Description
The June 2019 featured collection celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride. This year's pride celebration marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, widely considered to be the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Our featured collection highlights many photographs from our Countee Cullen-Harold Jackman Memorial Collection of black entertainers including Josephine Baker and Bessie Smith. The collection also contains correspondence from writer James Baldwin and a poem from Angelina Grimké. Additionally, the Archives Research Center holds a collection of BLK, a monthly magazine published from 1988 to 1994 with the motto “where the news is colored on purpose,” which covered people, events, and issues relevant to LBGT African American readers.
Rights
All images in this collection either are protected by copyright or are the property of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, and/or the copyright holder as appropriate. To order a reproduction or to inquire about permission to publish, please contact archives@auctr.edu with specific object file name.
![An Honest Look At BLACK GAYS AND LESBIANS<br />
By Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.Associate Professor of PsychiatryHarvard Medical School<br />
Lately, they have “come out of the closet” in increasing numbers<br />
Some people fear and scorn, others tolerate homosexuals, but few understand and welcome them as equal partners in African-American society. Most of us have laughed at Eddie Murphy pretending to be a swishing drag queen. Black comedians rely on stereotypes of Black gays and lesbians as a ready source of<br />
[images: Phil Wilson, co-chair of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum in Los Angeles, feels that Black gays can avoid rejection by the Black community only if they are not too obvious about their gay orientation. At right, Venus Medina, a project officer at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, says that most Black lesbians identify as Black women first and lesbians second. Medina is a 30-year-old mother of two]](https://glamportal.auctr.edu/files/fullsize/09d44d9ac206fc5bd6b89a0841afec9a.jpg "An Honest Look At BLACK GAYS AND LESBIANS<br />
By Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.Associate Professor of PsychiatryHarvard Medical School<br />
Lately, they have “come out of the closet” in increasing numbers<br />
Some people fear and scorn, others tolerate homosexuals, but few understand and welcome them as equal partners in African-American society. Most of us have laughed at Eddie Murphy pretending to be a swishing drag queen. Black comedians rely on stereotypes of Black gays and lesbians as a ready source of<br />
[images: Phil Wilson, co-chair of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum in Los Angeles, feels that Black gays can avoid rejection by the Black community only if they are not too obvious about their gay orientation. At right, Venus Medina, a project officer at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, says that most Black lesbians identify as Black women first and lesbians second. Medina is a 30-year-old mother of two]")
![Ethel Waters wearing ornate gown and headdress signed "To Floyd [?] Ethel 9/3/34"](https://glamportal.auctr.edu/files/fullsize/174df82ee176d7bb26c9ed2dad80f5ae.jpg "Ethel Waters wearing ornate gown and headdress signed \"To Floyd [?] Ethel 9/3/34\"")
