Timeline of African and diasporic LGBT history

This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of African ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, third gender, gender nonconforming), men who have sex with men, or related culturally specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Africa, the Americas and Europe and in the global African diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.

1700s

1791 – France repeals its anti-"sodomy" law in all French-held territory, including Saint-Domingue (later Haiti), Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana.

1800s

1830

Brazil's anti-"sodomy" law is repealed under Emperor Pedro I of Brazil.

1880s

The Kabaka of Buganda, Mwanga II, assumes the throne of his country at age 16. He sets about to drive out Christianity, Islam and European influence from the kingdom, and executes several of his Christian-converted male pages who refuse his sexual advances.^[1]

1920s

1924

December 24 – The Society for Human Rights, an advocacy organization for gay men, is chartered in Chicago; an African American clergyman named John T. Graves serves as the first and only president of the organization, and the organization publishes Friendship and Freedom, the first gay-interest publication in the United States. The Society collapses by the following summer.

1940s

1948

22 June – Ivor Cummings, an openly gay British civil servant with Sierra Leonean ancestry, welcomes the first immigrants of the Windrush generation, and his decisions on how to support them end up establishing Brixton as a modern hub for Britain's African Caribbean community. He is known as the "gay father of the Windrush generation."^[2]

1960s

1960

Bayard Rustin, prominent gay activist who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, is forced to resign from the organization by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. when he threatens to leak fake evidence of an affair with Martin Luther King Jr.^[3]^[4] Because of the threats, King also calls off a demonstration in front of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California, U.S.

1962

James Baldwin publishes his novel Another Country, which intersects issues of race and sexual orientation.

1963

At the behest of Asa Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin co-organizes the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, despite Senator Strom Thurmond railing against him as a "Communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual" and having his entire Pasadena arrest file entered in the record.^[5] Despite his preference for behind-the-scenes work, Rustin becomes famous for his work. On September 6, 1963, a photograph of Rustin and Randolph appeared on the cover of Life magazine, identifying them as "the leaders" of the March.^[6]

1969

Black and Latino queer people are among the majority of patrons at the Stonewall Inn who riot against a police raid, resulting in the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement in the United States.

1970s

1970

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera establish the gay and transvestite advocacy organization S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).^[7]

1972

Johnson and Rivera establish the S.T.A.R. house, the first shelter for gay and trans street kids, and paid the rent for it with money they made themselves as sex workers.^[8]
July 1 – Ted Brown and the U.K. Gay Liberation Front organized the U.K.'s first Gay Pride Rally.

1974

The Salsa Soul Sisters form from the Black Lesbian Caucus within the Gay Activists Alliance in New York, with the goal of supporting inclusion of lesbians of color, particularly Black and Latina lesbians. It is the oldest Black lesbian womanist organization in the United States.^[9]
The newly formed Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian organization created in Boston, drafts the Combahee River Collective Statement^[10] a key document in the history of contemporary Black feminism and the development of the concepts of identity and intersectionality as used among political organizers and social theorists.^[11]^[12]

1976

Glenn Burke becomes the first (and only) openly gay Major League Baseball (MLB) player, coming out as gay to teammates and team owners during his professional career and later acknowledging it in public.^[13]^[14]

1978

Sylvester releases his well-received disco album Step II.
National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG) founded by A. Billy S. Jones, Darlene Garner, Delores P. Berry, and Gilberto Gerald (among other activists) in Columbia, Maryland.

1979

The first National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference takes place in Washington D.C. It brought together LGBT people of color from the U.S, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean.
The Lambda Student Alliance forms at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the first openly Black LGBT organization on a college campus.^[15]^[16]
August 1 – Blacklight, the first Black gay publication in the Washington, D.C. area, begins publication under founding editor Sidney Brinkley.
October 14 – Audre Lorde speaks at the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

1980s

1980

October 17 to 19 – The First Black Lesbian Conference is held in San Francisco, with nearly 200 women in attendance.^[17]

1983

In 1983, after a battle over LGB participation in the 20th anniversary March on Washington, a group of African American leaders endorsed a national gay rights bill alongside Coretta Scott King and put Audre Lorde from the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays as speaker on the agenda.^[18]

1984

Rev. Jesse Jackson included LGB people as part of his Rainbow/PUSH.^[19]

1985edit

Once the only gay bar in Brixton, South London and cornerstone of the 1970s Black LGBT community, bisexual Jamaican immigrant Pearl Alcock's shebeen closes.^[20]