- Keith Boykin
Keith Boykin (born August 28 1965) is an American broadcaster, author and commentator. He is co-host of the BET TV talk show "My Two Cents".
- Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an African-American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier and principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was openly gay and advocated on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career.
- Audre Lorde
Audre Geraldine Lorde (February 18, 1934 in Harlem, New York City - November 17, 1992) was a writer, poet and activist.
- Barbara Jordan
Barbara Charline Jordan was an American politician from Texas. She served as a Congresswoman in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979.
- Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American author and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for her critically acclaimed novel "The Color Purple".
- Maya Keyes
Maya J. Marcel-Keyes, more commonly known as Maya Keyes (born May 23, 1985), is an American political activist and daughter of United States Ambassador Alan Keyes, former Republican presidential, senatorial candidate, and advisor to Ronald Reagan. Despite her staunch conservative upbringing, Marcel-Keyes has been involved with the anarchist and gay rights movements. She also identifies herself as adamantly pro-life.
- James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, and essayist, best known for his novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain". Most of Baldwin's work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century United States.
- Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey, Jr. (January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989) was an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58. Ailey was born to his 17-year-old mother, Lula Cooper, in Rogers, Texas. Alvin developed an early interest in dance. In 1943 he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. Initially, he took dance classes from choreographer Katherine Dunham, and later studied under Los Angeles, …
- Nell Carter
Nell Carter (September 13, 1948 - January 23, 2003) was a Tony Award-winning American singer and film, stage, and television actress.
- Pokey Chatman
Dana "Pokey" Chatman (born June 18, 1969 in Ama, Louisiana) is the former head coach of the LSU Lady Tigers basketball team. After taking over from coach Sue Gunter in 2004, Chatman led the Lady Tigers to three consecutive NCAA Final Fours in 2004 (as acting head coach for the ailing Gunter), 2005, and 2006. Notably, Chatman resigned from her post at LSU on March 7, 2007 amid allegations of an inproper sexual relationship with a former player.
- Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.
- Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American socialist organizer, professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Davis's main association however, was her membership in the Communist Party USA. She first achieved nationwide notoriety when she was linked to the murder of judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break; she fled underground, …
- Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903-January 9, 1946) was an African-American Romantic poet and an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance.
- Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis (July 23, 1899 - October 5, 2000) was the oldest known open lesbian and a die-hard LGBT rights activist. Her life was the subject of the documentary "Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100".
- Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and litigant in the United States Supreme Court case, "Hansberry v. Lee". Born in Chicago, Illinois, Hansberry was the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry (a prominent real estate broker) and Nannie Perry Hansberry. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood. When she was eight, the family moved into an all white neighborhood, …
- Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting two decades. The composition most closely associated with Strayhorn is "Lush Life".
- Willi Ninja
Willi Ninja (12 April, 1961 - 2 September, 2006) was a gay African-American dancer and choreographer best known for his appearance in the documentary film "Paris is Burning". Ninja for years was a fixture of ball culture at Harlem's drag balls who took inspiration from sources as far-flung as Fred Astaire and the world of haute couture to develop a unique style of dance and movement. He caught the attention of "Paris is Burning" director Jennie Livingston, …
- Deborah Batts
The Honorable Deborah A. Batts (born 13 April 1947) is a U.S. federal judge, currently serving on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She is the first and, as of 2006, the only openly LGBT person to have served as a judge of the United States federal courts. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was educated at Radcliffe College and Harvard Law School.
- Peter J. Gomes
Peter John Gomes is a prominent African American preacher and theologian at Harvard University's Divinity School. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1942, Gomes graduated from Bates College in 1965 and Harvard Divinity School in 1968. He also spent time at the University of Cambridge and is now an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, where The Gomes Lectureship is established in his name.
- Paul Winfield
Paul Edward Winfield (May 22, 1939 - March 7, 2004) was an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated American television and film actor. He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film "Sounder" and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the television miniseries "King".
- RuPaul
RuPaul (born RuPaul Andre Charles on November 17, 1960), and named after Paul Bergeron, is an American drag performer, dance music singer, actor, and songwriter who gained worldwide fame in the 1990s; appearing in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Though a catty attitude is often associated with drag queens, RuPaul intentionally displayed a "love one another" attitude to be set apart from them.
- Kevin Aviance
Kevin Aviance (born Eric Snead on June 22, 1968 in Richmond, Virginia) is an American female impressionist, Club/Dance musician, and fashion designer. He is a very popular personality in New York City's gay scene and is a member of the "House of Aviance", a local gay performer's group. He is known for his trademark phrase, "Work. Fierce. Over. Aviance!"
