The Harlem Renaissance at 100: as black as was gay

Contents:

• THE GAY HARLEM RENAISSANCE
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• GAY RIGHTS
• NYC: MARRIED COUPLE OPENS 'LAMBDA LOUNGE,' SEND GAY BAR IN HARLEM CREATED FOR BLACK LGBTQ PATRONS

THE GAY HARLEM RENAISSANCE

She appeared at the Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club, but she was also often seen cked out a whe tuxedo sgg rnchy songs at gay speakeasi like Harry Hansberry’s Clam Hoe, backed up by drag performers. One of the few openly gay Black wrers of the perd, Richard Bce Nugent, published the short story “Smoke, Lili and Ja, ” nsired a semal work of gay Harlem for pictg bisexualy and a 19-year-old male artist sexually volved wh another man. Read more: You’ve Probably Heard of the Red Sre, but the Lser-Known, Anti-Gay ‘Lavenr Sre’ Is Rarely Tght Schools The richns of that culture still remaed, wag to be redisvered—a procs that began after the 1960s and ‘70s gay rights movement was followed by the loss of life durg the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, which raised awarens of the need to prerve gay history.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Ain Amerin lerary cric and profsor Henry Louis Gat once reflected that the Harlem Renaissance was “surely as gay as was Black, not that was exclively eher of the. Quiet as ’s kept, along wh Cullen, a number of the brightt lights of the Harlem Renaissance fell somewhere along the LGBT (lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr) rabow spectm.

Cl McKay, Wallace Thurman, Ala Locke, Richard Bce Nugent, Angela Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Langston Hugh, all lumari of the New Negro lerary movement, have been intified as anywhere om openly gay (Nugent) to sexually ambiguo or myster (Hugh).

Throughout the so- lled Harlem Renaissance perd, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lbians and gay men were meetg each other [on] street rners, socializg barets and rent parti, and worshipg church on Sundays, creatg a language, a social stcture, and a plex work of stutns. In Gay Voic of the Harlem Renaissance, thor Schwarz explas that historians eher liberately or advertently siled the lk between the Harlem Renaissance and homosexualy.

GAY RIGHTS

Locke, ” bgrapher Leonard Harris acced some scholars of obscurg Locke’s gay life, leadg to the false ia that “Locke’s sexualy was irrelevant to his tellectual and personal history.

Du Bois fired his iend and protégé Augt Dill, the bs manager of the NAACP’s magaze, the Crisis, after Dill was arrted for a homosexual enunter 1928 — a move that Du Bois said he regretted. The 1931 novel Strange Brother, by Blaire Nil, sums up the perd’s plited social geography bt: “In Harlem I found urage and joy and tolerance, ” not one gay character.

NYC: MARRIED COUPLE OPENS 'LAMBDA LOUNGE,' SEND GAY BAR IN HARLEM CREATED FOR BLACK LGBTQ PATRONS

In the early 1970s, Black and Latx gay, trans and queer people veloped a thrivg subculture hoe balls, where they uld exprs themselv eely and fd acceptance wh a margalized muny. “Other trans women—some of them would never ll themselv trans—the Pepper LaBeija, the Dorian Corey… Ho beg to be named after the women, ” says Michael Roberson, rint of the Center for Race, Relign and Enomic Democracy (CRRED) and founr of the Hoe of ballroom further differentiated om drag balls 1973, when Erske Christian beme the first gay man to pete, acrdg to Roberson.