"Amelio Robles Avila" (November 1889-December 9 1984)

Was a colonel during the Mexican Revolution. Assigned female at birth with the name Amelia Robles Avila,he fought in the Mexican Revolution,rose to the rank of colonel,

and lived openly as a man from age 24 until his death at age 95.

He was born in Xochipala,Guerrero to Casimiro Robles & Josefa Avila. Casimiro was a wealthy farmer who owned 42 hectares of land and a small mezcal factory.Amelio 
had two older brothers Teodulo & Prisca.Amelio was three years old when Casimiro 
died and a few years later Josefa married Jesus Martinez,one of the ranch hands who took care of the livestock.Josefa & Jesus had three more children,Luis,Concepcion,and Jesus Martinez Avila.They raised the children in the 
Catholic religion.Amelio studied until the fourth grade at the school for young ladies 
in Chilpancingo.

From a young age,Amelio showed an interest in activities that were considered masculine,learning to tame horses and handling weapons,and becoming an excellent
marksman and rider.Before joining the army,Amelio was treasurer in a Maderistas club in Xochipala.

Amelio joined the army in 1911 or 1912, perhaps when General Juan Andreau Almazan passed through Xochipala in 1911 as pressure mounted against Porfirio Diaz to resign as president.

Between August & November 1911, Amelio was sent to the Gulf of Mexico in a commission in order to obtain money from oil companies for the revolutionary cause.
Two years later,Amelio began to dress as a man and demanded to be treated as such.
(He was not alone as a person assigned female presenting as male in the Mexican army at the time.Maria de la Luz Barrera and  Angel(a)  Jimenez also adopted male 
indentiities during the war.) From 1913-1918,Amelio fought as "el coronel Robles" 
with the Zapatistas under the command of Jesus H.Salgado,Heliodoro Castillo,and Encarnacion Diaz.Amelio gained the respect of peers and superiors as a capable military leader,and was eventually given his own command.

In 1919,some time after Emiliano Zapata was killed,Amelio and 315 men under his command joined the the forces of Alvaro Obregon, and in 1920 fought with them in the Agua Prieta Revolt which brought an end to the government of Venustiano Carranza.In 1924,Amelio supported General Alvaro Obregon against the Delahuertist
rebellion under the command of General Adrian Castrejon,where the Delahuertist 
general Marcial Cavazos died and Amelio was hurt.

Following the military phase of the Revolution,Amelio supported revolutinary general Alvaro Obregon when the latter was president of Mexico in 1920-1924; Amelio fought with Obregon forces to put down the 1923 rebellion of Venustiano Carranza.When 
Amelio settled in Inguala for a time  after the revolution,a group of men are said to have attacked him wanting to reveal his anatomy;he killed two in self-defense.
In 1939 he supported Almazan in the presidential election.

In 1948,Amelio received the medical certificate required to officially enter the 
Confederation of Veterans of the Revolution.The medical revision confirmed that he 
had received six bullet wounds.

In 1970,the Mexican Secretary of National Defense recognized Amelio as veteran (veterano) of the Revolution.Toward the end of his life,he received various decorations acknowledging distinguished military service: a decoration as a 
veteran of the Mexican Revolution,and the Mexican Legion of Honor; in 1973 or 1974,
he was also decorated with the Revolutionary Merit award.( medalla al merito revolucionario).

According to historian Gabriela Cano Ortega,Amelio adopted a male identity not as 
a survival strategy because of a strong desire to be a man.his male identity was accepted by family,society,distinguished military service;and the Mexican government,and Amelio lived as a manfrom the age of 24 until his death.According to to a former neighbor,if anyone called Amelio a woman or "Dona" he would threaten 
them with a pistol.Amelio has therefore been seen as transgender.

Amelio met Angela Torres in Apipilulco in the 1930,and they later married.They adopted a daughter together,Regula Robles Torres. Horacio Legras says that that both later became estranged from Amelio.

On his deathbed Amelio supposedly made two requests,to received honors for his military service and to be dressed as a woman in order to commend his soul to God.
The latter request has never been confirmed,and his death death certificate notes that he lost the ability to speak more than a year before dying.

"Audre-Lord" (February 18 1934-November 17 1992)

Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde,was an African American writer,feminist,womanist,lesbian,and civil rights activist.As a poet,she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression,particularly in poems expressing anger and outrage at civil and social injustices  she observed throughout her life.Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights,
feminism,and the expoloration of  African American female identity.In relation to white feminist in the United States,Audre famously said "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

She was born in New York to Caribbean immigrants from Barbados and Carriacou,Frederick Byron Lorde (called Byron) and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde,who settled in Harlem.Audre's mama was of mixed ancestry but could pass for white,a source of  pride for family.Audrey's daddy was darker than the Belmar family liked,and they only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron charm,ambition,and persistence.Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind,and the youngest of three daughters (two oldest sisters,Phyllis & Helen),Audre grew up hearing her mama's stories about the West Indies.She learned to talk while she learned to read,at the age of  four,and her mama taught her to write around the same time.She wrote her first poem when she was in the eight grade.

She chose to drop the "y" from her first name while still a child,explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of  My Name that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the "e" - endings in
the two side-by-side names "Audre Lorde" than in her spelling her name the way her parents had
intended.

Audre relationship with her parents was difficult from young age.She was able to spend very little time with her parents,who were busy maintaining their real estate business in the tumultuous economy after the Great Depression,and when she did see them,they were often cold or emotionally distant.In particular,Audre's relationship with her mama,who was deeply suspicious of  people with darker skin than hers (which Audre was) and the outside world in general, was characterized by "tough love" and strict adherence to family rules.Audre difficult relationship with her mama would figure prominently in her poems,such as Coal's "Story Books on a Kitchen Table.

As a child,Audre who struggled with communication,came to appreciate the power of poetry as a form of expression.She memorized a great deal of poetry,and would use it to communicate,to the extent that,"If  asked how she was feeling,Audre reply by reciting a poem.Around the age of twelve,she began writing her own poetry and connecting with others at her school who were considered "outcasts" as she felt she was.

She attended Hunter College High School,secondary school for intellectually gifted students,and graduated in 1951.

In 1954,Audre spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of  Mexico,a period she described as a time of  affirmation and renewal,during which she confirmed her identity on personal  and artistic  levels as a lesbian and poet.On her return to New York,she attended Hunter College,graduating class of 1959.There,she worked as a librarian,continued writing and became an active participant in the gay culture of  Greenwhich village.Lorde furthered her education at
Columbia University,earning a master's degree in Library Science in 1961.She also worked during this time as a librarian Mount Vermon Public Library and married attorney Edwin Rollins;they divorced in 1970 after having two children,Elizabeth & Jonathan.In 1966,Audre became librarian at Town School Library in New York City,where she remained until 1968.

In 1968 Audre was write-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi,where she met Frances Clayton,a white professor of psychology,who was to be her romantic partner until 1989.

