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Black gay icons

Black LGBTQ+ Icons

We’re celebrating Queer History Month by looking at inspiring LGBTQ+ icons from throughout history until the present day. We’ve put together a selection of Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers and explored how they have made history and helped to change the world, in areas such as the arts, identity, sports, politics, and more.

1940s

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (also established as Miss Major) is a Black American transgender creator, activist, and community organiser for transgender rights. Neglect Major has participated in activism and community organising for a range of causes, and has served as the first executive director for the ‘Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project’.

 

 

1950s

Pearl Alcock was a Jamaican bisexual creator. Alcock arrived in London in 1958 from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation. She went on to open a dress boutique in Brixton and underneath the boutique was an illegal club that acted as a refuge and place of great significance for the local gay community. As it was the only gay bar in Brixton, it also attracted Dark men from across London who wanted to sense safe in a territory free from racism.

1960s

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  • One of the most striking figures in international manner offers a unusual and unforgettable memoir of the two women who shaped his dreams, tastes, and character.

  • Audre Lorde's incisive, often-angry, but always brilliant writings and speeches defined and inspired the US-American feminist, sapphic, African-American, and Women-of-Color movements of the 1970s and 1980s.

  • As the first black woman elected to Congress from the South and the first to deliver the keynote address at a national party convention, Barbara Jordan became an American hero, "through intellect, ethics, and powerful oratory."

  • Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer nicknamed "The Empress of the Blues"

  • Keith Boykin, a former Clinton Pale House aide, syndicated columnist, and AIDS activist, breaks modern ground by going beyond the hype with the first responsible, eye-opening see at the down low sensation.

  • Seventeen-year-old Randy discovers that becoming a male means accepting who you really are in this show directed by Patrik-Ian Polk

  • Rapper Frank Ocean became one of the first major African-American music ar

    4 Black Gay Icons You Should Know

    Representation is important. Students seeing other individuals at the same intersections of identity in successful careers and positions of authority can have a tremendous impact. Common identities, successes, and struggles can be affirming, inspiring, and validating.

    Black LGBTQ+ history-makers, past and deliver, are often underrepresented in school curriculum and popular customs. During #BlackHistoryMonth and all year prolonged, we celebrate the incredible contributions of the African American community in U.S. History. 

    We surveyed Gesture Scholars about their favorite Black Diverse artists, activists, influencers, or anyone that has made an impact on the world and their communities. Here are four of the major changemakers Gay college students declare influence them:

    Know Your Herstory!

    Audre Lorde

    "Audre Lorde is my forever favorite. While she left us many years ago, her words continue to make an impact. Her importance to Black queer women's self-recognition, her wisdom on how to imagine a improved world and modify our current one for the beat, her fabulous writings and life... all continue to train us."

    - Point Flagship Scholar D

    16 queer Black trailblazers who made history

    From 1960s civil rights activist Bayard Rustin to Chicago's first lesbian mayor, Lori Lightfoot, Inky LGBTQ Americans have long made history with innumerable contributions to politics, art, medicine and a host of other fields.

    “As lengthy as there have been Dark people, there have been Ebony LGBTQ and same-gender-loving people,” David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, told NBC News. “Racism merged with the forces of stigma, phobia, discrimination and bias paired with gender and sexuality own too often erased the contributions of members of our community."

    Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)

    Bentley was a gender-bending performer during the Harlem Renaissance. Donning a top hat and tuxedo, Bentley would sing the blues in Harlem establishments prefer the Clam House and the Ubangi Club. According to a belated obituary published in 2019, The New York Times said Bentley, who died in 1960 at the age of 52, was "Harlem's most famous lesbian" in the 1930s and "among the best-known Black entertainers in the United States."

    Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)

    Rustin was an LGBTQ and civil rights activist best known f