Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen born 30 May 1903 (d. 1946)

Countee Cullen was an American Romantic poet. Cullen was one of the leading African American poets of his time, associated with the generation of black poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

Cullen was born with the name Countee LeRoy Porter and was abandoned by his parents at birth. He was raised by his grandmother, Mrs Porter, but because he was very secretive about his life, it is unclear where he was actually born. Scholars state he was either born in Louisville, Kentucky, or Baltimore. Later in his life, Cullen said he was born in New York City. It is known that he attended Townsend Harris High School for one year and then transferred to DeWitt Clinton High School in New York and received special honours in Latin studies in 1922.

In 1918 his grandmother died. Cullen was subsequently adopted by Reverend Frederick Ashbury Cullen, minister at Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, and thus Cullen was raised a Methodist. Throughout his unstable childhood his birth mother never attempted to contact Cullen, and would not attempt to do so until sometime in the 1920s, after he'd become famous.

Cullen won many poetry contests from a very young age and often had his winning work reprinted. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, mainly consisting of all white, male students. He became Vice President of his class during his senior year, was also involved in the school magazine as an editor, and was affiliated with the Arista Honor Society.

After completing his secondary education, Cullen attended New York University. While an undergraduate, he published works in various literary magazines, including Harper's, Century Magazine, and Poetry. Also, his writing exceptional faculties were acknowledged with prizes from The Crisis, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity of the National Urban League. He graduated in 1925. Soon afterwards, he produced his first volume entitled Color and pursued graduate studies at Harvard University.

In April 1928, Cullen married Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of the famous W. E. B. Du Bois. Two months after the wedding, Cullen left for Europe with his father and Harold Jackman; his wife followed after a month. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928.

Nina Yolande Du Bois divorced Cullen two years later, saying that he told her that he was sexually attracted to men.

In 1940, he married Ida Mae Roberson and they enjoyed a seemingly happy marriage.

On January 9, 1946, Cullen unexpectedly died of uremic poisoning and complications from high blood pressure. After his death, for a few years, Cullen was honoured as the most celebrated African American writer. A collection of some of his best work was also arranged in On These I Stand.

The West 136th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem is named after Countee Cullen

Paul Winfield

Paul Winfield born 22 May 1939 (d. 2004)

Paul Edward Winfield was an Academy Award-nominated American television and film actor. Winfield was openly gay in his private life, but remained discreet about it in the public eye.

Winfield was born in Los Angeles, California. He first became well-known to audiences when he appeared for several years opposite Diahann Carroll on the US television series Julia. He also starred as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978 miniseries King. In 1973, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1972 film Sounder, becoming the third African American to ever earn a nomination for a leading role, after Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier. Though it should be noted that Sounder co-star Cicely Tyson was also nominated that year for a leading role, for Best Actress. He appeared in the 2003 Disney-produced television remake of Sounder. Winfield played the part of 'Jim the Slave' in Huckleberry Finn (1974) which was a musical.

Winfield also starred in more recent miniseries, including Roots: The Next Generations, Queen: The Story of an American Family and Scarlett.

Winfield gained many fans for several of his brief but memorable roles in science fiction TV programs and movies. He was Captain Clark Terrell in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and a friendly but crusty cop partnered with Lance Henriksen in The Terminator. On the small screen, he appeared as General Richard Franklin, father of regular character Dr Stephen Franklin, on Babylon 5 and as an alien captain in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. He also provided voices on the cartoons Spider-Man, The Magic School Bus, Batman Beyond, and The Simpsons, on the latter voicing the Don King parody Lucius Sweet. He was 'The Mirror' on the TV show The Charmings (1987-1988). He also played the long-lost father of Harriette Winslow and her sister Rachel Crawford on Family Matters. At the time of his death, he was a narrator for the A&E show City Confidential.

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance in the King and Roots: The Next Generations. He won an Emmy Award, in 1995, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, for his appearance in an episode of the CBS drama Picket Fences.

