom to Lincoln, and Catherine and Harriet's decision to accept. Morgan recalls Julia talking up this great lesbian journal that might be looking for a new home and asking who would be interested in working on it. Apparently, there was enough enthusiastic response, and Julia's invitation was issued via phone call shortly after Sinister Wisdom 5 came out in 1977.

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Morgan was familiar with the magazine, having subscribed since Sinister Wisdom 2 after seeing a classified ad in the back of a Ms. Magazine. In a much later conversation, Catherine said that ad was the worst waste of money they ever spent. To which Morgan said, “Hey, you got me out of it.” And Catherine revised her opinion, saying “Okay, it wasn’t so bad.”

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After Catherine and Harriet announced that they and Sinister Wisdom were moving to Lincoln, it didn’t take long for Debbie to decide to move there, too. She was out in only a limited way in Charlotte. Her newspaperman father was a famous columnist and reporter, and highly regarded in the community. Had she been as openly out in Charlotte as she wanted to be, and as she eventually was in Lincoln, the scandal and scrutiny would have been tortuous for herself and all in her family.

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Sinister Wisdom moved to Lincoln in summer 1978. Harriet and Catherine moved into a rented house on R Street and set up the Sinister Wisdom offices in the basement. There we read submissions, typeset the issues, kept the financial records and mailing lists, collated and stapled issues, and prepared the mailings.

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One of the first Sinister Wisdom events in Lincoln was a collating party. In the early years of the magazine, the pages were collated and saddle stapled by hand. Huge piles of pages were placed around the big room in the basement, and ten or more lesbians would go around and around in circles collecting the pages for stapling, watching the mountains of paper slowly dwindle as the finished copies filled boxes. It was a huge relief when the magazine was financially stable enough to get the issues bound at the printer.

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On a side note: Morgan and Debbie moved to Vermont in 1984 and discovered that the third Sinister Wisdom editor, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, lived down the road from Debbie’s cabin in the woods. For some reason, Melanie knocked on Debbie’s door one day and Morgan answered it. They each did a double take—having met several years earlier in Lincoln and never expecting to run into each other in the wilds of Vermont. As a result of that chance meeting, Morgan became the office manager for Sinister Wisdom under Melanie’s editorship.

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The level of help Sinister Wisdom found in Lincoln was never enough for the task, but Harriet and Catherine stayed until 1981 and helped grow our community. Their presence increased the draw Lincoln had for women traveling around the country. A number of women who had published in Sinister Wisdom visited. Marilyn Frye and her partner Carolyn Shafer came for a memorable Thanksgiving weekend that was extended by several days when a Nebraska ice storm forced them off the road before even getting out of Lincoln.

 

An Organization of Our Own

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At a party in Moni’s house in 1979, several of us began reminiscing about the good old days of the Midwest Feminist Conference organized by WomanSpace in Omaha. Most of the Omaha women had moved to the west coast, and the Orielle had closed. We missed the radical women-centered spaces they had offered. Several of us had experience organizing events and conferences, and a history of work with women’s, anti-war, and civil rights groups.

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We expanded the conversation to the lesbian rap group at the UNL Women’s Resource Center, where we were talking about our lives as lesbians and the challenges the world posed for women-loving-women as we came out in our families, at our jobs, and in our communities. We didn’t think gay men shared many of our interests because of sexism. We also wanted to work and play mostly with other lesbians and women in general.

 

Feminism was a lens through which we tried to live our lives. It was hard work but there was joy in seeing our world expand and meeting women like us. We talked and read, and a possible new world took shape. We learned there had always been cultures centered around women in our history, or herstory as we learned to say. We began writing “wimmin” or “womyn” and eliminating the word “man.” English teachers may have taught us that “man” and “men” meant both genders, but we knew better.

 

In the fall on 1979, we circulated a letter to every lesbian we knew, outlining our ideas and urging them to attend an organizational meeting.

 

 

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We all agreed we needed an up-front lesbian organization in Lincoln, Nebraska. The isolation and invisibility we faced while living in a society that denied our very existence pointed to a need for a lesbian group that supported lesbians and provided a place to build community. We also wanted an organization which would address our concerns as lesbians and women—a group with a lesbian-feminist focus. We wanted to

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1. Plan cultural, social, and educational events for the lesbian community. Our individual coming out experiences showed us the importance of supportive and self-affirming connections within the lesbian community. We wanted to provide more such opportunities for lesbians.

