Along with the inspiring, hopeful history of resistance, this chronology sometimes includes extremely offensive, racist language because documenting oppression (as well as resistance) is important to the work of remembering the past, understanding the present, and creating a free future. See also Timeline: African American LGBTQ+ U.S. History, 1912-2009 and Queering African American History: A Bibliography, by Kevin J. Mumford.

1600

1646-06-25: New Netherland: Jan Creoli executed
Jonathan [Ned] Katz, "1646: New Netherland Colony; Jan Creoli, 'Condemned of God . . . and an abomination'." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 22-23. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 90.

1700

1700-11-27: Pennsylvania: “Sodomy” law
“Pennsylvania legislators provided for the death penalty for Blacks guilty of buggery (bestiality and sodomy), murder, burglary, and the rape of a white woman”, Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. p. 120, 122-123

1706-01-12: Pennsylvania: “Sodomy” and “buggery” law
(provision referring to “negroes,” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983),p. 125.

1712-01-29: Massachusetts: Mingo, alias Cocke Negro, executed
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 127-128.

1800

1849-00-00: Herman Melville's novel Redburn: His First Voyage (1849), includes a comment on his shipmate:

Lavender, the steward on the Highlander, is a "handsome dandy mulatto," who was once a barber on West Broadway. His name, it seems, derives not only from his past occupation of haircutter, but from certain other peculiarities. Lavender keeps his own hair "well perfumed with Cologne," and sometimes sports "a gorgeous turban," an "uncommon large pursy [fat] ring on his forefinger with something he called a real diamond in it." He reads sentimental, romantic novels and carries a lock of hair which he shows to sympathetic viewers, "with his handkerchief to his eyes."

The ship's black cook, a religious man reads the Bible to Lavender, "whom he knew to be a sad profligate and gay deceiver ashore addicted to every youthful indiscretion." The word "gay" was not yet used in America in reference to a specifically same-sex lust, but did denote an illicit underworld of Victorian sexuality.

Lavender admits to the Bible-toting cook that "he was a wicked youth." He "had broken a good many hearts," and left many "weeping for him." (The sex of those sad lovers is, significantly, never specified.) But he is not responsible for this emotional devastation: he had not created "his handsome face, and fine head of hair, and graceful figure." Those who fell in love with him were to blame for his indiscretions, "for his bewitching person turned all heads, and subdued all hearts, wherever he went." Looking "serious and penitent," Lavender would then glance in the mirror, fix his hair, "and see how his whiskers were coming on." Lavender's clothes and manners, and Melville's reticence about the sex of his lovers, suggest that this is one of the first American portraits of an effeminate black sodomite. (This is also the earliest known portrait of the sodomite as hairdresser.) See: Melville's Secret Sex Text: The Essay

1880: United States Census: The Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes." "Prisoners of the United States in 1880" jailed for a "Crime against nature (Synonym: sodomy, buggery, bestiality)," include 32 "colored" males. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 36-37.

1882-11-00: Ross, Dr. Irving C.: “Perversion of the [Procreative] Instinct”
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 233-34.

1886-02-00: Grimké, Angela Weld: “Under the days”
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 289-291.

1888-04-12: Joseph, Channing G: The Black Drag Queens Who Fought Before Stonewall

1890: United States Census: "Crime Pauperism, and Benevolence." The "Total colored" crimes against nature listed are 78. Seventy-six are by "Nnegroes," two by Chinese. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 39.

1892-01-25: Alice Mitchell Murders Freda Ward, Memphis, TN, January 25, 1892 discusses murder by one African American woman of another.

1892-09-00: Dr. Irving C. Ross: Homosexuality in Washington, D.C., reports arrests in Lafayette Square of white and black "moral hermaphrodites," the majority of whom were negros." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 42. 

1893-00-00-1920-12-04: Cabello, Tristan, Queer Bronzeville's Pre-History

1893-08-16: Daniel, Dr. Fe. E.: “Castration of Sexual Perverts”
“those of the ‘lower classes, particularly negroes,’ known for their ‘extremely common’ illicit intercourse”; Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 242, 247.

