Blacks in the American Gay Rights Movement

The following article was published in the Encarta Africana Encyclopedia.

The Harlem Renaissance

In 1926, Bruce Nugent wrote a homoerotic essay for the premier issue of a controversial Harlem publication called FIRE!! Alongside articles by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Nugent's piece -- written under the pseudonym Richard Bruce -- described a male homosexual relationship. Although the article and the publication provoked criticism from some blacks for the controversial topics it explored, it marked an important milestone for blacks in the gay movement.

Many leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance were known to be homosexual or bisexual. Historian Eric Garber has noted that "homosexuality was clearly part of this world." It included well-known artists and writers such as Bessie Smith, Mabel Hampton, Wallace Thurman, Bruce Nugent, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, and others.

Following the Harlem Renaissance, few black musicians in the pre-civil rights era were more distinguished than Billy Strayhorn, who joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1939 as a pianist, arranger, and lyricist. As a black gay man, he worked in the shadow of Ellington, with whom he developed a close working relationship. Strayhorn created Lush Life (1938) and wrote Take the A Train (1941), the theme song of the Ellington band, and he is credited with nearly 200 solo and joint compositions.

The Civil Rights Movement

By the 1950s, several black writers who had confronted the vexing issue of segregation in America, began to address questions of sexual orientation as well. In 1956, James Baldwin, a black gay man, published the novel Giovanni's Room, his first homosexual love story. A year later, the young playwright Lorraine Hansberry, a black lesbian, wrote a letter to The Ladder, an early lesbian publication, where she suggested that "homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma." Hansberry would go on to achieve widespread acclaim when her play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959 to rave reviews.

During the 1950s and 60s, a number of black lesbians and gay men participated in the civil rights movement in the South and the North, but none was so well known as Bayard Rustin. In 1955, Rustin was a close associate of A. Philip Randolph, the cofounder of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Dispatched to help Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the Montgomery bus boycott, Rustin soon became a close adviser to King as well. Their relationship was strained when King, under pressure from conservative elements in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, agreed to distance himself from the openly homosexual Rustin. His best known achievement was as the principal organizer for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice. But Rustin, as a known homosexual, had to fight for this role against the objection of NAACP executive secretary Roy Wilkins, and he was not allowed to hold the actual title as march director.

The civil rights movement awakened America's consciousness to the unfulfilled promises of the nation and set the stage for other movements, including the gay liberation movement.

Stonewall

On Friday, June 27, 1969, eight New York City police officers raided a gay bar at 57 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. The manager of the Stonewall Inn was served with a warrant for selling liquor without a license, and police ordered patrons to leave the bar. As the patrons congregated outside, unlike at previous raids, they taunted the police with catcalls and openly defied them by throwing bricks and bottles. Led in part by black and Latino drag queens, a spontaneous rebellion erupted against the practice of police harassment of homosexuals. As word spread in the following days, hundreds of gays and lesbians, including African Americans, showed up in Sheridan Square to show their solidarity. The Stonewall Rebellion, as it has become known, marked a turning point for gays and lesbians, and it has since become the defining moment in American gay and lesbian history.

Post-Stonewall

After Stonewall, increasing numbers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans began to emerge "out of the closet," and African Americans have played a critical role in the gay movement's development during this time.

Activists in the 1970s began to make connections between the politics of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. On August 15, 1970, Huey P. Newton, Supreme Commander of the Black Panther Party, published a letter in the party newsletter stating, "the women's liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends." In April 1977, a group of black feminists called the Combahee River Collective issued a statement addressing the "interlocking" system of "racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression." In October 1979, during the gay community's first national march on Washington, hundreds of participants gathered at Harambee House for a Third World conference on gays and lesbians of color, titled "When Will the Ignorance End?" In 1980 black gay activist Melvin Boozer helped push the Democratic Party when he addressed the convention and explained the similar pain of racism and homophobia.

From the late 1970s to the present, numerous organizations formed to represent the interests of black homosexuals, bisexuals, and others. These include the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, and the National Body of the Black Men's Exchange. Some activists, such as veteran organizer Mandy Carter, played leading roles with both black gay organizations and mainstream gay organizations. As the AIDS epidemic began to impact black gay men disproportionately in the late 1980s and 1990s, many black gays and lesbians created new community organizations to respond to the crisis.

Black gays and lesbians became more prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. On the screen, the works of Marlon Riggs and Isaac Julien have created a new genre of black gay films. On the dance stage, Alvin Ailey and Bill T. Jones produced works that have been seen by audiences worldwide. In literature, black gay writers Essex Hemphill, E. Lynn Harris, and James Earl Hardy have written books that explore the black gay experience. Black openly gay and bisexual writers such as Sapphire and Samuel Delany have written popular novels that focus on issues other than sexual orientation.

Black writers, intellectuals, and activists have left a profound impression on the gay rights movement. Linda Villarosa served as executive editor of Essence magazine and introduced hundreds of thousands of black women to black lesbians when she co-authored a "coming out" piece with her mother. Barbara Smith's groundbreaking anthology Home Girls presented dozens of perspectives of black feminism that integrated black lesbian viewpoints. Others such as Cheryl Clarke, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and June Jordan have shared their experiences about bisexuality and lesbianism in their writings and public comments.

Black lesbian feminist writer Audre Lorde spoke at the 20th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, and activist Phill Wilson addressed the 30th anniversary march in 1993. Lorde produced literature so expressive and unique that she became a cultural icon in both the black community and the gay community. Wilson has articulated the interests of black gay men living with AIDS as he has played a leading role in the fight against the disease nationally and internationally.

Openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual entertainers such as Me'Shell N'degŽOcello, Little Richard, Nona Hendryx, Sylvester, and RuPaul have changed and challenged the music industry. In sports, Glenn Burke, a black openly gay member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is credited with inventing the "high five" in 1977. In fashion, black gay designers such as Patrick Kelley and Willi Smith have helped to shape the industry. In politics, a new breed of black openly gay elected officials emerged, including Ken Reeves, the first black mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Sabrina Sojourner, the shadow U.S. Representative for the District of Columbia; Keith St. John, an alderman in Albany, New York; and Sherry Harris, a city council member in Seattle.

In April 1993, three black gays and lesbians participated in a White House meeting as part of the first group of gay and lesbian leaders to meet with an American president. In the same year, when the Clinton Administration discussed plans to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military, black gay men and lesbians were involved and affected. One such soldier was Perry Watkins, who had been drafted into the army in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War. At the time he was drafted, Watkins acknowledged his homosexuality, but was nevertheless admitted into military service. He served openly gay until he was discharged in 1982 for homosexuality. Watkins fought the discharge for several years and finally won reinstatement when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the U.S. Army's appeal case. He later retired with an "honorable discharge" and became the only openly gay person to retire with full honors from the military.

In 1995, hundreds of black lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals assembled in New York for a conference called "Black Nations/Queer Nations?" to explore the intersections of race and sexual orientation. By October of that year, when the Nation of Islam organized the Million Man March in Washington, more than 200 people took part in a contingent that carried signs and placards identifying themselves as black gay men. In the 1990s, leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have joined in support of laws protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination.

Bibliography

Keith Boykin, One More River to Cross: Black & Gay in America (1996)

Wayne R. Dynes, Ed., Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (1990)

David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1988)

Barbara Smith, Ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983)

© 2001 by Keith Boykin. All Rights Reserved.