2. Educate the straight community about lesbians and what our lives were really like, and to push back against the homophobia we all faced.

 

As we talked about possible group names, the Lincoln Legion of Lesbians leaped above other possibilities. Lesbians as legion was outrageous. It was bold and beautiful. We loved the idea of legions of us, the lack of fear that name signified.

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The original women who became LLL were Barbara Bradford, Cheryl Long, C. Colette, Debbie Alicen, Janet Louise, Julia Penelope, Liz Beu, Morgan Grey (Bobby Lacy), and Moni Usasz. This group met weekly for several years as we grew the lesbian community in Lincoln. One of the first tasks undertaken was creating by-laws and policies. We’re not sure why we chose to have by-laws but the dialogue we had around them helped us get to know each other as individuals and develop a strong group cohesion.

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Julia, Debbie, and Morgan were lesbian separatists(16), which for them meant setting aside male authors, thinkers, and authorities; focusing on what lesbians, particularly, and other feminists were thinking, writing, and doing; and taking inspiration from them. The rest of us ranged out widely from there but we were all lesbian-feminists, and we threw ourselves thoroughly into LLL for two to four years. We laughed and called ourselves professional lesbians.

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In the next few months, we decided to operate as a collective with all decisions made by group consensus and that we would operate with a closed membership. The purpose of closing the collective was not to exclude women but to ensure continuity and responsibility within the group and to avoid getting mired down in debates over different brands of politics. We wanted to do things: produce concerts, give workshops, and educate people. Over time, other women joined the LLL collective, including K Christiansen, Janis Morariu, Kate Moran, Andrea Sophie Rondum, Susan White, Iris Johnson, Fay Timmerman, and Bev Snyder.

 

As we debated how to publicize our events to lesbians, we realized we couldn’t advertise in the paper without the risk of exposing women to homophobic backlash and possible outing. We created a mailing list by brainstorming a list of all the lesbians we knew, then looked up their addresses in the phone book. We mailed a letter to over 60 lesbians, then crossed our fingers and held our collective breath until we saw what the response would be. The day we received the first donation, a check for $60, we were overjoyed and took it as a sign that there was support for this wild idea.

 

LLL started producing events for lesbians.(17) We brought in lesbian performers, organized four lesbian-feminist conferences, sponsored social and educational events for the lesbian community, and a speakers’ bureau. Julia Penelope was well known in the larger lesbian community and with her larger-than-life personality, helped us bring in writers, artists, and musicians. Lincoln became a popular and conveniently located stop for creative lesbians touring the country. Some of us spent a lot of our volunteer time as event promoters bringing women to Lincoln for concerts or readings. We borrowed a sound system. Performers drove to Lincoln and usually stayed at women’s homes, so costs were low enough we could afford them on our shoestring budget.

 

While we sometimes collaborated with the UNL Women’s Resource Center or the YWCA, most of LLL events were independently produced. These included concerts by Holly Near, Maxine Feldman, Alix Dobkin, Izquierda Ensemble, Betsy Rose and Cathy Winter, Meg Christian, Michelle Brody, Kansas City Women’s Chorus, Heather Bishop, and Kay Gardner. There were readings by Maureen Brady, Sally Gearhart, British lesbian-feminist writers Tara Lynn and Kimberly McGregor, Joy Harjo, and Elana Dykewomon, as well as presentations by Caryl Bentley (fat liberation), Joan Biren (JEB; lesbian images in photography), Kay Gardner (music and healing), and Amazones D’Hier-Lesbiennes D’Aujourd’hui (a Montreal-based lesbian separatist collective).