1893-10-00: Hughes, Dr. Charles H.: "An Organization of Colored Erotopaths." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History (Harper & Row, 1976), p. 42-43, n. 46 p. 575 citing "[Charles H. Hughes, "Postscript to Paper on 'Erotopathia' = An Organization of Colored Erotopaths," Alienist and Neurologist (St. Louis, MO), v.. 14, n. 4 (October 1983), pp. 731-32,

1896-10-13: N. Y. Times: Archibald Gunter’s A Florida Enchantment
“A darky maid servant is similarly transformed, and some of the so-called men in the play are changed into women,” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983),p. 291.

1897-11-24: Jones, W. L., v. The State (Texas): November 24, 1897

1900

1900-00-00–1940-00-00: Cabello, Tristan, Part 1: The Emergence of Queer Networks in Bronzeville (1900-1940)

1901-12-30-1975-00-00: Delaney, Beauford

1907-00-00: Hughes, Dr. Charles H.: "Homo Sexual Complexion Perverts in St. Louis." Dr. Hughes writes about the arrest of a group of Black male transgender people and white male homosexuals in St. Louis, Missouri. This document hints at an aspect of an underground interracial, sexual subculture for which there is as yet little other documentation. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 48-49, n. 55 p. 576 citing Charles H. Hughes, "Homo Sexual Complexion Perverts in St. Louis. Note on a Feature of Psychopathy," Alienist and Neurologist (St. Louis, MO), v. 28, n 4, pp. 487-88.

1908-00-00?: Stevenson, Edward: The Intersexes
“The male ‘American negro has ever been similisexual’”; “In the Southern States, the Creole type is not lacking the impulse, in spite of all its heterosexuality,” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 228.

1909-06-14: Willard Motley born. Queer Writers: Willard Motley

1910

1910-00-00 - 1985-00-00: Pauli Murray (1910 - 1985

1913: Margaret Otis: "A Perversion Not Commonly Noted." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 65-68. Lesbian relationships between Black and White inmates in reform school. Cited from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

1914-00-00: "A Uranian scholar" quoted in Magnus Hirschfeld's Homosexuality in Men and Women (1914) writes" that an acquaintance "knows of a Turkish bath in a small city in Ohio whose owner, a mulatto, is definitely homosexual." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 50.

1916-06-00: Dr. James G. Kiernan: “Chicago has not developed a euphemism yet”
“The method of negro perverts who solicit men in certain Chicago cafes is usually fellatio, although paederasty by the customer is permitted.” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 367.

1919-00-00-1920-00-00: Kate Richards O'Hare: Prison Lesbianism. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 68-69. Her account of an "evil, Black female prison trustee fails to place this individual's authority and conduct within the larger prison power structure."

1920

1920-00-00-1960-00-00 (date approximate): The Drag Balls in Bronzeville

1920-11-00: The Dial: Emory Holloway, “Walt Whitman’s Love Affairs”
Reference to female Creole prostitute, Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 391. (JNK: Could Whitman have had a same-sex love affair with a male Creole prostitute in New Orleans? Is there any research on this?)

1924-12-24: Reverend John T. Graves, an African-American clergyman, was the first president of the Society for Human Rights, Chicago. Graves, Henry Gerber, and five others are listed as directors when the state of Illinois grants the group a charter on December 24, 1924, making it the oldest documented homosexual organization in the United States. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History (Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 385-97; Jim Kepner and Stephen O. Murray, “Henry Gerber (1895-1972): Grandfather of the American Gay Movement,” in Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context, ed. Vern J. Bullough (Harrington Park Press, 2002), p. 25.

1925-00-00-1927-00-00: "Chris Albertson; Lesbianism in the Life of Bessie Smith." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 76-82.

1928-00-00: The Black scholar W.E.B. DuBois dismisses NAACP activist Augustus Granville Dill after he is arrested for homosexual acts in a public restroom. (Dickel, Black/Gay, 103).
PHOTO Unknown photographer - (September 1913). "Men of the Month - Our Business Manager". The Crisis (5): 222. ISSN 0011-1422.

1928-00-00: Claude McKay: Home to Harlem
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983),p. 447.

1928-08-00: Ma Rainey: “Prove It On Me Blues”
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 442-444.