- Paris Barclay
Paris KC Barclay (born June 30, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois) is an African-American television director and producer. Since the early 1990s, he has been a noted director of television drama programs. He won two Emmy Awards as well as a Directors Guild of America award for directing episodes of "NYPD Blue", among numerous nominations.
- Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan and later called Lady Day, was an American jazz singer.
- Luther Vandross
Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. was an eight-time Grammy Award-winning American R&B and soul singer and songwriter. During his career, Vandross sold over 25 million albums and won eight Grammy awards including Best Male R&B Vocal Performance four times. He won four Grammy Awards in 2004 including the Grammy Award for Song of the Year for the track "Dance With My Father", co-written with Richard Marx.
- Sakia Gunn
Sakia Gunn (May 26, 1987-May 11, 2003) was a 15-year old African American lesbian who was murdered in a hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. On the night of May 11, Gunn was returning from a night out in Greenwich Village, Manhattan with her friends. While waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two men.
- E. Lynn Harris
E. Lynn Harris is an American author. Harris, who is African-American and openly gay, writes primarily about African American men on "the down-low," or in the closet. Five of Harris’ novels were on "The New York Times" Best Seller list. Harris currently lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Atlanta, Georgia.
- Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs (3 February 1957 - 5 April 1994), an African-American poet, educator, filmmaker, and an outspoken gay rights activist. Riggs was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame in 2006. He produced many documentaries for public television, some of which were considered controversial by media watchdog groups, who protested the fact that Riggs' films were produced with money from the National Endowment for the Arts.
- Wallace Thurman
Wallace Henry Thurman (1902-1934) 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 color among black people.
- Matthew Rush
Matthew Rush (born Gregory Grove on September 22, 1972) is an American gay pornographic actor who appears in gay pornographic films and magazines. He is also a bodybuilder and personal trainer under his real name. He has competed at the Gay Games in Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia.
- Latasha Byears
Latasha Nashay Byears (born August 12, 1973 in Memphis, Tennessee) is a professional women's basketball player who plays for the Houston Comets in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Byears, who previously played for the Sacramento Monarchs, the Los Angeles Sparks, and the Washington Mystics, ranked eighth all-time in field goal percentage (.514) and was among the top 10 rebounders in the league's history as of 2003.
- David Hampton
David Hampton (1964-2003) was an African-American con artist who gained infamy in the 1980s after bilking a group of wealthy Manhattanites out of thousands of dollars by convincing them he was Sidney Poitier's son. His story became the inspiration for a play and later a movie, titled "Six Degrees of Separation".
- Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (July, 1892 or April, 1894 - September 26, 1937) was the most popular and successful female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, and a strong influence on subsequent generations, including Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Janis Joplin.
- Bill T. Jones
Bill T. Jones is an American artistic director, choreographer and dancer based in New York City. He is the recipient of the 2007 Tony Award, the 2005 Wexner Prize, the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement and the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, as well as a 1994 MacArthur Fellowship. Jones began his dance training at the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY), studying classical ballet and modern dance.
- David Ehrenstein
David Ehrenstein (born February 18, 1947, in New York City) is an American critic who focuses primarily on issues of homosexuality in cinema. He attended the High School of Music and Art (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts) and then Pace College (now Pace University). He now lives in Los Angeles. His writing career started in 1965 with an interview with Andy Warhol which was published in "Film Culture" magazine in 1966.
- Donna Brazile
Donna Brazile is a senior political strategist and former campaign manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000-the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign. She is currently chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Cooking with Grease is an intimate account of Donna's thirty years in politics.
- Angela Robinson
Angela Robinson (born February 14, 1971 in San Francisco, California) is an American film director, and graduate of Brown University and New York University. Robinson is a lesbian and frequently deals with gay and lesbian topics in her films. Robinson has directed an award winning short film "D.E.B.S. (2003 film)" and a feature length film "D.E.B.S. (2004 film)".
- Jaye Davidson
Jaye Davidson (born Alfred Amey on March 21 1968) is an Oscar-nominated former actor. Davidson identifies as a gay man; he is 5'3" (1.60m) and biracial. Davidson is the son of a Ghanaian father and English mother but was born in Riverside, California. His family left for England when he was two and a half years old. He grew up in Hertfordshire, UK.
- Gladys Bentley
Gladys Bentley (12 August 1907-18 January 1960) was a famous African-American blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Bentley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote. She appeared at Harry Hansberry's "Clam House" on 133rd Street, one of New York City's most notorious gay speakeasies, in the 1920s, and headlined in the early thirties at Harlem's Ubangi Club, …
- Felicia Pearson
Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson (also known as Snoop From The Wire) born on May 18, 1980 in Baltimore, Maryland is an African American actress and rapper, known for her role on the HBO series "The Wire" as a character named after herself.