 

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poster that generated essential funds for the magazine. When new editors Adrienne Rich and Michelle Cliff weren’t interested in keeping the poster, Harriet and Catherine donated it to LLL.​

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We developed several revenue streams to support LLL’s activities. We charged admission to events that featured out-of-town performers who were paid for their work and transportation. We kept ticket prices as low as possible while offering free or reduced admission to any woman who needed it. In most cases, ticket sales covered the cost of producing the concert or event. We held fundraisers, such as the boxed lunch social auctions (inspired by a pioneer tradition to introduce young people to potential mates) in which auctioneer Shirley Roby presided. Ever scrappy and resourceful, we held garage sales and recycled aluminum cans back in the day before mandatory deposits. The Sanctuary women’s bar collected their aluminum cans for us to pick up and take to the scrap metal collection center. Payment was by the pound. We also sold books from lesbian and feminist publishers such as Persephone Press at our events.

 

In 1981 we began selling the Tee Corinne Sinister Wisdom poster and a set of notecards featuring four of her solarized photographs. Later that year we introduced a second notecard line called “Cover Dykes,” which included cover photos from four lesbian publications: Maxine Feldman’s album Closet Sale, Sinister Wisdom #9 and #14, and Feminary 11:3. Although Wikipedia says LLL sold “erotica,”(18) for many lesbians, Tee Corinne’s image of women making love was a political statement of the purchaser’s out and proud lesbian stance. Tee was one of the preeminent lesbians of the time.(19) Recently, when going through LLL files from the end of the organization in 1994, we found about a dozen unfilled orders for the poster, including uncashed checks. Apologies to any reader who sent in one of those checks.

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Most of our social gatherings were homegrown: potlucks, dances, talent shows. Shirley Roby, a lesbian auctioneer donated her time and skills to several fundraising events until her tragic death in a car accident in 1981.

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A popular event was the annual Winter Solstice Celebration, which included a potluck, a ceremony, and fun. Creative minds, suspected to have been C. Colette and Linnea Johnson, wrote new sing-along lyrics for traditional tunes. There was “Solstice Night” (to the tune of “Silent Night”):

Sisters far, sisters near,

Hold we each the others dear.

 

But truly memorable was “I Came Out On a Midnight Clear”:

I came out on a midnight clear,

O Gloria was so bold

With witches bending near the earth

We loved away the cold.(20)

 

We drew on the expertise of local women to provide educational forums on a wide range of feminist topics, such as ageism, incest survivors, chemical dependency, children in the lesbian community, self-defense, and sizeism/lookism. Women shared their interests and skills, teaching classes in tai chi, American sign language, ancient goddesses, tarot, and verbal self-defense.

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Lesbians all over the city were coming together in many ways. Support groups blossomed, some sponsored by LLL, the UNL Women’s Resource Center, the YWCA, or simply by the women who joined. They were all announced and supported in the LLL newsletter, Lesbian Community News (An irregular periodical). Throughout the 1980s, there were support groups for lesbian mothers, incest survivors, women’s spirituality, lesbian teens, and a drop-in lesbian rap group.

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The energy led to creation of new businesses, such as The Sanctuary women’s bar (1982), and the Common Woman bookstore (mid 1980s). The Woman’s Journal-Advocate, a feminist newspaper, was published from 1982 to 1992.

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Planned Parenthood even proposed a partnership with LLL to make gynecological health services more widely available to lesbians. It was well-intended, but we had to face the fact that Planned Parenthood’s funding was based on providing contraception. They proposed a work-around of noting “foam and condoms as needed” in lesbian’s chart, understanding that there wouldn’t be much demand for the stuff. But lesbians were less than enthusiastic about even that compromise and the partnership didn’t develop.

 

LLL’s speaker’s bureau met with any group that wanted to talk with us. These included university classes, UNL residence hall staff, the College and University Police Officers conference, UNL Cultural Affairs and Programming staff, nursing students, the Lancaster County Commission on the Status of Women, mental health agencies, YWCA staff and volunteers, Planned Parenthood, representatives of both daily newspapers, a high school class (a lesbian student asked her teacher to invite us), among many others. We responded to multiple requests each week for several years, and purchased an informational slide-tape presentation called Woman-Loving Women(21) for use in many of our presentations. Unfortunately, we never thought to keep a list of the speaker’s bureau activities, nor did we fully document our reach and impact. We never considered applying for grant funding, and in fact, deliberately decided not to seek non-profit tax status, preferring to operate under the legal radar.

