Why Is Black LGBT History Ignored In The Black Community?

The Harlem

Renaissance was an important era  from 1919 to 1930 when black artists believed their art reached America’s consciousness.

For the first time in America’s history, African-American gay, bisexual, transgender, and lesbian writers, poets, singers, artists, work reached the world.

For instance, the pianist Gladys Bentley, she dressed in drag in a men’s suit and performed for audiences.

The lesbian writer and poet Angelina Weld Grimke was publishing her poetry and plays during the 1920s. For instance, the NAACP commissioned Angelina to write her anti lynching play “Rachel”, it was first performed in Washington D.C. in 1920.

Langton Hughes  he was  the most famous member of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes poetry reached audiences across the world. However, Hughes he was reticent about his homosexuality because he feared losing the support of heterosexual blacks. Even though, Hughes has been dead since 1967, there is still a battle over whether he was homosexual or heterosexual?  I believe the truth about  Langton Hughes sexual orientation is buried in his writings. If you look beneath the surface of Hughes work, this is where his homosexuality emerges.

I believe Langton Hughes was indeed homosexual. For instance, if you read Hughes poems such as “Desire”, “Cafe 3 am”, “Young Sailor”, you will see the subliminal homoerotic themes of his poems.

Hughes is very respected in the black heterosexual community but Hughes homosexuality is still a controversial issue. After the Harlem Renaissance, the black lesbian playwright Lorraine Hansberry she wrote the play “A Raisin In The Sun.” However, Hansberry’s lesbianism is omitted from black history. Hansberry’s lesbianism is ignored due to homophobia. Hansberry she wrote for the lesbian publication “The Ladder” in the 1950s.

There were other important black writers during this period such as the feminist authors Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and Jesse Fauset.  Hurston, Larsen, and Fauset were straight black women but they supported their black gay and lesbian friends.