Frances Clayton(1830 — 1863)
Frances Clayton
États-Unis
5 min read
American psychologist and partner of the African American poet and activist Audre Lorde for nearly twenty years. The couple raised Lorde's two children together on Staten Island, a figure in 20th-century lesbian and feminist history.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- From around 1968, shared her life with the poet Audre Lorde, a relationship that would last nearly two decades
- The couple settled on Staten Island and raised Lorde's two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, together
- A psychology professor by training, within the American academic context of the 1960s-1970s
- Their relationship, lived openly, came to an end in the late 1980s
- A figure associated with the history of lesbian couples and second-wave American feminism in the 20th century
Works & Achievements
Frances Clayton worked as a professor of psychology, at a time when women still struggled to gain access to academic positions.
Together with Lorde, she raised Elizabeth and Jonathan on Staten Island, embodying the model of the chosen lesbian family championed by feminism.
Her presence at Lorde's side, from the 1978 diagnosis onward, runs through the journals “The Cancer Journals” and “A Burst of Light.”
Photographed by Robert Giard, she became part of the visual memory of the American lesbian and gay literary community.
Anecdotes
A psychology professor of white background, Frances Clayton shared the life of African American poet Audre Lorde for nearly twenty years, from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Their interracial, lesbian relationship was highly visible at a time when such a partnership faced both racial and homophobic discrimination.
In Staten Island, Frances and Audre raised together the two children Lorde had from her marriage: Elizabeth and Jonathan. This blended family — lesbian and biracial — was a concrete embodiment of the “chosen family” model championed by feminist activists of the 1970s.
Frances Clayton's daily life alongside Audre Lorde runs through several of the poet's autobiographical books, notably *The Cancer Journals* and *A Burst of Light*: she appears in them as the companion who supported Lorde through her battle against breast cancer, which began in 1978.
The couple was photographed by Robert Giard, who devoted part of his work to documenting the faces of the American lesbian, gay, and literary community. These portraits are among the few surviving images of Frances Clayton, whose life remains known chiefly through Lorde's writings.
Primary Sources
Private journal in which Lorde recalls the presence of her partner and loved ones during her mastectomy and recovery, bearing witness to the supportive role played by Frances Clayton.
Collection of journals in which Lorde describes her daily life, her family, and her activist struggles as her cancer progresses, a period shared with Frances Clayton.
Series of portraits of American lesbian and gay literary figures, among them Audre Lorde and Frances Clayton, held notably at Yale's Beinecke Library.
Definitive biography that traces the nearly twenty-year relationship between Audre Lorde and Frances Clayton and their family life on Staten Island.
Key Places
Neighborhood where Frances Clayton and Audre Lorde lived together and raised Lorde's two children. The heart of their family life for nearly twenty years.
Metropolis where the couple's intellectual, academic, and activist life flourished, at the heart of the American feminist and LGBTQ movements.
City where Audre Lorde stayed regularly from the 1980s onward to receive treatment and teach; an important chapter in the couple's shared life during this period.
New England university city associated with Frances Clayton's academic career in psychology.