 

Our boldest adventure in the speaker’s bureau was when Liz Beu and Morgan left the relative safety of Lincoln for the wilds of outstate Nebraska. It started with a request from a women’s group in North Platte (pop. 24,500)(22) and grew from there. The women’s group held a monthly dinner at a local restaurant, with close to 100 women in attendance. Liz and Morgan were on the program next to a presentation on how to decorate your home. They took notes on some of the suggestions, but never got around to implementing them.

 

From North Platte, they visited Kearney State College (Kearney, pop. 21,000). A friend attending classes there arranged to have the presentation sponsored by the Student Sociology Club. At least three classes made it a required activity and it was publicized in the local paper as open to the public.

 

The third stop was in Scottsbluff (pop. 14,000), where a local lesbian, who was a librarian, arranged a presentation at the library for local mental health providers. This too was announced in the newspaper, making it public knowledge. When Liz and Morgan arrived at the library, there was a pickup with young men and a fully stocked gun rack in the back window. Liz and Morgan knew that young men, pickups, and gun racks were a common combination in rural Nebraska. But the timing and location of these particular young men with their truck and guns gave Liz and Morgan an anxious moment. They drove several times around the parking lot until the pickup left, before parking and entering the building.

 

The final presentation was at a potluck for the lesbians in Scottsbluff, hosted by the librarian and her partner. Although some LLL members thought they were crazy to attempt the grand tour, Liz and Morgan found a warm reception in each town.

 

The Midwest Lesbian-Feminist Conference

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From the very start of LLL, we wanted to continue the tradition of the Womanspace Midwest Feminist Conference. Rebranded the Midwest Lesbian-Feminist Conference, it was our biggest and most controversial undertaking for four years.

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As mentioned previously, we decided that we wouldn’t advertise in the newspapers. We hoped that keeping a relatively low profile would help women feel safe at our events. But that didn’t prevent others from dragging us into the press.

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Things would have been easier if we’d left “lesbian” out of the conference name and if we’d adopted a meeker, but less alliterative, organizational name like the “Lincoln Legion of Feminists.” But as it was, some people took exception to our existence and wanted to make it a big deal. We just wanted to do our (mostly women-only) thing.

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The first conference, in 1980, was originally booked at a YMCA camp. When the YMCA leadership got wind of the fact that it was a lesbian conference, they cancelled the contract shortly before the conference date. There was a furor in the press, with people writing in support of both LLL and the YMCA. We managed to find a new location and notified all of the registrants of the change. Then we posted signs at the entrance to the original camp in case anyone showed up there. Good thing we did, too. A woman had hitchhiked to the camp and found the signs. She retreated to a bar to call us from a pay phone (pre-cell phone days). Morgan and Liz drove 90 minutes each way to pick her up.

 

The new location was at a Methodist camp, and we had to share it with a group of bird watchers. The arrangement wasn’t optimal, but we were desperate. It went pretty well—no problems with the birders—but some lesbians were unhappy about the teen-aged boy who was the mandatory lifeguard at the pool. So they took off their tops in protest. Then they sneaked over the fence for a midnight swim sans lifeguard. We weren’t invited back.

 

For the next two years we had a wonderful relationship with the YWCA’s Camp Brewster near Omaha. It was a beautiful location, and the camp manager even said we were the best group she’d ever had. That was the first year. In our second year at Camp Brewster, a far right group picketed the camp entrance and made threats against the YWCA leadership. They didn’t attempt to enter the campgrounds, but we were on high alert the entire weekend and organized shifts of women to patrol the perimeter. In spite of the tension, Morgan remembers it as the most cohesive and joyous of the four conferences.

 

In 1983, the YWCA, out of fear for their staff’s safety, was understandably reluctant to rent to us again. We weren’t able to find another camp willing to take the risk. So, we decided to go to a state park and use the campgrounds like everyone else. Well, our presence made some of the other campers nervous. Men walked their women to the wash house and stood protectively outside the door. A women’s bookstore was openly selling books on the site, which attracted the attention of a park ranger. He was calm and respectful while saying they couldn’t sell things on state property without a permit. One of the booksellers became irate and created a loud scene. The LLL members were caught totally off guard and failed to deescalate the situation. The result was that many participants were frightened and felt unsafe. Some left that day. Others stayed for a long conversation around the campfire that evening, but the joy and celebration was gone. That was the last year of the Midwest Lesbian-Feminist Conference.