Audre's time at Tougaloo College,like her year at the National University of Mexico,was a formative experience for Audre as an artis.She led workshops with her young African American undergraduate students,many whom were eager to discuss the civil rights issues of that time.
Through her interactions with her students,Audre reaffirmed her desire not only to live out her
"crazy and queer" identity,but devoted new attention to the new formal aspects of craft as a poet.
Her book of poems Cables to Rage came out of her time and experience at Tougaloo.

From 1977-1978 Audre had a brief  affair with the sculptor and painter Mildred Thompson.The Two met in Nigeria in 1977 at the Second World Black and African Festival of  Arts and Culture
(FESTAC 77) Their affair ran its course during that time Mildred lived in Washington,D.C.

Audre battled cancer for fourteen years.She first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and underwent a mastectomy.Six years later,she was diagnosed with liver cancer.After her diagnosis,
she chose to become more focused on both her life and her writing.She wrote The Cancer Journals
which won the American Library Association Gay Caucus Book of of  the Year Award in 1981.
Audre featured as the subject of a documentary called a Litany for  Survival: The Life and Work of  Audre Lorde,which shows  her as an author,poet,human rights activist,feminist,lesbian,a teacher,a survivor,and a crusader against bigotry.Lorde is quoted in the film as saying: "What I leave behind has a life of its own.I've said this about poetry;I've said it about children.Well,in a sense I'm saying it about the very artifact of who I have been.

From 1991 until her her death,she was New York State Poet Laureate.In 1992,she received the Bill
Whitehead Award for lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle.In 2001,Publishing Triangle
instituted the Audre Lorde Award to honor works of  lesbian poetry.

Audre died of  liver cancer,in St.Croix,where she had been living with Gloria I Joseph.She was 58.
In African naming ceremony before her death,she took the name Gamba Adisa,which means "Warrior: She who Makes Her  Meaning Known.

"Melvin-Dixion"(May 29,1950-October 26,1992)

Poet novelists,and critic.In his life and writing,Melvin insisted upon asserting the repf resentative and complete humanity of African American regardless of sexual orientation.His works give voice to the rarely heard African American homosexual man.Born in Stamford,Connecticut.He attended school there.Melvin graduated from Wesleyan University,where he studied English and French literature and dance,in 1971.He continued his education at Brown University,where he earned a Ph.D.in English in 1975.A Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship allowed him time to research African American writers in Paris,France,while on leave from his first teaching position,at Williams College (1976-1980).Melvin later taught at Queens College and the City University of New York Graduate Center (1980-1992).In 1984 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry,and in 1988 he began work on his translation of The Collected Poems of Leopold Sedar Senghor,published in 1991.Melvin died from complications arising from AIDS.Love's Instruments,his second collection of poems,was published posthumously.

"Randall Kenan" (March 12,1963)

Is an American author of fiction and non-fiction.Raised in a rural community in North Carolina,Randall has focused his fiction on what it means to be African-American and gay in the southern United States.Among his books is the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury their Dead,which was named a New York Times notable book in 1992.Randall is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship,a Whiting Writers Award and the John Dos Passos Prize.
He was born in Brooklyn,New York.Initially raised by his grandparents,Randall  soon went to live with a great-aunt in Chinquapin,North Carolina,a rural community of fewer than a thousand people.The community later became the basic of the fictional Times Creek,where all of his fiction is set.Randall  attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,from which he graduated in 1985 with degrees in English and creative writing.He studied with the author of Doris Betts.Based on an instructor's recommendation,and the help of novelists and editor Toni Morrison,he was hired for a job with Random House in New York City.
He eventually transferred to the editorial of Alfred A.Knopf,where he worked until 1989.That same year he began teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.Currently,an associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill,he has served as a visiting writer or writing in residence at a number of other universities,including the University of Mississippi,the University of Memphis,Duke University and the University of Nebraska Lincoln.Randall's first novel,A Visitation of Spirits,was published in 1989.While a few critics praised the book,it did not receive much attention.This changed with the publication in 1992 of Randall's second book,a collection of short stories titled Let the Dead Bury their Dead.The stories,based in the fictional community of Tims Creek,focused on (among other things) what it meant to be poor,African American,and gay in the southern United States.The book was was hailed as a revival of classic southern literature and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction,was a finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award,and was named a New York Times Notable Book.The short story collection also brought renewed attention to his first novel,which was likewise set in Tims Creek.In 1993,Randall published a young adult biography of gay African American novelists and essayist James Baldwin.Randall has frequently stated that James is one of his idols.He then spent several years traveling across American and Canada collecting oral stories of African Americans,which he published in Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty first century (1999).Randall has won a number of writing awards,including a Guggenheim Fellowship,a Whiting Writers Award,the Sherwood Anderson Award,the John Dos Passos Award,and the Roman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In 2007 Randall The Fire This Time,a book whose title was taken from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.His latest book,"only the Dead Know Chapel Hill" tells the tale of an adduction of African American boys from Chapel Hill.This story is filled with walking contradiction,for example:Jesus become Beelzebud but is repeatedly referenced by both of his names.

"Essex Charles Hemphill" (April 16,1957-November 4,1995)

