LGBTQ and bisexual activist Abilly S. Jones-Hennin, a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, died last Friday at the age of 81.
Jones-Hennin was born in the West Indies in 1942 and raised in Virginia with nine other adopted siblings. He served in the Marine Corps, then graduated from Virginia State College (now a university) and later earned a master’s degree in social work from Howard University.
On his father’s advice, according to a 2016 Outwords interview, he married a woman, “that I love very, very much and still do to this day,” and raised three kids with her. They separated after seven years, but he retained joint custody of the children. “My kids were always with me, even then. They’d go to all sorts of LGBTQ events,” he recalled in a 2022 AARP interview. For himself, “I became very active with gay fathers,” he told Outwords.
In 1978, Jones-Hennin was a founding member of the DC and Baltimore Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, which became the National Coalition of Black Gays, the first national advocacy organization for Black gay men and lesbians. He also helped mobilize the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights—and the same weekend, helped organize the National Third World LGBT Conference at Howard University, which led to Howard University’s Lambda Student Alliance, the first openly LGBTQ organization at an HBCU, according to Outwords.
He met his partner and later spouse Christopher in a support group called GAMMA (Gay and Married Men’s Association), where Jones-Hennin was a founding member. He didn’t then use the term “bisexual” openly, however, and rarely found others who did, out of fear of rejection by both the straight and gay communities, he explained to Outwords. Later, however, he would come to embrace being a bisexual activist.
In addition to his roles above, Jones-Hennin was at various times minority affairs director of the National AIDS Network, board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now The Task Force), board member of BiNet USA, and co-chair of the National Association of Black and White Men Together, among other positions. He was also employed as a researcher and technical director at a Washington-based advisory firm.
He and Christopher were partnered for 46 years, had two children together (in addition to the three from Jones-Hennin’s previous marriage), and married in 2014. In total, says the Washington Post in its obituary of him, the two had five children, 10 grandchildren, and 11 great grandchildren—yet another reminder that the history of LGBTQ families goes back generations.
A profile like this only begins to scratch the surface of a long, full life that helped move things forward for bi, LGBTQ, and Black equality. If you want to learn more about Jones-Hennin and his work, please check out the links above. My condolences to his family and friends and to all whom his life impacted.