 

During its first three years, the conference was a joyous and affirming place for lesbians from not just the surrounding Midwest states, but far-flung parts of the country. Many of our speakers, facilitators, and performers were from the region, a testimony to the expertise and skills of women within our lesbian communities.

 

Women-Only Controversies

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In addition to the media furor over the YMCA camp debacle, LLL was in the press several times over our commitment to women’s space and women only events. In one case, the minister of the Unitarian Church where we regularly held events made a public fuss over a women-only concert in his sanctuary. There was an energetic volley of pro and con letters in the newspapers. Ironically, that Unitarian Church regularly sponsored gender-specific discussion groups for men and women, and in the previous year, that same minister had participated in the “Man to Man Conference,” sponsored by the YWCA and local community college. Publicity for that conference specifically asked women to allow men the space to explore their concerns.(23)

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This media attention wasn’t all bad. A young lesbian in rural Nebraska heard about us over the radio. It gave her hope. Now a trans man, he told Moni that he wanted to thank the Lincoln Legion of Lesbians for their visibility when he most needed it.

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Women-only space was important to lesbian-feminists in the 1970s and 1980s because of the level of sexism and homophobia in society. We were feminists but feminist groups weren’t always welcoming and were frequently afraid of us. We were gay but gay men were often sexist and we didn’t always have the same interests and approach. In the future, AIDS would bring us together in a way nobody had foreseen, but at the time, our interests appeared to be separate.

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Also, violence against lesbians and gay men was real. A gay male friend of Moni’s partner was killed outside a gay bar in Phoenix because he didn’t know he needed to run. He was kicked in the throat and died. In the 1980s Lesbian Connection carried at least three different stories about lesbian couples who were murdered because they were dykes.

 

We discovered that not only did many feminists of the time fear lesbians, they felt especially threatened by the thought of claiming space without men. This became clear when a coalition of feminist organizations joined forces to organize Lincoln’s first Take Back the Night March in the early 1980s.

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At the time, Morgan was on the board of the Lincoln chapter of NOW and the editor of its newsletter. In response to several members asking about the reason behind women-only events, she had written and published a short explanation in the newsletter. The only response to the article was positive appreciation. In preparation for the Take Back the Night coalition meeting, the NOW board voted to support the march. Morgan urged the other board members to support a woman-only march, stressing the powerful symbolism of women in the streets at night without male escorts. There was no objection and virtually no discussion, so she assumed they supported the idea.

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When the issue of only women marching came up in the coalition planning meeting, Morgan stated that NOW was in support. None of the other NOW board members present spoke up. That evening, Morgan was summoned to an emergency meeting where she found the state NOW president, the Lincoln chapter president, and one other board member. They were furious. In what felt like a tribunal, Morgan was informed that she had single-handedly set the women’s movement back ten years. Naively, she was stunned by the vitriol directed at her that evening, and she resigned from NOW.

​

In LLL, we maintained women-only events(24) because many lesbians would not have felt safe with men present. Also, women needed to be able to breathe in women only spaces: places where we could build community, strategize, philosophize, play, without male strictures fencing us in or out.

 

The End of LLL

​

Just as Omaha’s WomanSpace dwindled when many of its members moved away, many to the West Coast, LLL declined gradually when members moved, this time to the East Coast. C. Colette was the first to go, moving to Massachusetts in 1981. Between 1982-1984 many members moved away to D.C., Massachusetts, Duluth, Long Island, Vermont, and Delaware. Several remained in Lincoln but became less active in LLL following the 1982 Human Rights Campaign. Bev Snyder,who joined LLL while actively working on the campaign, continued for a while. Until, as far as we can determine, only Bev was left.

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In 1987, the LLL newsletter announced a reorganization of the collective, including the election of new collective members. Several months later, the newsletter announced the new collective of six members who were identified by first name only. One was Bev Snyder, still carrying on. Another was PT Martin, a long-time friend of Bev’s and a frequent volunteer in the early years of LLL.

