Onyx Preserved Black Lesbian Life in the Bay Area

Before social media and online archives, community publications were vital ways for LGBTQ people to find one another, exchange ideas, and document their lives. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Onyx: Black Lesbian Newsletter was an early example of that work.

Originally published under the name Black Lesbian Newsletter, Onyx was based in Berkeley from 1982 through 1984. The bimonthly publication centered Black lesbian life and culture, offering a platform for material that could be difficult to find in broader lesbian, feminist, or Black newspapers and magazines.

Its pages brought together many forms of community expression. Readers could encounter fiction, poetry, opinion writing, news, reviews, visual art, photographs, and personal advertisements. That range made Onyx more than a news publication: it also functioned as a cultural record and a means of connection for Black lesbians in the Bay Area and beyond.

Laverne Gagehabib, A.C. Barber, and Vivienne Walker-Crawford created the newsletter. Marlene Bonner was among its editors, while artist Sarita Johnson illustrated the covers. The publication’s contributors and production team helped establish a distinctly Black lesbian editorial space at a time when representation within LGBTQ media was often limited or fragmented.

Onyx is identified as the earliest of three San Francisco Bay Area publications devoted to Black lesbian life and culture. It was followed by Aché: A Journal for Lesbians of African Descent and Issues! The Magazine for Lesbians of Color. Together, these publications form part of the region’s LGBTQ print history, showing how local communities built their own media when mainstream outlets did not meet their needs.

Gagehabib continued writing after Onyx ended. Her later books include The Blacksmith and the Doctor, The Doctors and Their Wives, Jonny and Vera, and Circles of Power: Shifting Dynamics in a Lesbian-centered Community, written in collaboration with Barbara Summerhawk. The latter examines a women’s community in Southern Oregon. The research notes that physical copies of Gagehabib’s books can be difficult to locate, adding to the importance of preserving records connected to her work and to Onyx.

For Bay Area LGBTQ history, Onyx offers a reminder that community journalism has long been part of movement-building. Its Berkeley publication run was brief, but its focus on Black lesbian voices, creativity, relationships, and public life helped broaden the region’s record of queer history.

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Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.ebar.com/news///240374 - https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/69262012 - https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/861537183 - https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/62281826 - https://archive.org/details/glbths-periodicals-onyx-junjuly-83-001/GLBTHS_periodicals_Onyx_junjuly83_002.jpg - https://archive.org/details/historicaldictio0000myer_n6t5/page/444/mode/2up Image rights Original illustrative artwork created from story keywords. It is illustrative, not a documentary photograph.