Throughout his career, Winfield frequently managed to perform in the theatre. His only Broadway production, Checkmates, in 1988, co-starring Ruby Dee, was also the Broadway debut of Denzel Washington. He also appeared in productions Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Winfield died of a heart attack in 2004; he was 64. His long-time partner of 30 years, architect Charles Gillan Jr., preceded him in death in 2002.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes born 1 February 1902 (d. 1967)

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and newspaper columnist. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry.

Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colourful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in 'Montage of a Dream Deferred'.

His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable black poets of the period — Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen — Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed Langston Hughes Place.

In addition to leaving a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known 'Simple' books: Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea) and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.

Academics and biographers today believe that Hughes was a homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, similar in manner to Walt Whitman, whose work Hughes cited as another influence on his poetry. Hughes' story 'Blessed Assurance' deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and queerness.

To retain the 'respect' and support of black churches and organisations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted. Arnold Rampersad, the primary biographer of Hughes, determined that Hughes exhibited a preference for other African-American men in his work and life. This love of black men is evidenced in a number of reported unpublished poems to a black male lover.

Alvin Ailey

Alvin Ailey born 5 January 1931 (d. 1989)

Alvin Ailey, Jr. was an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on 92nd Street in New York City.

Born into poverty in Rogers, Texas, Alvin Ailey moved to Los Angeles at the age of twelve and was introduced to dance by performances of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. His formal training in dance began with an introduction to Lester Horton's classes by his friend, Carmen de Lavallade. It was with Horton, the founder of the first racially integrated dance company in the US, that Ailey embarked on his professional dance career. After Horton's death in 1953, Ailey became the director of the Lester Horton Dance Theater and began to choreograph his own works.

In 1954, he and his friend Carmen de Lavallade were invited to New York to dance in the Broadway show, House of Flowers by Truman Capote. In New York, Ailey studied with many outstanding dance artists, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman and took acting classes with Stella Adler. The versatile Ailey won a number of acting roles, continued to choreograph and performed as a dancer.

In 1958, Ailey founded his own company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey had a vision of creating a company dedicated to the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance heritage and the uniqueness of black cultural expression. In 1960, he choreographed Revelations, the classic masterpiece of American modern dance based on the religious heritage of his youth.

When Ailey began creating dance, he drew upon his 'blood memories' of Texas, the blues, spirituals, and gospel as inspiration. He concentrated on ballets that used blues, folk songs, and gospel to celebrate the southern Black Experience in America.

Although he created 79 ballets over his lifetime, Alvin Ailey maintained that his company was not exclusively a repository for his own work. Today, the company continues Ailey's mission by presenting important works of the past and commissioning new ones to add to the repertoire. In all, more than 200 works by over 70 choreographers have been performed by the Company.

Alvin Ailey died from AIDS in 1989 at the age of 58.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Wallace Thurman

Wallace Thurman born 16 August 1902 (d. 1934)

Wallace Henry Thurman was an African American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which describes discrimination based on skin colour among black people.

Thurman was born in Salt Lake City in 1902 to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. Beulah Thurman was reportedly never fond of Wallace; she would marry six times during her lifetime. Between his mother's many marriages, Wallace Thurman and his mother lived with Emma Jackson, the maternal grandmother to Wallace. His grandmother's home doubled as a saloon where alcohol was served without a license. The relationship between Wallace and his father was a distant one. While Wallace was less than a month old, Oscar Thurman abandoned and lived apart from his wife and son. Wallace was almost thirty years old when he met his father.

Thurman's early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and poor health. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but poor health eventually led to a long absences from school and several moves, although he did finish high school. Throughout it all, Thurman was a voracious reader, writing his first novel at the age of ten. He attended the University of Utah from 1919 to 1920 as a pre-medical student. Later, in 1922, he transferred to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles but left without receiving a degree. While in Los Angeles he became a reporter for an African American owned newspaper where he wrote his first column.

