LGBTQ History Month Spotlight: Martha Ficken Papers

As we conclude LGBTQ History Month this October, we are spotlighting a recent addition to the Special Collections at WashU Libraries.  

Martha Ficken: Lesbian Community Activist and Literata (1937–2023)

The Martha Ficken Papers document the life of a woman who grew up in North Carolina in the 1950s and moved to St. Louis in the 1970s, where she was able to finally live her authentic life as a lesbian. 

As a woman of letters (literata), Martha had a passion for reading, writing, and teaching. She wrote nearly all her life, and this is documented in her archive through many journals, essays, poems, chapbooks, and more. As soon as she moved to St. Louis in 1976, she became active with the lesbian group IRIS, and several women’s poetry groups. For a decade, she authored book reviews and articles, along with helping with the layout and distribution of The Lesbian and Gay News Telegraph—all in her “spare” time from being an elementary teacher.  

In one of her articles Martha (Carla) reflected:

“There was little in my experience by the 50s to help me recognize the lesbian in myself, and much less that would make me feel at ease about doing so. Even now [1980s] there is not enough. I’ll read anything about or by Lesbians and feel happy about the incentive that led to creating it.”  

This passion for LGBTQ publications is well reflected in her archives which include several scarce lesbian comic zines, such as Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist, periodicals such as Lesbian Connections, and first editions of books she was sent for reviews, including Heather Has Two Mommies.

The collection was generously donated by Martha’s lifelong partner Dr. Nan Sweets. As we emailed to discuss what would go to the archive, Nan, herself a poet and writer, offered these pointed reflections on Martha’s work: 

“Her storytelling and poetry were crowd favorites, offered in her ‘Carolinkie’ (West Tennessee) accent. … Besides her personal writing, Martha contributed year by year (sometimes month by month) to whatever local rag was reaching lesbians, be that GLTBT, etc., or “gay” or “lesbian.”  Her specialty was book reviewing … Another was the herstorical blurb … building a lesbian culture for those who needed and enjoyed those cultural hooks. An early reader of The Ladder, she contacted its late editor Barbra Geier as Grier moved into book publishing with Naiad Press. Martha visited her and contributed office work: she also read manuscripts for Naiad, those coming in ‘over the transom.’ … All while teaching full time for the St. Louis Public Schools, first grade usually, loving to teach kids to read and write.”

WashU Libraries is grateful to Nan for the opportunity to preserve these materials.

About the Archives

This collection and others at WashU were collected as part of our ongoing effort to ensure that local LGBTQ+ history is preserved and available for study. Over the next months, these materials will be organized and a description added to the online archive catalog, ArchivesSpace. All researchers, regardless of university affiliation, are welcome at Special Collections. Please contact us at spec@wumail.wustl.edu for more information about accessing collections.

If you have files, photographs, recordings, or other items that document LGBTQIA+ life in the St. Louis area, contact Miranda Rectenwald, curator of local history, at mrectenwald@wustl.edu to talk about ways this history can be preserved for future generations.