The Importance Of Sexual Traditions And Values : The Expects Of The Class?

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture, uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York’s Harlem. Throughout the so- called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly 1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other [on] street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social structure, and a complex network of institutions.” Richard Bruce Nugent, who was considered the “perfumed orchid of the New Negro Movement” said, “You did what you wanted to. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn’t any closet.”

“Go Carolina” by David Sedaris hits on a very important and meaningful problem in today’s world: Society doesn’t determine what, or who, someone should be. Using subtle word choice, tone, characterization, and structure, Sedaris paints a vivid image in the reader's mind about the world this story takes place in, as well as how judging and harsh society could be. David and other homosexuals are “rejected” and “shunned” by them in a way; in one instance, David explains, “You could turn up your nose at the president or Coke or even God, but there are words for boys who didn’t like sports” (19). David summarizes this later in the book more explicitly: “anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing” (24). These simple yet imperative sentences

Purpose: David Carter wrote “Stonewall” to function as a complete analyzation of the riots of 1969. He wanted to create a reliable source of education over the “what,when, where, why, how?” of Stonewall. To support this, Carter states in his prologue, “how these various strands [of homophobic events] eventually came together to create a turning point for the gay rights movement is the subject of this history”(2).

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, society wasn’t the most accepting of places for people who were different from the “social norms”. Now I know, people today still struggle with trying to fit in and be “normal” but it was different. Being a gay man living in San Fransisco at the time, which had a large gay population, Richard Rodriguez had a hard time dealing with the discrimination he faced. Richard Rodriguez was an American journalist who wrote and published a memoir about his life as a gay man. In October of 1990, Rodriguez published his memoir “Late Victorians” in Harper’s Magazine, a critically acclaimed publication of the time. In his memoir, Rodriguez describes what it was like to realize he was gay and watch as the country changed to become a more accepting place. He does this by setting up how things can change and then explaining the actual ways things change for the gay population.

“Sex was something mysterious which happened to married couples and Homosexuality was never mentioned; my mother told me my father did not believe it existed at all ‘until he joined the army’. As a child, I was warned about talking to ‘strange men’, without any real idea what this meant. I was left to find out for myself what it was all about.” Mike Newman, who was a child during the 1950s America recalls how homosexuality was perceived during the post-World War II era (F). This sexual oppression was not only in Newman’s household, but in almost everyone’s. While the civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s and ended late 1960s, the LGBT community started to come out of the closet slowly. The gay rights movement stemmed from the civil rights movement

“[W]orking-classes people in the capital of black America were stunningly open about their homosexuality” as it was “evident in urban blues lyrics of the time,” but it was not accepted in the middle-class and upper-class communities (Russell 103, 105). Some influential, elite/upper- or middle-class people during the Harlem Renaissance, such as Claude McKay, George Chauncey, Alain Locke, and others were “extraordinarily open about homosexuality and about the repressive nature of heterosexual norms” (103). Even James Baldwin was open about his sexuality and “claimed to have felt accepted as a homosexual” in Harlem (108). However, this did not stop the elitists, middle- and upper-class individuals, and the media from having their say. Under government policy, “President Eisenhower banned homosexuals from federal jobs, prospective employees were required to undergo screenings of their sexual histories,

Crossroads at Clarksdale by Francoise Hamlin sketches the struggle to freedom for African Americans in Clarksdale, MS. Hamlin shares the stories of two successful African Americans at the forefront and how they work to become leaders in Clarksdale. From the 1950’s to the 1970s, college students, numerous organizations, and campaigns for social transformation fought hard battles for social and economic justice. In an attempt to withstand the social prejudices that were highly advocated in Mississippi African Americans were targeted for violence and degraded by Jim Crow laws that were inhumane and restricted their rights. Despite the poverty and inequality African Americans had to undergo, their slow struggle to freedom in Clarksdale was accompanied by accomplishments and relentless efforts for civil rights. Hamlin articulates in detail the situations that were occurring in the south, how the citizens were affected by the situations, and their responses to these situations.