​

We don’t have any newsletters past 1987. PT left Lincoln in 1990, and Bev was lost to cancer in 1992. We haven’t been able to locate any of the others named as the reorganized collective. Some bank records such as cancelled checks indicate a few events in 1990 and 1992, including an Alix Dobkin concert. The final record is a letter from the bank closing the account for inactivity in 1992.

 

Last Thoughts on the Impact of LLL

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Early in this article, we said that we believed we could change the world.

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We set out to improve life for lesbians and to counter public misconceptions about our lives. As a result, we found ourselves in the middle of controversies that other people created out of fear and ignorance. As a collective and as individuals, we brought the issues of lesbian and gay lives into public view. Perhaps to some, that may be brave. We were just creating the world we wanted to live in.

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We found opposition, and we found support. And it wasn’t only LLL in Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

Remember, Lincoln was just one city on Rolling Stone’s list of thriving lesbian communities.(25) We were part of a much larger movement in many Midwestern cities and towns, as well as on the Coasts. The actions were local, and the effects were cumulative on a national scale.

 

There are still struggles with invisibility and homophobia, but as we write this in the summer of 2024, the landscape for young LGBTQ+ people now is very different from what it was in 1980.

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So, how to track progress?

• In the 80s, a young lesbian/trans man in a small Nebraska town found courage when they heard a radio news story about a group of out lesbians taking a stand.

• In 2021, three of Lincoln’s seven city council members were LGBT, including the chair.(26) That same year, the mayor appointed a lesbian as chief of police.(27) This in a city that still doesn’t have a gay rights ordinance.

• In 2024, just hours before Morgan wrote this paragraph, Pete Buttigieg addressed the Democratic National Convention. He described his home and family life, saying,

the existence of my family is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondered if he would ever find belonging in the world…. This kind of life went from impossible, to possible; from possible to real; from real to almost ordinary, in less than half a lifetime. But that didn’t just happen. It was brought about through idealism and courage. Through organizing and persuasion. And storytelling and, yes, through politics. The right kind of politics.(28)

 

Buttigieg speaks of change over 25 years; change that began years before he was that anxious teenager in Indiana; back to that lonely young lesbian/trans man who found hope in the work of a group of lesbians in Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

The world has changed in these 45 years, and we were part of the change.

 

 

 

Copies of LLL’s papers were donated to the Nebraska State Historical Society.

The originals will be donated to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City.

​

We owe a debt of gratitude to Barbara DiBernard

for preserving the LLL files

when it appeared nobody wanted them.

Without her foresight, this article would not have been possible.

 

Author Bio

Morgan Grey, Moni Usasz, and Debbie Alicen were three of the nine original members of the Lincoln Legion of Lesbians.

​

Footnotes

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1. CJ Janovy, "Life on the ‘fruited plains’.” 10 Percent, Winter 1993, 20.

2. Lindsy Van Gelder, “America’s Gay Women,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 11, 1982, 13. https://archive.org/details/rolling-stone-magazine-382-november-11-1982/page/n13/mode/2up.

3. Most of this article, unless otherwise noted, is based on the recollections of the authors.

4. https://www.employerscouncil.org/resources/words-matter-gender-coded-language-in-job-ads/

5. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/importance-being-ernie/.

6. Sarah Raphael, “The Women’s Liberation Movement and Women’s Organizations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,” Nebraska U: A Collaborative History, Archives of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Fall 2022. https://unlhistory.unl.edu/exhibits/show/women-liberation/women-liberation.

7. https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix-education-amendments-1972

8. Van Gelder, “America’s Gay Women,” 16.

9. McCalla regularly performed at The Boar’s Head and The Zoo Bar in Lincoln between 1975 and 1978, as announced in Calendar listings in the Lincoln Journal and Lincoln Star during that period.