1930

1930-00-00-1940-00-00: (date approximate),Tristan Cabello, Bronzeville's Queer Nightlife

1930-05-19-1965-01-12: Lorraine Hansberry

1935-08-18: N.Y. Times Book Review: Gale Wilhelm’s We Too Are Drifting
Katz: The Times reviewer . . . condemned lesbianism as a ‘subject matter’ which necessarily limited the novel’s appeal to ‘larger human impulses and values,’ a criticism leveled against Jewish Black, and other literatures focusing on a minority experience.” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 507.

1936-00-00: John Dos Passos: “Pat was dancing with a . . . pretty mulatto girl, Dick was dancing with a softhanded brown boy,” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 524-526.

1936-02-21-1996-01-17: Barbara Jordan

1937-01-00: Edna Thomas ("Mary Jones"): "a tenderness I have never known," January 1937. Identifies the African American actress Edna Thomas as the 1937 case history of  “Mary Jones, published by Dr. George Henry. For her time Thomas was amazingly positive about her lesbian experience. Evocative photos of Thomas are included.

1940

1940-00-00 – 1955-00-00: Tristan Cabello, Part 2: The Making of Bronzeville's Queer Culture (1940-1955)

1941-00-00: Drs. Saul Rosenzweig and R. G. Hoskins Hormone Medication "An empirical test of the influence of sex hormones" to treat homosexuality, using a Black male subject. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 167-169.

1941-11-02: N. Y. Times Book Review: Felice Swados’s House of Fury
“On one side of the institution’s grounds the white ‘girls’ were housed.’On the other are the Negro girls . . . .’,” p. 571.

1944-00-00: Dr. Samuel Liebman; Electroshock, "My vision of the world on fire"
Experiment on a person that Katz calls "a Black male homosexual transvestite." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 170-173.

1944-08-00: Robert Duncan: “The Homosexual in Society”
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp, 591-92. (Katz: an amazing resistance essay.)

1946-01-19: “Bulletin,” Los Angeles Tribune (Los Angeles, CA), p. 1; GenealogyBank.com Tags: “African American”; “arrest”; “FBI”; “Hempstead, NY”; “Lucy Hicks Anderson”; “Reuben Anderson”; GenealogyBank.com

1946-02-17: N. Y. Times Book Review and Time: Jo Sinclair’s Wasteland
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 597, 600, 603-604, 627.

1947-06—9: Newsweek: “Homosexuals in Uniform”
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 616-617.

1948-02-00: Lisa Ben, Vice Versa
review of Jo Sinclair’s Wasteland, Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 627.

1948-04-11: Dr. William C. Menninger: Homosexuals and the military
“no difference in the incidence [of homosexuality] between Negro and white soldiers.” Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 636.

1948-11-02: birth of Mandy Carter

1949-09-00-1951-01-00: The Knights of the Clock, described as an interracial group of homosexual and heterosexual men and women was formed in Los Angeles, California by William Lambert Dorr Legg (White) and his partner Merton Byrd (Black). Its aim was to promote understanding between homosexuals and heterosexuals, Black people and White, and offer social, employment, and housing services, especially to interracial couples. William Lambert (pseudonym of William Lamber Dorr Legg) "Knights of the Clock Incorporated," in Marvin Cutler, ed. (pseudonym of William Lambert Dorr Legg). Homosexuals Today: A Handbook of Organizations and Publications. Los Angeles: ONE, Inc., 1956. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Hardback: Thomas Y. Crowell; Paperback: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 634 n. 118. "Legg, Dorr," Online Archive of California: https://oac.cdlib.org/

1950

1953-09-27-1983-10-24: Keith Barrow

1955-00-00 – 1970-00-0: Tristan Cabello, Part 3: Civil Rights and Gay Identities in Bronzeville (1955-1970)

1957-05-00: Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff writes a letter of support to the Lesbian periodical The Ladder. Letter signed "L.H.N" [Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff], The Ladder, vol. I, no. 8 (May 1957), p. 26, 28. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Hardback: Thomas Y. Crowell; Paperback: Harper & Row, 1976), pp.425, 638 n. 142. Hansberry's Letters to The Ladder Quoted

1957-08-00: Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff writes a letter of support to the Lesbian periodical The Ladder. Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Hardback: Thomas Y. Crowell; Paperback: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 425, 638 n. 142. Hansberry's Letters to The Ladder Quoted

1960

1963-00-00: Dr. Michael M. Miller: Aversion Therapy (Hypnotic). "Suggestions of film . . . were implanted in their subconscious." In the Journal of the National Medical Association (an organization of Black physicians), Dr. Miller of Howard University reintroduced the suggestion that hypnosis may be of use in treating the "homosexual neurosis." Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 194-196. 