Poet,editor,and performance,artists,was born in Chicago,Illinois,the second oldest of five children of Mantalene Hemphill from Columbia,South Carolina.Little is known about his daddy.Essex was raised in Anderson,Indiana,Columbia,South Carolina,and Southeast Washington,D.C.Fron an early age he was aware of both his homosexuality and the homophobia among his peers.He described the oppressive situation of his youth in the introduction to Brother to Brother "The male code of the streets where I grew up made this very clear:Sissies,punks,and faggots were not "cool"with the boys." Essex started writing in 1971 at age fourteen.That same year he had his first homosexual affair with an older white man from his Washington neighborhood.Essex grew up in a situation with hardly any visible African American gay men who could have been role models, he decided to explore the dimensions and intersections of race and sexuality both politically and artistically and was one of the first openly gay African American artists.Radically addressing white supremacists attitudes and racist stereotypes of African American men within the white-dominated gay subculture,as well as homophobic attitudes within the African American community,Essex became an important protagonist of the African American gay culture of the 1980s.After graduating from Ballou High School in Washington,D.C. Essex studied English and journalism at the University of Maryland and got his degree in English at the University of the District of Columbia.In 1978 he and another student from the University of Maryland founded the Nethula Journal of Contemporary Literature.During a poetry reading at Howard University in 1980 Essex publicly came out as a gay man.He became known to Washington audiences in 1983,when,together with Wayson R.Jones and Larry Duckette,his longtime companion,he formed the poetry performance group Cinque.They first peformed at the Enik Alley Coffeehouse in northeast Washington,an important venue for African American lesbian and gay artists.Two years later he self-published his first chapbook, Earth Life (1985),which he funded entirely with his own savings. His His career as a writer accelerated in 1986 when he received a fellowship in poetry from the National Endownment of the Arts (NEA) that enable him to publish Conditions (1986),his second book of poems,with editorial assistance from Joseph Beam.That same year his work appealed in Gay and Lesbian Poetry of Our Time and In The Life,an influential anthology of texts by African American gay writers edited by Joseph Beam.In 1987  his  poetry was included in Tongues United,an anthology of poems by five African Americans poets.The title refers to the poem "Tongue-Tied in black and White"by Michael Steve Harper and was chosen because Michael "expounds on how the mores and language of a dominant culture can stifle the creativity of peoples within the culture" (Tongues United,5).Two years later the filmmaker Marlon Riggs chose "Tongues United"as the title for his influential documentary on African Amerigan gay identity.In Tongues United (1989) Marlon combined poetry,performance,and personal testimony to reflect on the situation of African American gay men in the United States.It is one of three internationally acclaimed and controversially debated films in which Essex and his poetry would appear.He also peformed his poetry for the soundtrack of Looking for Langston (1989) a filmic meditation on Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance directed by the black British filmmaker Isaac Julien.In the U.S. some parts of the estate of the film were censored by the executor of the estate of Langston Hughes to prevent a connection of  Langston's name and homosexuality.The third film featuring Essex and his poetry is Marlon's Black...Black Ain't (1994),a personal and radical examination of African American gay experiences in the age of AIDS.
Owing to these films,Essex became known internationally.
In 1991 Essex edited Brother to Brother:New Writings by Black Gay Men.The Book was originally conceived and planned by Joseph Beam as a companion anthology to In the Life.After Joseph's death from AIDS-related complications in 1988 Essex completed the work with the support of Joseph's parents,Dorothy & Sun Beam,in their home in Philadelphia.Like In the Life,the anthology includes texts by important African American gay artists of the 1980s,such as Assotto Saint,Graig G.Harris,and Melvin Dixon,and was awarded the Lambda Literary Award.That same year,Essex's work was included in the anthologies The Road before Us:100 Gay Black Poets (1991) and Hometowns: Gay Men Write about Where They Belong (1991).
Essex's collection Cremonies: Prose and Poetry was published in 1992.Its poems and essays cover a wide range of topics concerning the situation of African American gay men in the United States, such as the intersections of the categories blackness and gayness, white gay racism,homophobia among some African American nationalists, and AIDS. Essex's pointed critique of racists representations of African American men in the work of the white gay photographer Robert Mapplethrope in his essay "Does Your Mama Know About Me?"led to controversial debates within the gay community.Ceremonies was awarded the National Library Association's Gay Lesbian,and Bisexual New Author Award.In 1993 he was a visiting scholar at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica,California,and he received a Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in the Arts and the Emery S.Hetrick Award for community-based activism from the Hetrick-Martin Institute.That same year his poem "vital Signs"was published in the anthology Life Sentences:Writers,Artists,and AIDS (1994),revealing his positive HIV status to the public.Apart from books and anthologies,Essex's work appeared in numerous journals,among them Black Scholar,Callalo,Obsidian,Painted Bride Quarterly,Gay Community News,the James White Review,and Essence.Essex died from AIDS-related complications in Philadelphia.

"Mabel Hampton" (May 2,1902-October 26,1989)

She and Lillian Foster lived as a couple from 1932 until Lillian died in 1978.Together they left a rich history of activism and archival documents of SGL-T life,more specifically,African-American SGL-T life.It was Mabel who,being the surving partner,turned over the documents to the Lesbian Herstory Archives.Mabel Hampton inspired many during her 87 year stay on this planet.Born in Winston-Salem,North Carolina,Mabel mother died when she was just two months old.She grew up in the care of her grandmother,surrounded by chickens,hogs,a garden full of roses and vegetables,her maternal aunt,and friends.She formed fond memories of North Carolina during this time and was forced to leave this haven of safety when her grandmother died when Mabel was just seven.She took the train to New York City where she went to live with her aunt and uncle.Treated poorly in that family and raped by her uncle,at eight Mabel walked away from their home and set out on her own.Between the ages of eight &17 she lived with a white family in New Jersey,was wrongfully imprisoned for prostitution,and eventually found work dancing in an all women's troupe that performed on Coney Island.For Mabel the 1920's were a time of dancing in all African American productions,private parties with Jackie "Moms"Mabley and other Harlem renaissance figures,and living amongst other dancers and lesbians.She was "in the life."Mabel left the chorus lines as work dried up,claiming that " i like to eat."She began a career of working as a cleaning woman for white families.Mabel is perhaps best recognized as a major contributor to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York.Through out her adult life she collected all matter of memorabilia,letters,and records documenting her history and the world around her as an African American and as a lesbian.In 1932 Mabel met Lillian Foster.The two quickly fell in love and remained a couple until Lillian died in 1978.For 45 years they,along with various friends,formed a household that weathered World War II,the Civil Rights era,and the Stonewall Rebellion.Perhaps most interesting about Mabel and Lillian is how integrated a life they led.They were surrounded by their lesbian contemporaries,and Mabel volunteered for the New York Defense Recreation Committee collecting cigarettes and refreshments for soldiers during World War II.,and was her community's air raid service warden in 1943.They often attended performances by the National Negro Opera Company and regularly contributed to the Martin Luther King Memorial Fund and later was to donate to gay organizations,all of this on a working class salary.Such was their commitment to the African American community and the SGL-T community.Mabel clipped articles,kept letters,and later donated her treasures to the Lesbian History Archives so that she could be "apart of going on."She marched in the first national gay and lesbian civil rights march in in Washington,appeared in the films Silent Pioneers and Before Stonewall.She inspired members of the gay and lesbian community in New York City's paradeMabel said "I,Mabel Hampton,have been a lesbian all my life.For 82 years, i am proud of myself and my people.I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world,my gay people and my black people."

"Marlon Troy Riggs" (February 3,1957-April 5,1994)

Was a gay African-American filmmaker,educator,and gay rights activist.He produced,wrote,and directed  several TV. documentaries,including Ethnic Notions,Tongues United,Color Adjustment,

