In 1993, Wanda and Brenda Henson wanted to continue organizing their small weekend music festival, which gathered between 200 and 300 women in the South.
A vibrant collection of women’s music festivals was operating around the country in Michigan, Indiana and Delaware, but that was a long drive from Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana. Wanda and Brenda, who had organized a few over the past years highlighting lesbian musicians and performers, called their gathering the Gulf Coast Women’s Music Festival. The event drew women from around the southern region.
Previous festivals were held at local campgrounds closer to the coast, but after each one, campground operators asked them not to come back because they didn’t feel comfortable hosting that many lesbians. The climate for LGBTQ+ people around the United States, including in Mississippi, was hostile in the early 1990s. Sodomy laws were still on the books; gay men and lesbians could not marry; workplace discrimination and denial of public accommodations was legal.
The Hensons, connected to a broader feminist movement from their work defending abortion clinics and the gay and lesbian movement through the feminist bookstore they operated in Gulfport, thought another world was possible. They figured they could help create it. Together, they decided that for the music festival to work, they needed land of their own. They also imagined that, with a nice plot of land, they could build a feminist education center to serve women in the South and help the local community. Through all their work, the Hensons lifted up feminism and women’s equality as well as caring for the most vulnerable—people who were hungry, poor and needed extra support.
They found an old hog farm in Ovett and bought it. Camp Sister Spirit had found its permanent home.
Neighbors had other ideas.
The story of Camp Sister Spirit, and the opposition to it from some in Ovett, made national headlines. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and the Baltimore Sun were among the newspapers that covered the emerging conflict in Ovett. Wanda and Brenda appeared on Larry King Live and the Oprah Winfrey Show. Opposition to their vision and to the presence of two, unapologetic lesbians in a Mississippi small town, made a good story for folks up north.
What didn’t make the news was the support that Wanda and Brenda earned. Brenda describes support from the local community in an oral-history interview. As the controversy swirled, they found allies in the community, who, like them, were “trying to control their lives”—those who wanted to do things like gamble or chew tobacco also faced opposition from the same people. Brenda recounts an Asian American woman who worked at the post office in Ovett who told her, “I just want you to know that no one from my church is involved with this group.” Over time, the Hensons found a place in the local Ovett community and earned folks’ respect.
After about 18 months, when lawsuits were settled or dropped and television cameras and journalists moved on to other stories, Wanda and Brenda continued the work of Camp Sister Spirit.
The duo hosted the annual music festival; they operated a food bank and continued upgrading the bunk house to include the addition of more sheds for sleeping. Camp Sister Spirit became a retreat center for a range of groups from Hattiesburg and southern Mississippi. Feminists gathered there, as did folks from gay and lesbian organizations as well as people working for peace and racial justice and members from the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship. Camp Sister Spirit in Ovett brought people together and operated as a vibrant organization from 1994 through 2006. That work, the ordinary work of community support and helping people in need, received little attention. Outside folks were interested in the controversy. When that waned, so did outside attention.
No matter. Wanda and Brenda Henson showed up every day to do the work, helping Mississippians—lesbian and heterosexual, gay and straight—until Brenda was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 2008.
Camp Sister Spirit did less after Brenda’s diagnosis and ceased operations after her death. To support herself, Wanda worked as a nurse, continuing her devotion to the community. By many accounts, what Wanda Henson wanted to do most in the world is help people. She wanted to feed people who did not have food. She wanted to provide medical care to people in pain. She wanted to nurture the spirit of women, particularly women beleaguered by the sexism and homophobia in the world.
And she did that work of service, that work of helping friends and neighbors and strangers throughout her life.
Wanda Henson died on May 22, 2025, after a long battle with cancer. She is now with her beloved Brenda.
Life in Mississippi is better because of the work that Wanda and Brenda did through their bookstore in Gulfport and Camp Sister Spirit in Ovett. The Hensons were part of a generation of women and lesbians who remade the world to create more space for justice and equality.
Today, all around the state, hundreds of other lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender people do similar work in local communities. Some LGBTQ+ folks are working to advocate for equal treatment and equal rights for lesbian, gay and trans people in the state as new attacks on our humanity happen. Other LGBTQ+ folks in Mississippi feed hungry people, provide medical care, teach, lead community groups, and lend helping hands to their friends and neighbors. The work continues.
For the past few years, I have invited students in my classes at the University of Mississippi to explore the history of Camp Sister Spirit through archival sources: newspaper articles, interviews with Wanda and Brenda, and reports from attendees at the music festival.
Most students are not aware of this queer Mississippi history—and it inspires them. By knowing about the work of the Hensons and Camp Sister Spirit, they imagine their own work in Mississippi and the new spaces that they might create for queer and allied communities.
In memory of Wanda Henson, Nov. 21, 1954—May 22, 2025.
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