hey gays, it's pride!! in honour of this month and the blm movement, i'm gonna talk a little about some black lgbt activism every day :D

so here's 30 Days of Black LGBT History: A Thread

disclaimer: i'm not black, but i'm a sapphic poc who loves history, so i wanna talk a little about it!

disclaimer two: i'm only scratching the surface here. there are so many voices to be heard and the history is so amazing to learn about

disclaimer three: i'm not TOO focused on key, well-known activists, i'm moreso looking for smaller voices that have something to be learnt from, and who played a small role in a big part of history. a lot of this thread is gonna revolve around specific events or decades.

1 The Harlem Renaissance

the harlem renaissance was an artistic movement in the roaring twenties, centred in harlem, manhattan.

what caused it? well, after the civil war, many african americans wanted to escape the south, leading to what is known as the Great Migration.

this generation was one that remembered the suffering during the Reconstruction era after the civil war, a time where black people had hope of a new life, but only few of the government's promises were met. some of their parents had been slaves, so the trauma was very fresh.

the renaissance started in the late 1910s, with black actors beginning to appear in plays, rejecting the stereotypical blackface plays.

i won't go into any more detail about the renaissance but it's super interesting and encouraged more black people to protest nationwide.

so what does the harlem renaissance have to do with black lgbt history?

lgbt culture was much more accepted in harlem than in most of the us at the time, and it was in lgbt circles at nightclubs and bars that the blues music scene erupted during the renaissance.

1.2 Bessie Smith

bessie smith, nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, was the most popular female blues singer in the twenties and even the highest-paid black entertainer at one point.

she was bisexual and her songs often explored female sexuality, as well as other social issues.

1.3 Gladys Bentley

bentley was also a blues singer and entertainer during the 1920s. she was a lesbian and a cross-dresser known for taking popular white songs and putting black cultural spins on them.

in the McCarthy era, she rejected her lesbianism, began wearing dresses and

got married to a man, claiming that taking female hormones had "fixed" her. historians speculate that the change may have been due to "therapy" she had received due to her sexuality :(

nonetheless, her "black female masculinity" left a legacy for future black performers to come.

1.4 Richard Bruce Nugent

nugent was a gay writer and artist whose career spanned about sixty years. it is often said that his work helped bridge the gap between the harlem renaissance and the black gay movement of the 1980s.

1.5 Alain Leroy Locke

locke was a professor who lost his professorship at harvard university in 1925 for campaigning for pay equal to that of his white colleagues.

though closeted due to him seeing his sexuality as a "vulnerability", he left a legacy by supporting young gays.

1.6 Langston Hughes

hughes was a writer who wrote some of the most well-known black poetry, even to this day. he was very quiet about his own sexuality so i will simply give u these excerpts to read :]

[ henry louis gates jr, a professor at harvard university, has said that the harlem renaissance was "surely as gay as it was black"

i will leave u on that quote for today, bc there are so many other black lgbt people u could look at in this time but i can't mention them all :( ]