and Black is...Black Ain't.Marlon aesthetically innovative films examine past and present representatives of race and sexuality in America.Born in Forth Worth,Texas.Marlon was was a child of civilian employees of the military and spent a great deal of his childhood traveling.He lived in Texas and Georgia before moving to West Germany at age 11 with his family.Later in his life, he remembered the ostracism and name-calling that he experienced at Hephzibah Junior High School in Hephzibah,Georgia.Marlon stated that African-American and white students alike called him a"punk"  a faggot,"and "Uncle Tom."He explains that he felt isolated from everyone at the school:"I was caught between these two worlds where the whites hated me and the blacks disparaged me.It was so painful.From 1973-1974 Marlon attended Ansbach American High School's opening year in Katterbach,Germany.Marlon was elected student body president at the military dependent school.In 1974 he returned to the U.S. to attend college.As an undergraduate,Marlon studied history at Harvard University and graduated from magna cum laude in 1978.As he began studying the history of American racism and homophobia,he became interested in communicating his ideas about these subjects through film.After working for a local T.V. station in Texas for about a year,he moved to Oakland,California,where he entered graduate school.Marlon received his master's degree in journalism with a special in Documentary film in 1981 from the University of California,Berkeley,having co-produced/co-directed with Peter Webster a master's thesis titled Long Train Running:The story of Oakland Blues,a half-hour video on the history of the blues in Oakland,California.Upon finishing graduate school,Marlon began working many independent documentary production in the Bay Area.He assisted documentary directors and producers initially as a production assistant and later as a post-production supervisor,editor,and sound editor on documentaries about the American arms race,Nicaragua,Central America,sexism,and disability rights.Because of his proficiency in video technology,Marlon was the on-line editor for a video production company.In 1987,he was hired as a part-time faculty member at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley to teach documentary film making.Marlon became a tenured professor at Berkeley shortly thereafter.That same year he completed his first professional feature documentary Ethnic Notions.The film was produced in association with KQED,a public television station in San Francisco,and aired on public television stations throughout the U.S..In Ethnic Notions,Marlon sought to explore widespread and persistent stereotypes of African-Americans images, of ugly,savage brutes,and happy servants-in American popular culture of the 19th and 20th centuries.This film uses a a narrative voice-over provided by African-American actress Esther Rolle in explaining striking film footage and historical still which exposes the blatant racism of the era immediately following the Civil War.This documentary also presents a set of contemporary interviews with expert commentators,including historians George Fredrickson and Larry Levine,cultural critic Barbara Christian,and many others who discuss the consequences of historical African-American stereotypes.This film expanded the commonly held assumptions about the parameters of documentary film aesthetics through its bold use of performance,dance,and music,to explore a historical narrative.While Marlon continued working as an educator at Berkeley,he kept making his own films.The 1989 film Tongues United,a highly personalized and moving documentary about the life experiences of gay African-American men,was aired as part of the PBS television series P.O.V. The film employs autobiographical footage as well as performance,including monologues,songs,poems,and nonverbal gestures such as snapping to convey an authentic and positive African-American gay identity.In order to demonstrate the harmful effects of silence on self-esteem,the film contrasts this image with negative representations of gay African-American men as comic-tragic stock caricatures and drag queens in contemporary American popular culture.The three principle voices of Tongues United are those of Marlon as well as gay rights activists.Marlon described the production as his own personal "coming out"film celebrating black gay life experiences and that he ultimately became "the person,the vehicle,and the vessel for these experience.Marlon explained that tongues was a catharsis for him: "It was a release of  a lot of decades-old,pent-up emotion,rage,guilt,feelings of impotence in the face of some of my experiences as a youth...it allowed me to move past all of those things that were bottled up inside me...I could finally let go.In 1988,while working on Tongues United,Marlon was diagnosed with HIV after undergoing treatment for near-fatal kidney failure at a hospital in Germany.The film shows the pain as well as the mentally and physically agonizing therapy that he had to go through in order in order to deal with his  kidney failure.Despite his deteriorating health,Marlon decided to continue to teach at Berkeley and make documentaries.In the short 1990 piece Affirmations,Marlon further developed his critique of homophobia that he originally expressed in Tongues Untied.In Affirmations,film made from the outtakes of "Tongues Untied," Marlon included Marlon included a coming-out story gay writer Reginald T.Jackson and footage of African-American men marching in a Harlem African America Freedom Day Parade.In 1991,he directed and produced Anthem,a short documentary about African-America male sexuality.The film includes a collage of erotic images of African-America men,hip-hop music,and a call to celebrate differences in sexuality.In 1991,Marlon founded signifin'works,a non-profit corporation whose mission is to produce films about history&culture.The founding Board of Directors included:Vivian Kleiman,Herman Gray,Patricia Turner,and Cornelius Moore.The 1992 documentary Color Adjustment was his second film to air on the PBS t.v. series P.V.O. the film Color Adjustment was Marlon follow-up to Ethnic Notions,focusing on images of African-American people in America t.v. from the mid-1940s through the 1980s.Unlike Ethnic Notions,which presents a putative,neutral slances on popular American representations of African-Americans,Color Adjustment presents a cultural criticism of these images through an African-American perspective on race.Produced by Vivian Kleiman,the film is narrated by African-American actress Rudy Dee.Using contemporary interviews of t.v. actors,directors,producers,and cultural commentators,the documentary conveys personal reflections and academic analyses of such t.v.programs as Good Times and The Cosby Show.In 1992,he directed the film [Non,Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Reget),in which five gay African American men who are Hiv-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding their infection and homosexuality.It was commissioned as part of a series of documentaries on the AIDS crisis.In 1993,Marlon received an honorary honorary doctorate degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts.That same year, he experimental short Anthem was featured in a collection of short films entitled Boys' Shorts:The New Queer Cinema.Shortly after completing "Color Adjustment," Marlon began work on what was to be his final film Black is...Black Ain't, a project that was completed posthumously by co-producer Nicole Atkinson,co-director/co-editor Christine Badgley,and Signifyin'Works.Much of the final text of Black Is...Black Ain't was developed by Marlon one night in his hospital room."It was as it the film film were rolling before me,"and i was just transcribing;I was couldn't keep up."The film therefore contains many scenes of Marlon on his hospital bed.The documentary takes on the topic of African-American identity,including considerations of skin,color,religion,politics,class stratification,sexuality,and gender difference that revolve around it.In this film,Marlon meets a cross-section of African Americans graping with the paradox of numerous,often contradictory definitions of blackness.He shows many who have felt unconfortable  and even silenced within the race because their complexion,class,sexuality,gender,or speech has rendered them "not black enough,"or conversely,"too black."The film scrutinizes the identifications of "blackness"with masculinity as well as sexism,patriarchy and homophobia in black America."(University of California).Besides making documentaries and teaching at Berkeley,Marlon also wrote poetry from time to time,as evidenced in Tongues Untied,which contains several of his poems about his life experiences as a black gay man.In his poem "Tongues Untied," Marlon discusses the racism he encountered as a child while living in Georgia as well as coming out about his homosexuality.

"Barbara Smith" (December 16,1946)

Is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in building and sustain Black Feminism in the United States.Since the early 1970s she has been active as a