In 1925 he moved to Harlem in New York City. During his time in Harlem and in less than ten years, he obtained various employments as a publisher, an editor for magazines and a major publisher, a writer of novels, plays, and articles, and at various times he served as a ghostwriter to various people. The following year he became the editor of The Messenger, a socialist journal aimed at black audiences. While at the Mesenger, Thurman became the first person to publish the adult-themed stories of Langston Hughes. Thurman left The Messenger in October 1926 to become the editor of a white owned magazine called World Tomorrow. The following month, he collaborated in the publishing of the literary magazine Fire!!

Only one issue of Fire!! was ever published. Fire!! challenged the idea that black art should serve as propaganda and those within the African American bourgeoisie who sought social equality and racial integration at the expense denying certain less-than-stellar aspects of black life in the United States. Thurman, like his fellow contributors to the magazine, attempted to show the real lived lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. His view was that black artists should be more objective in their writings and not so self-conscious that they did not acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African American lives, as many actually existed instead of presenting a singular false facade to win white approval. This was in contrast to African American leaders and middle class who saw the goal of the New Negro movement as showing white Americans that blacks were not inferior.

During this time, Thurman's rooming house apartment at 267 West 136th Street in Harlem became the main place where the African American literary avant-garde and visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance met and socialised.

In 1928, Thurman published another magazine called Harlem: a Forum of Negro Life. The publication lasted for only two issues. Afterwards, Thurman became a reader for a major publishing company. He was the first African American in such a position in a New York publishing house.

Thurman wrote a play, Harlem, which debuted on Broadway in 1929 to mixed reviews. The same year his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life was published. The novel is now recognised as a ground breaking work of fiction because of its focus on intraracial prejudice, specifically between light-skinned and dark-skinned black people - Thurman was very dark-skinned. However, at the time many African Americans did not like the public airing of their community's so-called 'dirty laundry'.

Three years later Thurman published Infants of the Spring, a satire about the themes and the individuals of the Harlem Renaissance. He co-authored a final novel, The Interne, published in 1932.

Thurman married Louise Thompson Patterson on August 22, 1928. The marriage lasted only six months. Thompson noted that Wallace was a homosexual and thus their union was incompatible.

Thurman died in 1934 at the age of 32 from tuberculosis, which many suspect was exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.

James Baldwin

James Baldwin born 2 August 1924 (d. 1987)

James Baldwin was born at Harlem Hospital in New York City to a poor, unmarried, twenty-year-old woman named Emma Berdis Jones. Baldwin's early years were deeply troubled. At home - terrorised by an abusive stepfather; outside - taunted by his peers because he was short and 'effeminate'. As an adolescent, he sought refuge in the church, and after an emotionally charged spiritual conversion, he became at 14 a minister who regularly preached at evangelical churches in and near Harlem. As a young man , he held a variety of odd jobs - a rail road construction worker, waiter, bus boy, and elevator operator. It was during this time that he began to write seriously, beginning with book reviews and essays.

He also became fully aware of the implications of being black in America. Everyday exposure to racism left him deeply wounded. His increasing consciousness of his homosexuality added to his pain and confusion. To escape, he left for Paris in 1948 with $40 in his pocket and no knowledge of French. In France, where he would spend the better part of his remaining years, he became a professional writer.

Baldwin published 22 books during a career that lasted nearly 40 years; he wrote formal essays, fiction, drama, and poetry. In his early collections of essays such as Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) he combined autobiography with astute observation to create brilliant critiques of American race relations.

A short story published in 1951 Outing - a story of sexual awakening centering on two adolescent boys - was his first 'gay' fiction. He revisited and developed the theme in his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953). The theme of sexual identity dominates Baldwin's second novel Giovanni's Room (1956) . Its all-white cast of characters and its candid treatment of homosexual romance 'disappointed' many of Baldwin's readers, but helped secure Baldwin's central place in gay American literature.