George Chauncey’s Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, goes where no other historian had gone before, and that is into the world of homosexuality before World War II. Chauncey’s 1994 critically acclaimed book was a gender history breakthrough that gave light to a homosexual subculture in New York City. The author argues against the idea that homosexual men lived hidden away from the world. Chauncey’s book exposes an abundant culture throughout the United States, especially in New York. In this book Chauncey not only shows how the gay population existed, but “uncovers three widespread myths about the history of gay life before the rise of the gay movement which was isolation, invisibility, and internalization.” Chauncey argues against these theories that in the years 1890-1940, America had in fact a large gay culture. Chauncey book is impactful in the uncovering of a lost culture, but also works as an urban pre-World War II history giving an inside view of life in the city through sexuality and class.

The American Civil War has captured the popular imagination of the world for more than a hundred and fifty years. Academic scholars and neophyte history buffs alike have published thousands of books on the subject, adding to a growing canon of Civil War literature and knowledge. Little attention is paid, however, to the intimate personal lives and sexual intimacies of the people who lived during that crucial period in American history. Historians pay even less attention to those figures who existed on the borders of society, whose sexual lives were considered perverse, deviant, and pathological, identities and behaviors which may be called provisionally queer.

As I was browsing the internet I discovered this article (McWhorter, 2013) comparing the gay community with the African American community. At first glance, I felt how can the two be compared? So, I decided to give this article a read. The purpose of the article was to bring attention to the civil rights movement of today dealing with the homosexual community’s civil rights and how it compares to the historic civil rights movements made by the African American community from 1955-1968. In my mind as an African American, my pride was not allowing me to see the comparison for what it really was. African Americans have endured a longer, more violent time frame of inequality than those of the gay community. This is how I see and feel it to be. I had to do some more research to see exactly how this era’s civil rights movement became an understudy for comparison to the civil rights movements by black Americans during the time span of 1955-1968. Us as African Americans need to support the gay civil rights movements of today because we should understand and realize the struggles we went through and help this nation become more equal. Gay is the new black in America, not all aspects of the two relate such as the level of violence endured by the African Americans as they fought to obtain equal rights but the fight to be seen equal is the same.

John Howard in his 1999 book Men Like That: A Southern Queer History explores gay and transgendered male-male sexual desire and actions that goes beyond self- identification as being gay and includes those men that are “like” that and self -label as gay, as well as men who “like” that and engage in homosexual activity but do not consider themselves gay. Howard aims for a more accurate accounting of homosexual desire in Mississippi during the postwar years after World War II and through the mid 1980’s and does not want to “…simply…recuperate past figures previously lost to history, but also to

This paper analyzes the coverage of gay issues in the Laurel Leader Call, a paper in a small city in the generally conservative state of Mississippi between the years of 1960 and 1979, a time that was of crucial importance to the LGBT national movement. The analysis of more than 200 wire stories indicates that the Laurel Leader Call seemed to have included a combination of positive and negative themes throughout the articles almost tending to create an equal balance between informative, educational and emotional scenarios of the gay community between the 1960s and 1970s. For that reason, Laurel Leader Call became a reliable barometer in providing a national image on the issue of homosexuality to the locals of Jones County

The book focuses on the different kind of interracial sexual connections in Virginia from "1787, when Sally Hemings left Monticello for France..to 1861, when Civil War began and would destroy slavery and consequently change the racial regime of Virginia in fundamental ways" (p. 4). The first and the most important chapter of the book explores President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings relationship. And how James Callender attempts to destroy the president 's political image by releasing the story in press which in turn "failed to have its intended impacts" (p. 49), while the white locals and elites who strongly objected and opposed such associations maintained a code of silent in this case even when many speculations seemed justifiable (like, the

The climate of the 1960s was turbulent. This decade was marked by many political movements, which reflected support for non-establishment themes. During this time the “sexual liberation movement” became a popular cause. This intensified social and political interest helped many disadvantaged groups to receive support and attention that previously had never been received. As part of the nation’s desire for sexual political liberation, gay liberation became visible.

Robinson, J. M. (2011, June). The LGBT movement springs from the stonewall riots. State Magazine, (557), 9. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.davenport.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA261452961&v=2.1&u=lom_davenportc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=e18ca598fedf2f801be43e9f661ba897