critic,teacher,author,lecturer,author,scholar,and publisher of Black feminist.She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities over the twenty five years.Her essays reviews,articles,short stories,and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications,including The New Times Book Review,The Black Scholar,Ms., Gay Community New,The Guardian,The Village Voice,Conditions,and The Nations.Barbara has a twin sister,Beverly Smith,who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.Barbara was born in Cleveland,Ohio.her family,wanting to find better economic opportunities and escape from Jim Crow racism,moved from George and settled in Ohio.Gartrell Smith,the twins' daddy,was absent from family life.Their mama Hilda Becall met Gartrell Smith during her attendance at Fort Valley State University (then Fort Valley College) in the mid 1940s.Employed by the armed services,Gartrell was possibly stationed in Cleveland when he and Hilda eloped.Hilda's family did not approve of the marriage,and the relationship fell apart,forcing a then-pregnant Hilda to return home to her family.Barbara and her sister were born prematurely.Barbara died from complications of rheumatic fever when Barbara was 9,and the siblings were brought up by their extended family,with their grandmother as primary caretaker.The siblings grew up in a working-class family,living in a two-family house that included their grandmother,two aunts,the husband of an aunt,themselves,and (formerly) their mama.Barbara credits her dedication to scholarship due to her upbringing.Barbara grand mama had been a schoolteacher to African-American teachers students when she lived in Georgia,and her aunts attended school whenever they could.On education,Barbara recalled,"I never was interested in any other grade except for an A.  [laugh] that wasn't because someone was threatening me at home.It was not about that.It was like,"We go to work every day.You go to school.School is your job.There was no intimidation around achieving in school.It was just like,you, have a mind,you're supposed to use it.Despite being academically gifted and attending well-funded resourced public schools,Barbara as a shy child,did escape humiliating experiences of racism.Her family rarely spoke on issues of Jim Crow racism in the south or economic racial disparities in their hometown,she recalled instances of racial discrimination:believing that she was "ugly"because she grew up not seeing anyone "who faintly looked like [her] being looked at as a beautiful person"in the media,along with experiencing the racial hostility of a French instructor who believed she did not belong in her summer French seminar.A gifted student,Barbara excelled in her honors and performed well on her PSAT.Her grades and test scores gained her entrance to Mount Holyoke College in 1965.Fatigued by the racial animosity at the college,she transferred to the New School and pursued study in social sciences,later returned to graduate from Mount Holyoke for her senior year in 1969.Being born in segregation,"she believed it was easy to develop a political consciousness.As high students Barbara and Beverley participated in school desegregation protest in 1964.Before entering college,Barbara became a volunteer for CORE in 1965,and during college,she participated in Students for Democratic Society activities.As Black Nationalism emerged from the Civil Rights Movement.She became extremely put off by the sexism she experienced in male-dominated groups,and turned to black feminist.Barbara settled in Boston after receiving an MA in Literature from the University of  Pittsburgh.Beverly staff position at Ms.Magazine allowed her obtain critical contacts,and through the publication,met Margaret Sloan,a founder of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO),intrigued by the call for attendance NBFO'S Eastern Regional Conference n 1974,Barbara caucused with women from the Boston area and made contacts in order to establish a Boston NBFO chapter.In 1975,with her sister and Demita Frazier,a Chicago activist,established a Boston NBFO chapter.Due to lack of direction from the national organization,the Boston chapter maintained an independent nature,deciding as a group to focus on consciousness-raising and grassroots organizing that assisted the poor and working classes of Boston.Frustrated by the lack of the NBFO,the group decided to spilt entirely and form a separate group.Named after a successful military operation led by Harriet Tubman during the Civil War at a river in South Carolina,Combahee River Collective moved quickly to write a manifesto.The Combahee River Collective Statement outlines the objective of the group,also identifies the group on the grounds of being a class-conscious,sexuality-affirming black feminist organization.Recognizing lesbianism as a legitimate identity reinforced the debate with in black feminism and the larger women's movement.As a socialist Black feminist organization,the collective emphasized the intersections of racial,gender,heterosexism,and class oppressions in the lives of African-American and other women of color.Like other black feminist organizations at the time,Combahee articulated many of the concerns specific to African-American women,from anger with African-American men for dating and marrying white women,to internal conflict over skin color,hair texture,and facial features,to the differences the mobility of white & African-American women...also attacking the myth of black matriarch and stereotypical portrayals of African-American women in popular culture.Addiitionally,the collective worked on issues such as "reproductive rights,rape,prison reform,sterilization abuse,violence against women,health care,and racism within the white women's movement.The collective's organizational structure was deliberately not articulated to avoid hierarchy and provide members with a sense of equality,and was cited in a memo author by Barbara as essential to ensuing that "black feminism [surviving] as a radical movement.Combahee members organized retreats to discuss issues within the statement,ways, to incorporate black feminism in the consciousnesses as pressing issues in their own communities.The organization lost momentum,as conversations of lesbianism and educational advancement alienated some members from participating.As a result leadership conflict and interpersonal disputes,memberships in Combahee declined and the lasting meeting was held in February 1980.Contining her work as a community organizer,Barbara was elected to the Albany,New York Common Council (city council) in 2005,representing Ward 4.She was reelected in 2009,and worked during this period on staff with David Kaczynski at New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on innovative solutions to violet crimes.She continues to serve the 4th Ward,and active on the issues of youth development,violence prevention,ane educational opportunities for poor,minority and underserved persons.Barbara is up for re-election in 2013.Barbara has continued to lecture and speak.She has donated her papers to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn,New York,and given oral histories of her life to Columbia University &Smith College.Barbara has made apperances in the 1994 Marlon Riggs documentary Black is...Black Ain't,and more recently,the 2013 PBS and AOL documentary Makers:Women Who Make America.Barbara was made a Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College fellow in 1996,and received a 1994 Stonewall Award for her activism.Barbara was was awarded the Church Women United Human Rights Award in 2000 and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

"Deborah Batts" (April 13,1947)

Is a United States federal judge,currently serving on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.In June 1994,she was sworn as a Federal District Judge for

Manhattan,becoming the nation's first openly LGBT, African-American she took senior status on her 65th birthday.Born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.She received an A.B. from Radcliffe College in 1969,and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1972.Deborah subsequently clerked from judge Lawrence Pierce on the Federal Court on which she now serves as judge.Deborah was assistant U.S. Attorney from 1979-1984.In 1984 she became an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University.Deborah was a Special associate counsel to the Department of Investigations for New York City from 1990-1991.On January 27,1994,the following recommendation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan,President Bill Clinton appointed her to a seat on the Southern District left 1989 when judge Richard Owens took senior status.Deborah was confirmed by the U.S. States Senate on May 6,1994,and received her commission on May 9,1994.She continues to serve as an adjunct at Fordham. Major cases:

1.1991 Criminal trial Cheng Young and Xingqi Fu,charged in a scheme to arrange transplant of organs taken from executed Chinese prisoners.

2.2001-04 criminal trial of Mamdouh Mahmud Salim.charged with stabbing a jail guard while awaiting trial in 1998 U.S.  embassy bombing conspiracy.
 

 3.2006 Civil Suit against former Environmental Protection Agency administration Christine Todd Whitman alleging that she misled people near the World Trade Center site about risks of toxic air pollution after September 11,2001 attacks.
4.2008 Commercial litigation between Exxon Mobil PdVSA with regards to Venezuela's expropriation of Exxon assets in the Orinoco Basin of Venezuela.
4.2009 Litigation regarding the publication of an unauthorized "sequel"to "Catcher in the Rye."Deborah ordered an injunction to stop the book to going to press.

