Leyendecker, who used his lover as the model for "The Arrow Collar Man" advertisements and celebrated playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. Included here are Jane Addams, the pioneer of American social work blues legend Ma Rainey, who recorded "Sissy Blues" in Chicago in 1926 commercial artist J. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago's LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked.
Throughout, he reveals how desire and art open routes to black queer freedom when policy, the law, racism, and homophobia threaten physical safety, civil rights, and social mobility.Ĭhicago Whispers by St Sukie De la Croix John D'Emilio (Foreword by) Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city's beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s.
From there, he pivots to institutional spaces-specifically prisons and hospitals-and the ways such places seek to expose queer bodies in order to control them.
He first focuses on how the state seeks to inhibit the movement of black queer bodies through public spaces, whether on the street or across borders. GerShun Avilez analyzes the work of diasporic artists who, denied government protections, have used art to create spaces for justice. Attending to and challenging threats has become a defining element in queer black artists' work throughout the black diaspora. To anyone with an interest in the history of the gay/lesbian rights movements in the United States, these names will be familiar, but did you know that in addition to their groundbreaking activism: Prescott Townsend was a Boston Brahman Dorr Legg was a Log Cabin Republican Harry Hay was at one time a member of the Communist party Jim Kepner was a boy preacher Troy Perry was removed from the ministry of his church for homosexuality-and then founded the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church Reed Erickson-a transsexual millionaire who gave millions to the cause-kept a pet leopard called Henry Barbara Gittings set up a kissing booth at the American Library Association convention and urged attendees to kiss a gay or lesbian! Before Stonewall is a perfect ancillary text for any gay/lesbian studies course, but more to the point, no one interested in these heroic figures and the movements they ignited should be without this book, which received an honorable mention in the 2004 Stonewall Book Awards.īlack Queer Freedom by GerShun Avilez Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychological, and socioeconomical injury. Authored by those who knew them (often activists themselves), the concise biographies in this volume examine the lives of pre-1969 barrier breakers like Harry Hay, Henry Gerber, Alfred Kinsey, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Jim Kepner, Jack Nichols, Christine Jorgensen, Jose Sarria, Barbara Grier, Frank Kameny, and 40 more.
Their stories are told in the following pages." Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context illuminates the lives of the courageous individuals involved in the early struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights in the United States. It was a motley crew of radicals and reformers, drawn together by the cause in spite of personality and philosophical differences. Bullough: "Although there was no single leader in the gay and lesbian community who achieved the fame and reputation of Martin Luther King, there were a large number of activists who put their careers and reputations on the line. Bullough Explore the early history of the gay rights movement! In the words of editor Vern L.