Terri L. Jewell

In 2019, Su Penn led a discussion on the life of Jewell at the 34th Annual Women in the Arts Festival held at the Edgewood United Church in East Lansing, Michigan.

In 2018, Voices of the Revolution, a spoken word group, formed by Susan Harris, Laurie Hollinger and TariMuñiz, celebrated the work of Pat Parker, Terri Jewell, June Jordan and other powerful, revolutionary women at the 33th Annual Women in the Arts Festival held at the Edgewood United Church in East Lansing, Michigan.

On November 26, 1995, Jewell's body was found at the Michigan park in Ionia County. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In 1993, Jewell was one of the first to publish a biography and critical essay about writer Sapphire.

In 1993, the Arts Foundations of Michigan awarded Jewell a $1,150 grant to support new poetry about African American poet, writer and activist James Baldwin. "She was on the verge of a great breakthrough with the James Baldwin poems she was writing...She would read me parts... It was an amazing work," according to Michigan State University colleague and author Lev Raphael. At the time of Jewell's death, her manuscript of poems about Baldwin was unpublished.

Jewell became politically active in the women's movement in New York while attending Montclair State College. She participated in marches and readings dealing with feminist issues. During her college years, Jewell acknowledged she was a lesbian. She wrote about coming out to her mother in her 1990 article “A Short Account of My Behavior.” In 1985, Jewell outlined the political, class and other challenges experienced by a Black lesbian in a relationship with a white woman in “An Alliance of Differences”.

About 1989/1990, Jewell interviewed Ruth Ellis, an African-American woman who became widely known as the oldest surviving open lesbian, for the publication Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian of Colour Anthology.

Jewell spent two years majoring in biology at the University of Louisville before transferring to another college. She graduated in 1979 from Montclair State College in New Jersey with Bachelors of Science degree in health education.

In 1968, Jewell won first prize, a $25 Savings Bond, for writing an essay for the third annual Negro History Essay Contest sponsored by the Louisville, Kentucky chapter of the Links, Inc.

The Terri L. Jewell papers (1968-1996) are at Michigan State University. The collection, approximately 15.6 linear feet of materials, consists of manuscripts of poetry, manuscripts of anthology projects, notebooks, reviews, interviews, research material, photographs, correspondence, obituary, and memorial program. The collection was donated by Lee Michael Sayles in 1996, with an accrual donated in 2018.

Terri Lynn Jewell (October 4, 1954 – November 26, 1995) was an American author, poet and Black lesbian activist. She was the editor of The Black Woman’s Gumbo Ya-Ya, which received the New York City Library Young Persons Reading Award in 1994.

Jewell was born the only daughter on October 4, 1954, in Louisville, Kentucky to Mildred (Midge) and Miller LaRue Jewell, Jr. She had a half-brother, Marcus Tandy.