African-American Gay Men in Philadelphia The most important contribution to African-American gay culture from Philadelphia is In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, edited by Joseph F. Beam. Joe created this anthology from close to nothing. As he points out in the introduction, he was tired of reading and rereading Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin's most famous gay novel) and a black African novel no longer in print, No Past, No Present, No Future, by Yulisa Amadu Maddy. So he took onto his broad shoulders the task to identifying and developing writers to contribute to his anthology. A few came easily, but most were people who had never written for publication before. In the years since In the Life was published, a number of new gay African-American writers have had major successes. Most of them have saluted Joe as the trailblazer. Joe put his book together while he was working at Giovanni's Room. He began a second anthology but was unable to complete it before his death from AIDS-related causes, in 1988. After Joe's death his friend, Essex Hemphill(1956-1995), moved in with Joe's parents in Philadelphia to complete the second anthology, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, and stayed in the city off and on till his own death, in 1995. Essex may be best known for his part in the films Searching for Langston and Tongues Untied, but through his poetry and personality, he has had wide influence on a whole generation of African-American gay and lesbian authors. Alain LeRoy Locke, graduate of Central High and Harvard U.; mentor and lover of Langston Hughes. A school in West Philadephia (46th & Market?) is named for him. Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) is most famous for having organized the 1963 Civil Rights March, at which Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. When Bayard died in the 1980s, no mention of his gayness was made by the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times, though both ran long obituaries that began on the first page. He grew up in a Quaker family in West Chester, Pa., thirty miles to the west of Philadelphia. The pacifism and social obligation that Quakerism instilled in him were the prinicipal influences that he passed on to the black civil rights movement. In the 1960s the FBI was doing everything it could to discredit the civil rights movement, and the civil rights movement was understandably nervous about one of its leaders being gay. He was always held somewhat in the background as a result and finally he was eased out. Later, as head of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, he was free to represent both African American and gay causes. John Anderson was a member of Philadelphia City Council in the late 1970s. He was a member of a prominent black Philadelphia family and died, apparently of AIDS related disease. He accompanied Ethel Allen (see below) to Giovanni's Room on at least one occasion. He was never out of the closet and his death, at an early age, was not recognized as AIDS related. In 1996 Temple University Press published Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay and on the Streets , by Leon E. Pettiway (1946- ), a collection of interviews with black drag queen hustlers. Leon prepared this book while he was teaching at Temple University. Presently the dean of black gay literature, Samuel R. Delany, lives around the corner from the store.

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