Longtime LGBTQ advocate ABilly S. Jones-Hennin dies at 81
ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, a longtime D.C. LGBTQ rights advocate who co-founded the National Coalition of Black Gays in 1978 and helped organize the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, died Jan.
19 at his and his husband’s winter home in Chetumal, Mexico. His partner and husband of 45 years, Christopher Hennin, said the cause of death was complications associated with Parkinson’s Disease and advance stage spinal stenosis.
He was 81. Jones-Hennin, who identified as bisexual, is credited with advancing the presence of the bisexual community within the LGBTQ rights movement while working through several organizations he helped to form to advance of the overall cause of LGBTQ and African-American civil rights.
He was born in St. Johns, Antigua in 1942 and was adopted at the age of 3 by an American civil rights activist couple. According to biographical information on Jones-Hennin released by organizations he worked with, he grew up in South Carolina and Virginia.
