The Politics of Homosexuality in the Twentieth Century Black Freedom Struggle
Abstract
This project examines the changing status and role of queer African Americans during the twentieth century in the context of increasing black politicization. Moreover, it traces the relationship between queer African Americans and their communities until the emergence of queer black identity politics in the 1970s. Specifically, this dissertation seeks to more fully illuminate both the experiences of queer African Americans and how their communities and leaders discussed and dealt with homosexuality in the broader context of black political mobilization from the Jim Crow era and the Harlem Renaissance, through the Black Power and early Gay Liberation movements, roughly the 1920s through the late 1970s. In their ongoing struggle for citizenship rights and social equality, African Americans faced political pressures that affected the ways in which they sought to present themselves to dominant white society, and these pressures influenced the ways that they dealt with the presence of homosexuality in black communities and political organizations. Ultimately, the need for racial solidarity both kept queer African Americans engaged in black communities and prevented any meaningful development of independent queer black identity politics until the 1970s.