 

"June Millicent Jordan"(July 9,1936-June 14,2002)

Was a bisexual Caribbean-American writer and activist.She was born the only child of Jamaican

immigrants parents,Granville Ivanhoe and Mildred Maud Jordan,in Harlem,New York.Her father worked as a postal worker for the USPS and her mother as a part-time nurse.When June was five,the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn,New York.While life in in the Jordan household was often turbulent,June credits her daddy with passing on to her a love of literature \,and she began writing her own poetry at at the age of seven.She describes the complexities of her early childhood 2000 memoir,Soldier:A Poet's Childhood which she dedicated to her father.In this short memoir she explores her complicated relationship with a man who encouraged her to read broadly and memorize passages of classical texts,but also would also beat her for the slightest misstep and called her "damn black devil child."In her 1986 essay For My American Family June explores the many conflicts to be dealt in the experience of being raised by black immigrant parents with visions of the future for their offspring that far exceeded the urban ghettos of the present.In Soldier:A Poet's Childhood,June recalls her father "There was a war on against colored people,i had to become a soldier."While greatful to America for allowing him him to escape poverty and seek a better life for his family,June's father was conscious of the struggle his daughter would face and encouraged her to fight.After attending Brooklyn's Midwood high school for a year,June enrolled in Northfield Mount Hermon School,an elite preparatory school in New England.Throughout her education she became "completely immersed in a white universe by attending predominately white schools,was also able to construct and develop her identity as an African-American and writer.In 1953,June graduated from high school and enrolled at Barnard College.She later expressed how she felt about attending predominately white schools,was also able to construct and develop her identity as an African American and a writer.In 1953,June graduated from high school and enrolled at Barnard College.June later expressed how she felt about Barnard College in her book Civil Wars, she wrote:"No one ever presented me with a single Black author,poet,historian,personage,or idea for that matter.Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker,or writer,or poet,or life force.Nothing that I learned,here,lessened my feeling of pain or confusion and bitterness as related to my orgins:my street,my family,my friends.Nothing showed me how I might try to alter the political economic realities underlying our Black condition in white America.It was at Barnard that June met a white Columbia University student Michael Meyer,whom she married in 1955,June subsequently followed her husband to the University of Chicago,where he would pursue graduate studies in anthropology.She also enrolled at the University but soon returned to Barnard where she remained until 1957.In 1958 June gave birth to the couple's only child,Christopher David Meyer.The couple divorced in 1965.Her first published book,Who Look at me (1969) and was a collection of poems for children.27 more books followed in her lifetime,one, (Some of Us Did Not Die,Collected and New Essays) was in press when she died.Two more have been published posthumously:Directed by Desire:The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Cooper Canyon Press,2005) and re-issue of the 1970 poetry collection SoulScript,edited by June.In memoir Soldier:A Poet's Childhood,June depicted in detail her relationship with her father in the book and was happy with the outcome stating,"I want to honor,my father,first of all and secondly,I wanted people to pay attention to a little girl who is gifted intellectually and creative,and to see that there's complexity here that we may otherwise not be prepared to acknowledge or even search for,let alone encourage,and to understand that this is an okay story.This a story, I think,with a happy outcome,you know.She was also an essayist,columnist for The Progressive,novelist,biographer,and librettist for the musical/opera I Was Looking at the Celling and Then I Saw the Sky,composed by John Adams and produced by Peter Sellars.When asked about the writing process of I Was Looking Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky June stated:"The composer,John [Adams],said he needed to have the whole libretto before he could begin,so I just sat down last spring and wrote it in six weeks  I mean,that's all I did.I didn't do laundry,anything.I put myself into 100 percent.What i gave to John & Peter [Sellars] is basically what Scribner's has published now.Her teaching career began in 1967 at the City College of New York.Between 1968 & 1978 she taught at Yale University,Sarah Lawrence College, and Connecticut College.June then became the director of the Poetry Center and was an English professor at Suny at Stony Brook from 1978-1989.From 1989-2002 she was full professor in the departments of English,Woman studies,and African America at the University of California Berkeley.At Berkeley June founded Poetry for the People in 1991.The program inspires and empowers students to use poetry as a means of artistic expression.Reflecting on how she began with the concept of the program June said:"I did not wake up one morning ablaze with a coherent vision of Poetry for the People!The natural intermingling of my ideas and my observations as an author,a poet,and the African-American daughter of poorly documented immigrants did not lead me to any limiting ideological perspectives or resolve.Poetry for the People is the arduous and happy outcome of practical,day-by-day,classroom failure and success.June composed three guideline points that embodied the program,which was published with a set of her students writings in 1995,entitled June Jordan's Poetry for the People:A revolutionary Blueprint.She died of breast cancer at her home in Berkeley California.

"Bayard Rustin" (March 17,1912-August 24,1987)

Was American in social movements for civil rights,socialism,pacifism and non-violence,and gay rights.He was born and raised in Pennsylvania where his family was involved in civil rights

work.In 1936, he moved to Harlem,New York City and earned a living as a nightclub and stage singer,and continued activism for civil rights.the pacifist of Reconciliation (FOR),Bayard practiced nonviolence.He was a leading activist of the early 194701955 civil-rights movement,helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge with civil disobedience racial segregation on interstate busing.He recognized Martin Luther Jr's.leadership;Bayard promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the nonviolence resistance,which he had observed while working with Gandhi's movement in India.Bayard became a leading strategist of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1968.He was chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for jobs and Freedom,which was headed by Asa Philip Randolph,the leading African American labor union president and socialist.Bayard also influenced young

activists,such as Tom Kahn and Stokely Carmichael,in organizations like Congress Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).After the passage of the civil-rights legislation's 0f 1964-65,Bayard focused attention on the economic problems of working-class and unemployed African Americans,suggesting that the civil-rights movement had left its period of "protest"and had entered an era of "politics",in which the African American community had to ally with the labor movement.He became the head of the AFL-CIO's Asa Philip Randolph Institute,which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans.Bayard became an honorary chairperson of the Social Party of America in 1972,before it charged its name to Social Democrats,USA (SDUSA);Bayard acted as national chairman of SDUSA during the 1970s.During the 1970s and 1980s,he served on many humanitarian missions,such as aiding refugees from Communist Vietnam and Cambodia.He was on a humanitarian mission in Haiti when he died in 1987.Bayard was a gay man who had been arrested for a homosexual act in 1953.Homosexuality was criminalized in parts of the US. until 2003 and stigmatized through the 1990s.His sexuality,or at least his embarrassingly public criminal charge was criticized by some fellow pacifists and civil-rights leaders.Bayard was attacked as a "pervert"or "immoral influence"by political opponents from segregationists to Black power militants,and from the 1950s-the 1970s.In addition,his pre-1941 Communist Party affiliation when he was a young man was controversial.To avoid such attacks,he served only rarely as a public spokesperson.Bayard usually acted as an influential adviser to civil-rights leaders.In the 1970s,he became a public advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes.Throughout the 1970s and 1980s,he worked as a human rights election monitor for Freedom House.He also testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Right Bill.Bayard died of a perforated appendix.He was survived by Walter Naegle,his partner of ten years.

