Having successfully raised money locally to send womyn to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) who would not otherwise have been able to go, in 2014 a band of friends turned ourselves into Purple, a tax-exempt non-profit with the declared purpose of fostering lesbian and womyn’s community. We continued to raise funds for womyn’s tickets to MWMF, and proposed to mentor and support womyn in our vicinity in other efforts to further that broader goal.
After the Festival ended in 2015, we advertised our availability to provide an umbrella for other local womyn’s community initiatives, and did consult with several womyn about their projects, but candidates for fostering failed to appear. What did appear, as if tailor-made, was the opportunity to become the fiscal sponsor of the We Want The Land Coalition (WWTLC), which was in the process of becoming its own non-profit with the goal of purchasing and making available the former site of the Festival (The Land) “For women. For girls. Forever.” (A fiscal sponsor is an established non-profit that provides its legal and tax-exempt status to the sponsored organization, taking fiduciary responsibility for it and offering supportive administrative services.) WWTLC achieved its own 501-c3 status as well as a contract for the purchase of The Land, and is fulfilling its ambition to acquire The Land and make it the site of events for womyn. Purple handed WWTLC the reins in 2019 and cast about for our next project.
What came to our attention was the fact that Terry Grant had donated the archives of Goldenrod, the national womyn’s music distributor she founded in Lansing, to Special Collections at the Libraries of Michigan State University. There they joined a vibrant assemblage of lesbian materials that has been growing since the 1970s. That assemblage came to include the archives of the MWMF too, once Terry talked with Lisa Vogel about the possibility, and Lisa decided to donate her records to Special Collections as well. To access this wealth, a person must come to the Library in East Lansing, and study the material on site. It occurred to us that it would be a fine thing if there were an endowment to make travel grants to women “scholars,” broadly construed, to make it possible for them to get here and work with these records of lesbian/feminist herstory. We commenced fundraising again, and in August of 2020 officially created the Lesbian Legacies Endowment: Amazon Cultural/Political Activism in Second Wave Feminism.
And by last year our fundraising topped the $50,000 needed to actualize the endowment, enabling it to fund its first travel grant. (Grants are made from the proceeds of MSU’s investment of the endowment itself.) We expect the university to decide on the first award from the endowment in November 2023, and issue it in the spring of 2024.
It pleases us that, as it turns out, all our efforts have been rooted in the strong and creative Amazon culture and practice quintessentially exemplified by the Festival. Now womyn are meeting once again on The Land, and will be able to find and learn from our lesbian legacies there and through Special Collections.
At every step this whole time, we have relied on the help and generosity of our supporters, and we so very much appreciate you all. Thank you!
Now we womyn of Purple feel that our work is nearly done. Though we’ve continued to be available, we still have not found the other little bands of troublemakers we imagined we might foster, and we don’t have the energetic wherewithal to undertake further major initiatives. So we will be dissolving Purple on August 31, 2023, the end of our current fiscal year.
Before we go, we intend to do what we can to raise awareness of the treasure in lesbian herstorical materials available at MSU Special Collections and of our Lesbian Legacies Endowment. For this, your help in spreading the information will be vital. We also hope to grow the endowment on our way out so that it can provide assistance to more visiting scholars.
Detailed information about the relevant materials in MSU Special Collections and about the Lesbian Legacies Endowment is available here on our website, with links to related information on MSU sites.
To donate to the Lesbian Legacies Endowment at MSU, there are two easy methods:
- Send a check payable to Michigan State University Libraries, including fund code AB020892 in the memo, to
Caitlin Dial
MSU Libraries (7)
West Circle Drive
East Lansing MI 48824
OR - Go through MSU University Development Online Giving, choosing the Lesbian Legacies: Amazon Cultural/Political Activism in Second Wave Feminism Endowment.
You will find information about further ways of donating, including donations to Special Collections of materials that would be covered by the endowment, on our website.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Purple emerged spontaneously from the lesbian/womyn’s community we have worked to foster, and we are profoundly grateful for the companionship and steady support you all have provided. We as individuals, of course, are not going anywhere: we remain ensconced in this beloved community, and will continue to support the endowment and an array of other community initiatives. We are just laying Purple as such to rest.
