Hello

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Conceived, Produced, and Directed by

Mamie Webb Hixon

 

MAMIE’S ANNUAL GIRLFRIENDS’ GATHERING – “It’s an experience,” describes regular attendee Delores Bivens, who is among the 200+ regular attendees at the 300- to 400-person gathering – all “gurls”: girlfriends, BFF’s, sisters, sistahs, sisterfriends, womenfriends, and sisterchicks who receive a “femail” from Mamie Webb Hixon, originator of this event, in late December of the year preceding the event or in early January of the year of the event, inviting them to participate in the annual all-female March gala. The women range from her Gurl Church members (a name she and her girlfriend Jackie Roberts coined for the women’s socials at her church) to her book club members, writing friends, BFF friends, childhood friends, dancing friends, dining friends, Grammarcise friends, sorority member friends, 100 Black Women friends, Impact 100 friends, community activist friends, teaching friends, traveling friends, high school classmate friends, Divine 9 friends, “Our Voices Are Many” friends, community activist friends, former student friends, former and current mentee friends, AKA and Delta “daughter” friends, professional friends, and friends of her friends. Mamie groups these women as friends, good friends, such good friends, and friends of my friends.

 

What started out in 2004 as a gathering of 35 women in Mamie’s circle of friends sitting around a hibachi table at a local Japanese restaurant singing, reading and reciting poetry, chair dancing, telling stories, lip-synching, and singing mushroomed into a gathering of over 350 women from 2006 to 2019 (the gathering was on a pandemic pause from 2020 to 2024), with women anxiously waiting to reunite and bring out the girls in themselves). In 2005, Mamie booked an entire restaurant, the then-Leisure Club on South Palafox for a gathering of the capacity of the venue – 50 girlfriends. Then the gathering moved to the then-Gregory Street Ballroom. All succeeding gatherings were held at New World Landing in Downtown Pensacola. After the closing of that venue, the gathering found a home at the Brownsville Community Center in 2024 for the epic return of the gathering after a four-year pandemic pause.

 

As a self-proclaimed “Connector,” Hixon has been creating and sponsoring events that connect people and communities through myriad programs and events for over twenty years. The annual Girlfriends’ Gathering, another connecting event, allows Hixon to connect her professional literary career to her social life: you see, the inspiration for this gathering is a 1974 play/choreopoem titled “For Colored Girls . . .” by playwright Ntozake Shange. Thus, Hixon explains, the subtitle for the event - “For Colored Girls” – and the requirement for each attendee to come to the event dressed as “a colored girl” wearing a “badazz” outfit in one of the colors of the rainbow or any other solid color so she can be identified as The Lady in Red, The Lady in Yellow, The Lady in Orange, The Lady in Green, The Lady in Purple, The Lady in Blue, The Lady in Brown, The Lady in Black, The Lady in White, The Lady in Pink, The Lady in Gold, The Lady in Silver, The Lady in Lavender, etc. The only other attire criterion is an outfit for the other ladies to ooh and aah about, she quips. The social criterion is “BRING OUT THE GIRL IN YOU . . . SING ABLACK GIRLS’ SONG . . . BRING HER OUT TO KNOW HERSELF . . . SHE’S BEEN DEAD SO LONG.”

 

The six-hour weeknight event (5:00 p.m. till 11:00 p.m.) always consists of an all-gurl cast participating in lots of -ings: dancing, singing, strutting, sashaying, dining, shopping with local female vendors, lip-synching, praising, reuniting, talking, and eating, just to name a few. Mamie added to this year’s list that she will be 79-ing (the month of the event is always March – her birthday month and WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH). “But the gathering is not about my birthday; we celebrate all March birthday queens.” Three highlights of the 2024 evening were the recognition of former high school and college majorettes, cheerleaders, and campus queens; the “We Speak Your Names’ Candlelight Memorial honoring the lives of girlfriend attendees who passed between 2020 and 2024; and the tribute to nonagenarians – 90-year-old women. Nine nonagenarians ranging from ages 90 to 98 were present for the tribute.

 

Women can’t wait to swarm around the dance floor during the Colored Girls Roll Call when each color is announced for women to come to the floor and dance. Then there’s what Hixon calls “Decade Dancing” in which the ladies in their nineties, eighties, seventies, sixties, etc. flood to the dance floor to show off their ages and dancing skills.

 

Vendors set up without a vendor fee and showcase and sell their wares because, as Mamie explains, “I like to support black businesses and help my vendor girlfriends ‘make mo money.’”

 

As Arnetha Welcome, a regular attendee and vendor said, “Mamie recognized every girlfriend in the place. Whether it was the color of her outfit, her birthday, her personal attribute(s) (her hair, her 

shoes, her height, her hips, her fashion sense, etc.). Every woman felt welcomed and affirmed.”