Richard Barthe (January 28,1901-March 5,1989)

Was born in Bay St.Louis,Mississippi,to Richmond Barthe, Sr.,and Marine Clementine

Robateau.His father died before Richmond was a year old,and his mother's sewing supported the family.She later remarried William Franklin,and old friend and Richmond godfather.William worked in a various odd jobs,including as an ice man,delivering ice throughout the rural community.According to Richmond he was artistically inclined from a a very young age.In a history of African American Artists,he quoted as saying,"When i was crawling on the floor,my mother gave me paper and pencil to play with.It kept me quiet and she did her errands.At six years old I started painting.A lady my mother sewed gave me a set of watercolors.By that time I could draw pretty well."As a teenager his artistic talent had attracted attention among several of his mother's clients,among his stepfather's ice customers as well.Richmond used to help in the delivery during the summer.One of the customers,who knew of and admired his work,told the young boy that he would injure himself carrying such large chunks of ice all day long.She arranged for him to get a job with the Pond family in New Orleans,a very wealthy with several homes and interests in supporting the arts.Richmond stayed with the Pond for several years,working as their houseboy while being encouraged to continue drawing and painting.Around this time,he met Lyle Saxon, a writer working for the New Orleans Times-Picayune,and the two men became good friends.Lyle was very interested in Richmond work and remained a champion of the artist after he became a well-known novelists.Around 1923,a Catholic priest took an interests in his work and began looking for a local art school for him to attend.In the South,no school would admit an African American,so the priest paid for him to attend the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.Here,Richmond rapidly developed as an artists,studying with several important teachers.His most influential teacher was Charles Schroeder.It was ultimately Charles who suggested that he try sculpture.Charles did not intend to suggest that Richmond,who was mainly a painter,then shift his medium,but for him to incorporate three dimensions into his art.It turned out,that he was a gifted sculptor,as was immediately apparent from the creation of his first busts in art school.An art institute show included three of his works.From that show Richmond received his first his first commission as a sculptor.The Lake County Children's Home in Gary, Indiana,his work and hired him to do busts of Henry O.Tanner & Tossaint L'Ouverture for its home.Richmond who had taken no classes in sculpting,began a career as a sculptor.His talents so impressed his teachers at the Institute that they advised him him not to take any classes,fearing that formal training might ruin the creative spark in his work.Having taking up sculpture,Richmond began drawing the kind of critical attention artists dream about but rarely achieve at such a young age.In 1929,just out of art school,he received an offer for a one-man show in New York,a tremendous honor.He was reluctant to accept,feeling he had not fully developed yet,not wanting to show in an important art center such as New york until he had refined his form more.Richmond declined the offer and spent a studying at the Art Students League in New York.In 1930,after returning to Chicago,he had a large show at the Women's City Club.The show was a major success and it won him  Julius Rosenwald Fund Fellowship.In 1931,Richmond felt he was finally ready for a New York show and was one was arranged at the Caz-Delbo Gallery,a prestigious showcase.his work at this show drew high praise and he moved to to the city when his Rosenwald fellowship was continued.In 1933 he exhibited  at the Chicago World's Fair and in 1934,Xavier University in New Orleans awarded him an honorary master of arts degree.In 1934,Richmond had a show at the Whitney Museum of  American Art in New York,the preeminent contemporary art museum in the country.After the show,the museum purchased three of his sculptures for its permanent collection.By this time,Richmond was selling so much work that for the first time he could abandon side jobs and devote himself entirely to art.Later in 1934,he went to Europe where the cultural heritage he observed fascinated him and where he also made several important sales to private collectors.In 1939,he held his second one-man show in New York.It was his largest exhibition to date,including 18 bronze works,and was held at the Arden Galleries.Again,critical response was ethusiastic and on the strength of the work  exhibited at these shows, Richmond was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1940 & in 1941.In 1943,the Boxer was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,America's largest and most important museum.After the second World War,the world of art began to change drastically on abstraction or distorted representations of realty.He was not interested in these trends and was increasingly forgotten by the artistic establishment.As a result,Richmond began devoting much of his time to making portraits busts for wealthy New York clients,especially people involved in the theatre.During and after the war,he made busts of John Gielgud and Maurice Evans.Later works were of Lawrence Olivier,Kathrine Cornell,and Judith Anderson.In 1946,he was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters.By the end of the 1940s ,he had grown tired of the art scene in New York (and depressed over his exclusion from it) and he bought a house in Jamaica on the advice of his doctor who told him that living in the city was hurting his health.Over the next several years,he became a tourist attraction on the island,while continuing to work.In 1953,he completed a forty-foot statue for the city of Port au Prince,Haiti,depicting Jean Jacques Dessalines,leader of the 1804 revolution.He also designed several Haitian coins that are still in use.At first Richmond enjoyed the prestige of being an expatriate black artist living in seclusion on a small Caribbean island,by 1969,he had grown restless and decided to move to Europe.He first went to Swizerland and then,in 1970,he moved to Florance .He stayed in Italy for the next seven years,then sold everything he owned and moved to California,where he rented an apartment from an admirer.Growing increasingly imppoverished and old,and getting sick as well, he became charity case.the actor James Garner,who had only recently met him was shocked that he should be living so poorly and began secretly paying his rent and medical bills.Other artist and actors began to help.The city of Pasadena renamed Barthe's street Barthe Drive.A fund-raising drive was also mounted to found the Barthe's Historical Society and to fund thirty Barthe scholarships for artists.

"Joseph F. Beam "(December 30,1954-December 27,1988)

Was an African-American gay rights activists and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the united states.His father Sun Bean worked as a bank security guard in Philadelphia.His

mother,Dorothy became a wage earner while still an adolescent,and attended evening classes to obtain her high school diploma.She later earned a college in elementary education and a master's degree from Temple University.She worked for more than twenty years as a teacher and guidance counselor in the Philadelphia school system.Baptised a Catholic,he studied mainly in parochial schools,including the Malvern Preparatory School, St.Thomas More High School and Franklin College, a small liberal arts college founded by American Baptists in Franklin,Indiana.An only child,Joseph boyhood was difficult and solitary;he was often the only student in his classes.Later,at Franklin College,he was influenced by the civil rights and the Black Power movements,and played an active role in the local Black Student Union.Also,as a member of the Franklin Independent Men,he helped organize several conferences on campus and was active in college journalism and radio programing.After graduating in 1976,Joseph remained in the Midwest,enrolling first in  Master's Degree program in communications and then working as a waiter in Ames,Iowa he returned to Philadelphia in 1979.Giovanni's Room in the Center District in Philadelphia was one of was one of the main bookstores and contact points for lesbians and gays in the 1970s and 1980s.Joseph,himself gay,became well acquainted with local and national gay figures and

institutions while employed there in the early 1980s.His articles and short stories began appearing around the same time in numerous gay news papers and magazines,including Au Courant,black heart,Changing Men,Philadelphia Gay News,The Advocate,New York Native,Body Politic,and Windy City Times.The Lesbian and Gay Press Association awarded Joseph a certificate for outstanding achievement by a minority journalist in 1984.The following year,he was hired as a consultant by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the American Friends Service Committee.Joseph the Executive Committee of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays in 1985,and became the editor of their new journal Black/Out.Joseph began preparing and collecting materials for an anthology of writings by and about black gay men in 1982.His goal was to counteract the absence of positive images of gay men of color in the media and their  exclusion from the cultural world of white gay rights activists.Inspired by the humanism of the black feminist and lesbian movement,he saw his work as part of a broad effort to correct and redefine the realty of

race,sex,class and gender in the United States.Through his writings,he sought to alleviate the alienation of black homosexuals and help create a community of their own.In the Life was published by Allyson Press in 1986;it was the first anthology of writing by gay black men. It was ignored by most African-American critics and institutions,but was greeted as a literary and cultural milestone in the gay community.Joseph was working on a sequel to In The Life at the time of his death of HIV-related disease in 1988.This work was completed Dorothy Beam and the gay poet Essex Hemphill,and published under Brother to Brother in 1991.Both books were featured in a television documentary,Tongues United,in 1991."As a writer,Joseph was more prolific,"wrote his friend Craig Harris after his death."His articles and essays were poetic,containing turned phrases and puns,metaphors in meters that made his writing musical with penetrating meaning.He took great pride in his skill and devoted time to multiple rewrites,crafting his work to create the style wich other writers of the Black genre dubbed Beameque.

