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Lesbian & Gay History

GLBTQ Encyclopedia Looks at the Harlem Renaissance Through a Lavender Lens

Feb 4th, 2008
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LGBT Harlem Renaissance Writers
Eight important glbtq contributors to the Harlem Renaissance:
Row 1: (left to right) Countee Cullen and Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Row 2: Angelina Weld Grimké and Langston Hughes
Row 3: Alain Locke and Claude McKay
Row 4: Wallace Thurman and Carl Van Vechten
Images of Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Carl Van Vechten are details from photographs created by Carl Van Vechten and appear courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Hughes, Langston (1902-1967)

Langston Hughes - gay poet

“Langston Hughes, whose literary legacy is enormous and varied, was closeted, but homosexuality was an important influence on his literary imagination, and many of his poems may be read as gay texts… One of the greatest ironies in the life of the people’s poet was his own understandable silence regarding the oppression of gays. As a gay man, Hughes lived that secret life silently in the confines of a very narrow, but well-constructed closet–one that still shelters him today.” ¹– Alden Reimonenq

Alden Reimonenq is Interim Dean of the College of Humanities at California State University, Northridge. He taught at St. Mary’s College of California for seventeen years. He is working on a biographical and critical study of Countee Cullen. His poetry and reviews have appeared in James White Review and in the anthology Milking Black Bull: 12 Black Gay Poets. His book of poetry Hoodoo Headrag was published in 2001.

Check out Frank H. Jump’s
Harlem Renaissance DVD Webquest!

Jacob Lawrence

Lesbian & Gay African-Americans – Tribute to Black History Month – U.S. Commemorative Stamps – Frank H. Jump

Feb 1st, 2008
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Lesbian & Gay African-American US Commemorative Stamps - Frank H. Jump
© Frank H. Jump

Audre Lorde – Audrey Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 in New York City. She decided to drop the “y” from the end of her name at a young age, setting a precedent in her life of self determination. She was the daughter of Caribbean immigrants who settled in Harlem. She graduated from Columbia University and Hunter College, where she later held the prestigious post of Thomas Hunter Chair of Literature. She was married for eight years in the 1960’s, and had two children — Elizabeth and Jonathan. Lorde was a self described “Black lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. However, her life was one that could not be summed up in a phrase.¹

James Baldwin – James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – November 30, 1987) was an American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist, and civil rights activist. Most of Baldwin’s work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century United States. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as for the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and homosexual well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups could be assumed.²

Bayard Rustin – (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was openly gay and advocated on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career. A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: “The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it’s the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated.”³

Barbara Jordan – Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician from Texas. She served as a congresswoman in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979. Jordan was a lesbian with a longtime companion of more than 20 years, Nancy Earl; Jordan never publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation, but in her obituary, the Houston Chronicle mentioned her longtime relationship with Earl. After Jordan’s initial unsuccessful statewide races, advisers warned her to become more discreet and not bring any female companions on the campaign trail.↑