MY HEROES WERE HIDDEN FROM ME.
In school, I was forced to learn about this country’s “forefathers.” You know, the famous guys who came before us and supposedly built this country. There was George Washington, known as the most popular general of the American Revolution and first president of the United States. And there was Abraham Lincoln, famously known for “freeing the slaves” with the Emancipation Proclamation. The list goes on: Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and don’t even get me started on Thomas Jefferson.
As a kid, I saw Abraham Lincoln as a hero, my savior for ending American slavery, which ultimately allowed me to be in school alongside my white classmates 130 years later. But those lessons about the forefathers were just an indoctrination process. Textbooks, teachers, curriculums wanted us to think that our history was shaped only by white, heterosexual men who should be viewed (specifically by non-white kids) as our saviors. It wasn’t.
Despite seeing so few stories about people like me in our history, I still loved to learn and loved to read. So I soaked in all that I could at school, and at times I used the library to find knowledge that I couldn’t get in class or at home. My yearning to learn about my own Blackness was often unrelenting. Even back then, I think I knew that my ancestors were going to be part of my salvation and my purpose in adult life.
Which is likely why I was always so excited whenever Black History Month rolled around. That glorious month allowed me to immerse myself in my culture and learn the stories of people who shared my skin color. These were the stories of people who were alive alongside my grandparents and great-grandparents. These histories connected my present to the past. Black History Month introduced me to heroes I could easily connect to. Or did it?
Of course, we always talked about Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other pillars of Black history. But there were also times—though not as often—when we got to learn about less famous heroes like Josephine Baker, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin. Perhaps that’s because there is something very different about the first four people versus the later four. A difference that could have made all the difference to me: being Black and queer.
I often say that it is hard for someone to look in the mirror and see a reflection when they can’t see any reflections of themselves out in the world. That was my experience growing up. By the age of five, I knew I was different from all the other little boys in my class. My flamboyant mannerisms and my point of view just weren’t in line with the way society wants boys to act, talk, and dress. And with little access to the stories of Black queer people who came before me, I felt alone and unseen.
As a Black queer child, I had the right to know that Black queer people existed before me. I had the right to know that the things I was feeling and experiencing had been felt and lived by millions of others. They paved the road for me to walk on. Yet that road was hidden from me and so many others, obscured by a society that deemed any identity outside of heterosexuality to be nefarious. As a result, I felt unacceptable in society.
And society is still trying to block, hide, and steal our Black and queer stories. My debut young-adult memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue, is currently one of the most banned and challenged books in the United States. It has been removed from library shelves in many school districts. It is not by chance but by design that Black queer stories are still being attacked and hidden away today.
Only in my late teens and well into my adulthood did I come to find out the truth about many of the people profiled in this book. And as I continue to look into the past, I’m discovering more and more people who were Black queer pioneers in a myriad of ways. Black queer people have always permeated every facet of life. Even when they were “closeted”—that is, even when they didn’t publicly share their full identity—they made a cultural impact during their lifetime that continues to be felt.
So many people try to say that queerness is some new phenomenon. The reality, however, is that queerness is as old as heterosexuality. And Blackness is inherently queer. You can’t have one that isn’t inclusive of the other. I like to operate under the Ghanaian principle of sankofa, which translates to “to go back and get it.” It’s a process of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress. That is what this book is. We can’t make positive progress as Black queer folks if we don’t tell the stories of Black queer folks before us—especially if those stories have been suppressed or told inaccurately.
I chose to write about the Harlem Renaissance because it has always been seen as one of the queerest historical periods. The Harlem Renaissance was a time when the Black community took great risks in the arts. Many icons of the Harlem Renaissance became worldwide phenoms, even if they never fully received their flowers here in the United States. Others, though, never got to see their names in bright lights or on book covers, despite changing the world for so many of us. This book celebrates their differences with the excitement and attention they have always deserved.
May the flamboyant Black and queer ancestors of the past be remembered for the light they shone during a time that forced them to live in the dark. Our Black and queer icons of the past should be hidden no more.