Back in April, I interviewed Bee Knight and Melissa Hamilton from the Leeway Foundation. It was originally intended to run as one column, but our conversation was so rich and engaging that I had to break it into two.
As a refresher, the Leeway Foundation is an organization that “supports women, trans*, and/or gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers working in communities at the intersection of art, culture, and social change.”
This is a difficult time for all of us — especially those in the arts. Just before I began writing this, I received an email from the Wilma Theater announcing that its NEA grant had been rescinded. Hundreds of theaters and arts organizations reportedly received the same news. Our voices are being silenced, but private foundations like Leeway continue to offer crucial support for work that promotes social change.
We pick up the interview with Hamilton, deputy director at Leeway. An arts administrator, educator and creative, Hamilton has been involved in Philadelphia’s arts and culture scene for more than a decade and is dedicated to helping artists not only survive, but thrive.
Where do you hail from?
I’m Philly born and raised. I feel like Philly’s in this moment of people discovering it and I’m really proud to be from here. I love working in the Philly community, especially in the arts, which I’ve always had a lot of love for. I was born in Kensington. That’s where my father’s from, and then we moved to this little section in the northeast called Bridesburg. I grew up there in the ’80s and it was a great place to live if you were white, straight, Catholic/Christian, and had a family. But I think when you went beyond those boundaries, it was a really challenging, tough place to live and I have some critiques in the ways in which they built community, or lacked inclusive community there. I hear it’s changing, but I don’t go there a lot.
My brother lived there for a while and it seemed OK — at least his block.
I hope so. I remember a Black woman moved into the neighborhood with her children, and the neighborhood gave that woman hell, like gave her significant pushback. I remember riding my bicycle past where she was living, and seeing a Nazi symbol for the first time, and not knowing what that was, and going home to ask my mother. It was wild. That woman eventually moved out of the neighborhood. I think I was 8 at the time, and had this first realization that some people are just hateful. You can find several news articles about it.
So tell me more about little Melissa.
Oh my gosh. I just had a birthday. And I was thinking about little Melissa, because I’m almost 40. I just turned 39 and when you have a birthday, you’re like, would little me be proud of me? And I thought, “Yeah, definitely.” I’m an Aries , so I was very excited about everything, and I loved what I loved. And I am still sort of like this, 110 on what I love and zero on the things I don’t, [laughing] not to enforce binaries! I was really energetic. I loved to ride my bicycle around the block. I loved theater as a kid.
My parents were working class, poor people who live paycheck to paycheck, and so we didn’t have coins to even go down to Broad Street and see a show. But we had a rec center in my neighborhood, and so that rec center was like my cultural hub. I always loved the arts. I took tap lessons there. I did theater and you could always find me with a sketchbook. I just really loved to be around people.
My partner recently asked me if I had a favorite birthday. Yes, it was my seventh birthday party, because I got to invite my whole class. “Aladdin” was really popular in the early ’90s, and Princess Jasmine came to my house in character, and we got to hang out. But my favorite part of that birthday party was that my mom let me draw a picture of the genie in “Aladdin,” and she ran it off on colored paper at her work, and put it in the party bags. That was like, “Wow, I’m an artist!”
You said you were very excitable. What was a favorite Christmas gift that got you overwrought?
Oh my gosh, so many. I got a keyboard one year, and that was everything. I really wanted to learn how to play, right? I had been taking piano lessons at church for I want to say six or seven months. It was that gift where you think you opened everything and are already happy and grateful and your parents are like, “I think there’s one more gift over there.” It was a keyboard, and it was the joy of my 10-year-old life for a solid year. It was one of those Casio keyboards with the synthesized beats. I thought I was a pop star.
Who was a favorite teacher?
I have two. One is my first-grade teacher Mrs. Z. I went to a Polish Catholic school in my neighborhood. She would read to us every afternoon, and she introduced me to books that I still love, like “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein, and other classics. I just remember the care she gave everybody in that space. Then when I was doing my undergraduate, there was a teacher named Dr. Teresa Gilliams, and she really pushed me to critically think about my positionality, especially as a white person. And she introduced me to incredible literature, like Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde and Pat Parker — some really great Black women writers that I would not have discovered without her making me get out of my box. That was up at Albright College in Reading. I don’t know how they got her, but she’s doing the Lord’s work at that school! I met my wife in her class and she really helped us navigate our relationship as an interracial couple in a really critical way. In the first year, she really checked me on some shit, which I needed.
I understand you were a teacher as well, at Arcadia. Were you there when they called it Beaver College?
I wasn’t, but I do have a sweatshirt that says Beaver College on it that my partner and I fight over. They changed the name real quick when the internet came.
Where did you go to college?
I went to undergrad at Albright. It’s a small liberal arts college. I took English and gender studies, surprise, surprise. I had a really good time there. I feel like it really shaped who I was. I didn’t have help from the parents to go to college, and they gave me a sizable scholarship so it made sense for me to go there. It got me out of the Bridesburg bubble and into a different environment. I went to graduate school at Arcadia and did my master’s in English and communications there too.
What was your first job out of college?
My first job out of college was in childcare, believe it or not. So it wasn’t in my field at all but I’ve always had this ethic from my mother and my father which is, “You gotta pay the bills. Don’t let your ego get in the way of making sure that you’re paying your bills and you’re secure.” When I graduated, I couldn’t
find a job in my field, and so I was like, “All right, gotta pay them bills!” I worked in the toddler room, reading books and wiping kids’ butts but having a lot of fun, until I found a job in my field. I started doing marketing work for arts nonprofits in Mount Airy, like the Mt. Airy Art Garage which at the time was run by two lesbians, Arleen Olshan and Linda Slodki.