1969-00-00-2009-00-00: Wesley Chenault: Atlanta Since Stonewall, 1969-2009

1970

1970-00-00-1979-00-00: Parties and Pride - 1970 to 1979 in Atlanta, Georgia

1970-00-00–1980-00-00: Tristan Cabello, Part 4: Gay Liberation in Bronzeville (1970-1980)

1976-00-00: "Black men," "Black women," Jonathan [Ned] Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Hardback: Thomas Y. Crowell; Paperback: Harper & Row, 1976), index p. 668.

1978-00-00: NCBG-Chicago: The National Coalition of Black Gays

1979-00-00: Bethel, Lorraine, and Barbara Smith, eds. Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue 2, no. 2 (Autumn, 1979).

1980

1980-00-00 – 1985-00-00: Tristan Cabello, Part 5: AIDS, Black Politics and The Making of a Black Gay Community (1980-1985)

1981-00-00: Smith, Barbara, and Beverly Smith. "Across the Kitchen Table: A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue." In Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1981

1982-00-00: Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1982.

1982-00-00: Moraga, Cherrie and Smith, Barbara. "Lesbian Literature: A Third World Feminist Perspective" in Margaret Cruikshank, editor, Lesbian Studies: Present and Future. Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1982

1982-12-10: Tristan Cabello, Chicago's African American Gays and the Early Days of the AIDS Epidemic

1983-00-00: Anita Cornwell publishes 1983 Black Lesbian in White America. Naiad Press, 1983. See: Anita Cornwell, October 6, 1993 

1983-00-00: Jonathan Ned Katz, “Blacks”; “Speech and Silence”
Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (Harper and Row, 1983), p. 60-61; p.163.

1983-00-00: Smith, Barbara, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.

1984-00-00: Bulkin, Elly, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith. Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism. Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1984, 1988.

1986-00-00: Beam, Joseph ed. In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology. Boston: Alyson Publications, 1986.

1989-02-14: Death of actor and playwright Philip Blackwell, at the age of 37, from AIDS. For his activities, including the March on Washington, see Laurence Senelick obituary in NY Native (May 8, 1989): 10.

1990

1991-00-00: Sherry Harris, Washington, 1991

1994-00-00: Sabrina Sojourner, Washington, D.C., 1994

1996-0700: Out in Black: Representations of Black LGBT Individuals in North Carolina

1996-09-00: Kevin J. Mumford. "Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography, and the Emergence of the Gay." American Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 (September 1996), pp. 395-414.

1997-00-00: Smith, Barbara. "Where Has Gay Liberation Gone? An Interview with Barbara Smith." In Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed, eds, Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life. New York and London: Routledge, 1997.

1998-00-00: Mankiller, Wilma, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Steinem, eds. The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

1998-00-00: Smith, Barbara. "’Feisty Characters’ and ‘Other People's Causes’: Memories of White Racism and U.S. Feminism." In Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ann Snitow, eds, The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women's Liberation. New York: Crown Publishing, 1998.

1998-00-00: Smith, Barbara. Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom: The Truth that Never Hurts. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

2000

2002-09-17: Picturing African American Men with Men
John Ibson, Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography (Smithsonian, September 17, 2002; republished by University of Chicago Press, March 2006.

2003-05-11: Murder of Sakia Gunn

2014-00-00: Jones, Alethia and Virginia Eubanks, editors. With Barbara Smith. Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forth Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith. Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley. SUNY Press, 2014.

2016-07-28: African American LGBTQ Timeline.

2019-03-14: Kevin J. Mumford. Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) University of North Carolina Press, March 14, 2016.

2019-05-01: Thomas W. Foster, Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 5-1-2019).

2020

2020-06-11: Kevin Mumford, "When the Penis Is Property: Why we can’t talk about the sexuality of enslaved African American men. Comment on Thomas W. Foster's Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 5-1-2019). See: https://publicseminar.org/essays/when-the-penis-is-property/