Another Country, Baldwin's controversial bestseller, was published in 1962. A complex narrative, it explicitly combines racial and sexual protests. Its setting is mostly New York; its plot is structured around the lives of eight racially, regionally, socio-economically, and sexually diverse characters. This multicultural cast constitutes a microcosmic America; the conflicts among them, therefore, become emblematic of larger crises in American society.

Subsequent novels further developed the themes of race and sexuality. Baldwin received a viciously hostile reaction to his gay-themed novels from angry black militants who were uncomfortable with the increasingly visible role of Baldwin - an openly gay black man - in the civil rights movement. His next novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) lacked a gay theme possibly in response to this, but his final novel Just Above My Head (1979) integrated a secondary gay theme.

Baldwin is a pioneering figure in 20th century literature. As a black gay writer in a mainly straight white culture, he offered in his work a sustained and articulate challenge to the dominant discourses of American racism and heterosexuality. As an African-American writer, he ranks among the finest. As a gay writer, he occupies a pre-eminent place.

Long before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 helped liberate the gay literary imagination in the United States, he boldly made his sexuality a vital part of his artistic vision. Even more important, by insisting on honest and open explorations of gay and bisexual themes in his fiction, he made a sharp break from the established African-American literary conventions. Through such a radical departure from tradition, he helped create the space for a generation of young African-American gay writers who succeeded him.

Richard Bruce Nugent

Richard Bruce Nugent born 2 July 1906 (d. 1987)

Richard Bruce Nugent (also known as Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent) was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Washington, DC to a prominent African American family. Spending a large part of his life in New York City, he died in Hoboken, New Jersey.

During the summer of 1926, Nugent was a part of a group of black artists, led by Wallace Thurman, who envisioned a literary periodical to break with the black literary establishment. This quarterly was known as Fire!!. His creative involvement included two brush and ink drawings and a short story, Smoke, Lilies, and Jade. This short story was the first literary work on a purely homosexual theme that had been published by an African American writer.

He was a contemporary of and close friends with Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman.

In 1952, Nugent married Grace Elizabeth Marr. He admitted without any hesitation that the love he had for her was not a physical love or lust. They were married for seventeen years. Grace died of ovarian cancer in 1969 and Nugent of congestive heart failure seventeen years later in 1987.

He is a principal character in the 2004 film Brother to Brother.

In 2002 Duke University Press released Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent which included examples of his writing and artwork.

E Lynn Harris

E Lynn Harris born 20 June 1955 (d. 2009)

Everette 'E' Lynn Harris was a prolific American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African American men on the down-low or in the closet.

In his writings, Harris maintained a poignant motif, occasionally emotive, that incorporated vernacular and slang from popular culture.

Born in Flint, Michigan, Harris became the first black male cheerleader while attending the University of Arkansas.

A former computer executive, Harris turned to writing and published his own first book, Invisible Life, about his own struggles with his sexuality, before signing a deal.

Many of his novels, 10 of which made it on to the New York Times best-sellers list, dealt with the experiences of the gay African American man.

Gay advocate Herndon Davis called Harris a 'pioneering voice' within the black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

'Harris painted with eloquent prose and revealing accuracy the lives of African American men and the many complicated struggles they faced reconciling their sexuality and spirituality while rising above societal taboos within the black community,' added Mr Davis.

Alongside fiction, Harris had also penned a personal memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?

Harris died suddenly on July 23, 2009 at the age of 54 while in Los Angeles for a business meeting. He was found unconscious at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Roy Simmons

Roy Simmons born 8 November 1956

Roy Franklin Simmons is an African-American athlete who played for the National Football League. In 1992, he came out as gay on the Phil Donahue Show. He played offensive lineman for the New York Giants and then with the Washington Redskins during Super Bowl XVIII in 1984.

In his autobiography, Out of Bounds (written with Damon DiMarco), he speaks of drug addiction, prostitution, and promiscuity. Around 1997, he learned that he was HIV-positive.

Only two other members of the NFL have ever admitted their homosexuality: David Kopay and Esera Tuaolo.

Roy Simmons