10. “Harrison and Tyler Here Tonight,” Lincoln Star, March 14, 1976. https://www.newspapers.com/image/66391806/?match=1&terms=tyler

11. Tracy Baim, “Passages Author Julia Penelope Dead at 71,” Windy City Times (Chicago, IL), Jan. 24, 2013. https://windycitytimes.com/2013/01/24/passages-author-julia-penelope-dead-at-71/

12. UNL Department of English, “Remembering Barbara DiBernard,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Sept. 26, 2023. https://www.unl.edu/english/news/remembering-barbara-dibernard

13. Kate, “Judy and Barbara,” Queer Love in History (blog), Feb. 4, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/queerloveinhistory/p/C27uVAWOg8q/.

14. Univnebpress, “Announcing the First Book in the Zero Street Fiction Series,” UNPblog, Sept. 6, 2022. https://unpblog.com/2022/09/06/announcing-the-first-book-in-the-zero-street-fiction-series/.

15. “Barbara Jo DiBernard,” Aspen Aftercare, Sept. 19, 2023. https://aspenaftercare.com/obituary/barbara-jo-dibernard/.

16. When asked to reflect on what lesbian separatism meant to her in the 1980s, Debbie recalled an incident involving a lesbian (whose name she has unfortunately forgotten) who was traveling around the country conducting interviews on lesbian separatism. She was surprised that Julia and Debbie both had male dogs. Julia, not missing a beat, said, “male dogs have never done anything to oppress me.”

17. Details of LLL programs and activities are from the organization’s newsletter, Lesbian Community News: An Irregular Periodical, 1980-1987. Copies are in the archives of the Nebraska Historical Society and will be donated to the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

18. “Lincoln Legion of Lesbians.” Wikipedia, July 31, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Legion_of_Lesbians.

19. “Tee Corinne.” Wikipedia, June 26, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tee_Corinne.

20. Full lyrics available on request.

21. Patricia Gozemba and Marilyn L. Humphries, Woman-Loving Women. Marblehead, MA: Lavender Horizons, 1980. Slide-tape.

22. David Drozd and Jerry Deichert, “Nebraska Historical Populations,” Center for Public Affairs Research, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Jan. 2018. https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-community-service/center-for-public-affairs-research/documents/nebraska-historical-population-report-2018.pdf.

23. Lincoln Legion of Lesbians, “This Concert is Not a Public Event,” 11/14/1981. In the author’s possession.

24. The sole exception to the women-only policy was a Kay Gardner concert in 1983. The press release, which focused on Kay’s work on music and healing, originally listed LLL as the concert sponsor, the name abbreviated to avoid negative attention. A reporter called Morgan to clarify if she should include that in the published article. Morgan said she thought people would know what LLL was, or not. Either way, she didn’t think it would be a problem. When the reporter noted that “LLL” could also refer to the Lutheran Layman’s League, she and Morgan agreed to omit the sponsor identification. Lincoln Journal Star, April 16, 1983, page 6.

25. Van Gelder, “America’s Gay Women,” 13. “You now see gay women holding hands on the streets of the major cities and resort towns favored by gay men: New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Franscisco (where their numbers are beginning to dominate the Mission District the way gay men populate the Castro), Providencetown, Key West. There are also thriving lesbian communities in Denver; Phoenix; Milwaukee; Baltimore; Oklahoma City; Rochester, New York; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to name just a few, and in most university towns. (The five-college area around Northampton, Massachusetts, is becoming a veritable lesbian Ellis Island.) While gay male culture is considerably more moneyed, there are lesbian hotels, restaurants, health centers, magazines, music festivals, comedy troupes, radio shows, bookstores…even, in Montana, a lesbian dude ranch.”

26. Trudy Ring, “History in Nebraska: Lincoln Council has Three Out Members, Gay Chair,” The Advocate, May 18, 2021. https://www.advocate.com/politics/2021/5/18/history-nebraska-lincoln-council-has-three-out-members-gay-chair/.

27. Grant Schulte, “Lincoln, Nebraska Mayor Names City’s 1st LGBTQ Police Chief,” APNews, June 28, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/death-of-george-floyd-nebraska-lincoln-police-government-and-politics-617badce688e548885ea47dd6e5704be/.

28. Nik Popli, “ ‘A Better Politics’: The Biggest Moments From Pete Buttigieg’s 2024 DNC Speech,” Time, August 22, 2024. https://time.com/7013796/pete-buttigieg-dnc-speech-2024/.

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