I’ve interviewed both of them! So tell me a little bit about your coming-out story.
Good Lord. Someone called me a lesbian at Girl Scout camp, and I didn’t know what that was. I was about 13 and I remember going home. I don’t even think Google was a thing yet. I think I used Ask Jeeves to search, “What is a lesbian?” and the website PlanetOut came up. I took a deep dive into the site and saw things like, Bikini Kill album reviews. And I was like, oh, what is this? Lesbian punk rock music? Then in true ’90s kids form, I went into a lesbian chat room, trying to be somebody I wasn’t.
But when I was about 15, I found The Attic Youth Center, so before I came out to family, I was out to chosen family and friends. My mom passed away when I was 16, and I felt like it wasn’t a great time to come out, though I feel like my family had to know — like, there were signs. But I waited to come out to my father until I was at college, and I had some safety and distance between the two of us. I came out in a letter to him, and he didn’t talk to me for three years, but then he got diagnosed with cancer in my senior year, and it was just like, all right, let’s put the shit aside. It’s time to try and repair it if possible. So in the last year of his life, we actually started talking again, and I became a caretaker for him. In his final months, he met Michelle, my partner at the time, who’s my wife now and he really fell in love with her. I feel like she actually brought us back together, and became almost like a mediator. She gave us the space to gather in a neutral way. And she was there right up until the end with him, up to the final day he passed. It’s emotional to think about, but I’m happy that we put some shit to the side.
[Michelle and I] didn’t get married until years later, but we had a welcome back to Philly party, and though [my father] was really sick at the time, he came. [Laughing] He was really out of his element. My partner’s family is really supportive of us, so all of our Black aunties were there, and they had cooked this big meal, and our chosen family was there. It was the first time he’d met my partner’s family and that day on our front porch, he said to me, “I’m really proud, like, really proud of you.” We didn’t look at each other, we were both looking in different directions. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time left and he could see that somebody was there to love me and take care of me. I think that was a big moment for him. I know it was a big moment for me.
And how did you and Michelle meet?
We were in a course together. She works in finance right now, so we’re a little different in that realm. How do I describe this? She wouldn’t speak until she had a really good point to make, and we were talking about Black women’s literature in a classroom that was predominantly not Black, and she read somebody for filth in the classroom in a really important way. And I was like, I love her. She did not feel the same about me originally, so I had to work a little harder to convince her that she should spend some time with me. But it worked out in my favor!
And how did you get involved with Leeway?
I kept seeing Leeway’s logo, this little swirl, whatever that logo is, at all these performances or at the poetry readings of queer and trans family and friends that I was going to see in Philadelphia. I googled and found out that it was a grant maker. I was teaching at the time, so I had some free time in the summer. I emailed them and was like, “Hey, do y’all have interns? I’m not a student. I don’t need credit. But I’d like to intern as a grown-ass adult at Leeway.” And they took me as an intern, and with three other students who were doing college credit. That was my introduction to Leeway back in 2011.
Then I applied for a job here and didn’t get it, which was so real. I look back at the time and it was really challenging. Like, damn, I didn’t get it, but they thought I needed to do some more growing and live a little. Two years later, they had another position for a program assistant. I reapplied and I was lucky enough to get it, and so that started my relationship with Leeway, and then I left and came back. It’s been a journey. Just like a lover, Leeway, I can’t quit you.
You all do some amazing things for people. What’s a story that moved you?
There’s so many. One right off the top of my head, there was an awardee who got the Transformation Award and was a seasoned artist, a little older. And she was able to, number one, go to the dentist to fix her teeth, which had been really bothering her. And she was able to transform a room in her basement into her studio, so that she could still create but also be in the comfort of her home. So that was really impactful.
I loved that we were able to support that, but I think the work we’ve done through the Community Care Fund — an emergency resource fund that started during the pandemic and still exists today — is really amazing. I’m really proud of the work that our staff has collectively done to grant almost $700,000 since 2020 for things like medical and housing support.
I could list 100 stories about the ways in which people have kept the lights on, or fed their families. I think emergency resource funding is really important for artists who are already rubbing together two nickels a lot of the time to make things happen. I think a lot of the existing funding in Philadelphia goes to new project ideas, the newest shiny thing, and that is amazing that artists can create cool things, but they also have to be well and eat and have a place to sleep that’s safe. I’m really, really grateful to be able to help with that work.
OK, totally random questions now. Favorite LGBTQ movie? Or celebrity crush?
Mine is Lenny Kravitz. He’s not a lesbian, but has lesbian energy. Also, I saw “Gypsy” with Audra McDonald up in New York for my birthday, and it was everything! File Audra McDonald under celebrity crush for me too. My movie would be “But I’m a Cheerleader.” I just find it so funny. I even like just the aesthetics of it. It’s like a comfort movie for me.
Go-to karaoke song.
“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” by Shania Twain. I just feel like it is that song that gets the crowd going. Even if you don’t like it, you still sing along.
Something on your bucket list?
I’ve got one thing that I really want to do. I’ve never traveled outside the United States or North America, and before I leave this world, I want to ride on a plane and go somewhere International. My mother never even left the Northeast. She went to New York City for the first time a year before she died. So I think it’s something that would be my wildest dream and I think it would be hers too.
Let’s wrap with a favorite saying or motto.
What I come back to all the time is a Walt Whitman quote from his epic poem, “Song of Myself.” It’s the line, “Onward and outward, nothing collapses.” It’s gotten me through some really tough moments in my life, and it’s become a mantra for me when I’m doing the hard thing. I think resilience is overrated. I think especially as women or women-presenting queer and trans people, we’re told to be resilient all the time and keep it moving. But I do think it’s important to have something that keeps driving you forward, that grounds you, and that quote is what does for me.