"Ruth Ellis"{July 23,1899-October5,2000}

Was the oldest known open lesbian and LGBT rights activist.She was born in Springfield Illinois,

to Charlie Ellis and Carrie Farro Ellis.Ruth was the youngest  of four children in the family and the only daughter.Her parents were born in the last years of slaveryin Tennessee.Ellis mother died when she was only a teen.Ruth came out as a lesbian around 1915,at a time when fewer than seven percent of African Americans graduated from secondary school.In the 1920s,she met the only woman she ever lived with,Ceciline "Babe"Franklin.They moved together to Detriot Michigan in 1937 where Ruth became the first American woman to own a printing shop in that city.She made a living printing stationery,fliers,and posters out of her house.Ruth and Ceciline house was also known in the African American communityas the "gay spot."It was a central location for gay and lesbian parties,and also served as a refuge for African American gays and lesbians.Ruth and Ceciline eventually separated,they were together for more than 30 years.Ceciline died in 1973.Ruth died in her sleep at home.

"Barbara Charline Jordan"(February 21,1936-January 17,1996)

Was an American Politician who was a leader, and a product of the Civil Rights movement.She was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate after reconstruction and the first

 

Southern black woman ever elected to the U.S. House of representatives.She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom,among numerous other honors.She became the first African-American woman to be interred in the Texas State Cemetery.The main terminal of Austin-Bergstorm Airport is named for her.She campaigned for the Texas House of Representatives in 1962 and 1964.Her persistence won her a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966,becoming the first African-American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body.Re-elected to a full term in the Texas senate in 1968,she served until 1972.She was the first African-American female to serve as president pro tem of the state senate and served one day,June 10,1972,as acting Governor of Texas.In 1972,she was elected to the United States House of Representatives,becoming the first black woman from a southern state to serve in the House.She was also the first woman to represent Texas in the House in her own right (the first woman from Texas,Lera Thomas,had been elected as stand-in for her husband Albert Thomas.She received extensive support from former President Lyndon Johnson,who helped her secure a position on the House Judiciary Committee.In 1974,she made and influential,televised speech before the House Judiciary Committee supporting the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.Barbara was a mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter in 1976,and that year she became the first African-American to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.Her speech in New York that summer was ranked 5th in "Top 100 American Speeches of the 20 century list and was considered by many historians to have been the best convention keynote speech in modern history.Despite being a candidate she received one delegate vote (0.03%) for president at the convention.Barbara retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor teaching ethics at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.She again was a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992.In 1995, Barbara chaired a Congressional commission that advocated increased restriction of immigration,called for all U.S. residents to carry a national identity card and increased penalties on employers that violated U.S. regulations.Then-President Clinton endorsed the Jordan Commission's proposals.While she was chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform she argued that "it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage policy who cite willingness to penalize employers who violate US  immigration regulations,to tighten borders security,and to oppose amnesty or any other pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and to broaden the grounds for the deportation of legal immigrants.She supported the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977,legislation that required banks to lend and make services available to undeserved poor and minority communities.She supported the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and expansion of that act to cover language minorities.This extended protection to Hispanics in Texas and was opposed by Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe and Secretary of State Mark White.In 1973,Barbara began to suffer from multiple sclerosis.She had difficulty climbing stairs,and she started using a cane and eventually a wheelchair.She kept the state of her health out of the press so well that in the KUT radio documentary Rediscovering Barbara Jordan,President Bill Clinton stated he wanted to nominate her for the United States Supreme Court,but by the time he could do so,Barbara health problems prevented him from nominating her.Her companion of close to 30 years was Nancy Earl.Barbara met Nancy and educational psychologist who would became and occasional speech writer in addition to Barbara partner,on a camping trip in the late 1960s.Barbara never publicly acknowledged her sexual orientation,but in her obituary,the Houston Chronicle mentioned her long relationship with Nancy.After her initial statewide races,advisers warned her to become more discreet and not bring and female companions on the campaign trail.Barbara narrowly escaped death by drowning in July 1988,when Nancy pulled her from their backyard swimming pool.Her death was caused from complications of pneumonia.In 1993 she was honored with the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.Barbara was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.The many other honors given to her include her election into both the Texas and National Women's Halls of Fame;she was awarded the prestigious United States Military Academy's Silvanus Thayer Award,becoming only the second woman awardee.Upon death Barbara lay in state at the LBJ Library on the campus of The University Texas at Austin.She was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin,and was the first black woman interred there.Her papers are housed at the Barbara Jordan Archives at Texas Southern University.The main terminal at Austin-Bergstorm international Airport is named after her,as are an elementary school in Odessa,Texas,a middle school in Cibolo,Texas;Barbara Jordan high school in Houston and YMCA in Martinville,Indiana.The Kaiser Family Foundation currently operates the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars,a fellowship designed for people of color who are college juniors,seniors, and recent graduates as a summer experience working in a congressional office.On March 27,2000,a play on Jordan's life premiered at the Victory Garden Theatre in Chicago,Illinois.Titled "Voice of Hope",Kristine Thatcher's biographical evocation of Jordan's life played in theaters from San Francisco to New York.On April 24,2009,a Barbara Jordan statue was unveiled at the University of Texas at Austin where Barbara taught at the time of her death.The Barbara Jordan statue campaign was paid for by a student fee increase approved by the University of Texas Board of Regents.The effort was originally spearheaded by the 2002-2003 Tapee class of the Texas Orange Jackets,the "oldest women's organization at the University"(of Texas at Austin).Many of her speeches have been collected in a 2007 publication from the University of Texas Press,Barbara Jordan:Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder.In her namesake,the Jordan/Rustin Coalition (JRC) was created in California in 2000.This organization seeks to mobilize gay and lesbian African American to aid in the passage of marriage in the state of California.Along with Bayard Rustin,a Civil Rights leader and close confidante of Martin Luther King,Barbara is remembered for her advocacy of progressive politics."The mission of the JRC is to empower Black same-gender loving, lesbian,gay,bisexual and transgender individuals and families in Greater Los Angeles,to promote equal marriage rights and to advocate for fair treatment of everyone without regard to race,sexual orientation,gender identity or gender expression.