African-American LGBTQ community
A landmark event for the LGBT community, and the Black LGBT community in particular, was the Stonewall uprising in 1969, in New York City's Greenwich Village, where Black activists including Stormé DeLarverie (who instigated the uprising) and Marsha P. Johnson (who was in the vanguard of the later pushback against the police) played key roles in the events.
Ruling in favor of Romer, Justice Kennedy asserted in the case commentary that Colorado's state constitutional amendment denying LGBT people protection from discrimination "bore no purpose other than to burden LGB persons".
[11] Trans woman Lucy Hicks Anderson, born in 1886 in Waddy, Kentucky, lived her life serving as a domestic worker in her teen years, eventually becoming a socialite and madame in Oxnard, California, during the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1945, she was tried in Ventura County for perjury and fraud for receiving spousal allotments from the military, as her dressing and presenting as a woman was considered masquerading.
[12] During the Harlem Renaissance, a subculture of LGBT African-American artists and entertainers emerged, including people like Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Moms Mabley, Mabel Hampton, Alberta Hunter, and Gladys Bentley.
She was very adamant on not allowing the police to discriminate against LGBT people, especially anyone who she considered her family, specifically butch lesbians and street kids.
A common law cited during arrests was "three articles," meaning that an individual had to be wearing at least three items of clothing that matched their assigned sex at birth.
She started singing in New Orleans clubs at 15, and soon after began touring around Europe, eventually landing in New York City and hosted at the Apollo Theater.
[13][14] It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience – it wasn't no damn riot.In 1979, the Lambda Student Alliance (LSA) was established at Howard University.
[18] In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality," to show how different aspects of one's identity, including race, sexuality, gender, etc., combine to affect their life.
[19] In 1993, William F. Gibson, national chairman of the board of NAACP, endorsed the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation and also supported repealing the ban on LGB service in the military.
[25] In 2018, the critically acclaimed TV show Pose premiered, which is the first to feature a predominately people of color LGBT cast on a mainstream channel.
[citation needed] In 2019, Atlanta's mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first elected official to establish and host an annual event recognizing and celebrating the black LGBT community.
The endowed chair is named after civil rights activist and famed poet Audre Lorde and backed by a matching gift of $2 million from philanthropist Jon Stryker.
[32] In the United States, down-low or DL is an African-American slang term[33] specifically used within the African-American community that typically refers to a subculture of Black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men, practice gay cruising, and frequently adopt a specific hip-hop attire during these activities.
[39][40] Down-low has been viewed as "a type of impression management that some of the informants use to present themselves in a manner that is consistent with perceived norms about masculine attribute, attitudes, and behavior".
Black LGBT people are often hesitant about revealing their sexuality to their friends and families because of homosexuality's incompatibility with cultural gender roles.
[59] Despite the emphasis of "personal freedom and social justice" in the black church, members tend to stick to this conservative family view, which is "linked to intolerance of gays and lesbians".
The federal law specifies no discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information.
There is legislation currently being proposed to congress known as the ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) that would include hindering discrimination based on sexual orientation, too.
However, current policies do not protect sexual orientation and affect the employment rates as well as LGBT individual's incomes and overall economic status.
Analyzing economic disparities on an intersectional level (gender and race), a black man is likely to receive a higher income than a woman.
While policies have been implemented to inhibit discrimination based on gender identity, transgender individuals of color lack legal support.
[72] Instead, they adapted the existing butch/femme dichotomy to form three main categories: Black LGBT individuals face many health risks due to discriminatory policies and behaviors in medicine.
President Barack Obama has recently written a memo to the Department of Health and Human Services to enact regulations on discrimination of gay and transgender individuals receiving Medicare and Medicaid, as well as to permit full hospital visitation rights to same-sex couples and their families.
The United States of Housing and Urban Development proposed policies that would allow access and eligibility to core programs regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.
[84] Research tends to show that the less social support Black LGBTQ individuals receive, the higher chance that they will report symptoms of depression.
"[83] These trends were observed even stronger for emerging adults in the Black LGBTQ community, as they have to cope with the stress of adulthood along with their sexual and racial identity.
[82][84] Research also suggests a link between general and cyber based victimisation in these low mental health outcomes for young Black LGBTQ people.
[83] African-American LGBT culture has been depicted in films such as Patrick Ian Polk's Noah's Arc and Punks, Dee Rees' Pariah, and Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, which not only has the main character as a gay African-American but is written by an African American and is based on a play by black gay playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.
