Head of a Young Person (also listed as Head of a Negress), Italy, 16th century, artist unknown.
From the Victoria and Albert Museum: “This Italian sculpture probably dates from the sixteenth century. The headband would once have been gilded and there are holes for lost earrings. Because African men were often depicted wearing these items, there is some debate over whether the figure is an adolescent boy or girl.
Historian Trent Kelly has collected 146 rare vintage photographs of black male couples from the past 150 years.
Although the large majority of the pictures depict gay couples, the collection also includes images of families and friends but they all have one thing in common: they capture images of love.
Below is a snippet of why Kelly started the collection along with a few photos from his archive.
Historically, the Afro American gay male and couple has largely been defined by everyone but themselves. Afro American gay men are ignored into nonexistence in parts of black culture and are basically second class citizens in gay culture. The black church which has historically played a fundamental role in protesting against civil injustices toward its parishioners has been want to deny its gay members their right to live a life free and open without prejudice. Despite public projections of a “rainbow” community living together in harmonious co-habitation, openly active and passive prejudices exist in the larger gay community against gay Afro Americans.
(Source: zoedelaluna)
Gladys Bentley (via Black History Month Spotlight: Queer black women behind the mic | AfterEllen.com)
The famous bulldagger of the Harlem Renaissance, Gladys Bentley was a lively, piano-playing blues and jazz singer. Hailing from Trinidad, Bentley performed at speakeasies (including Clam House, the most notorious gay speakeasy) across the country, clad in her famous tuxedo and top hat, boasting her sexuality, raunchy lyrics, and play on gender identity. Bentley penned a memoir, If This Be Sin, joining the ranks of other queer black intellectuals and performers in Harlem, including Langston Hughes andEthel Waters.
Bentley married a white woman, garnering an uproar of gossip and media attention over miscegenation. However, after recording music for more than 20 years and performing with drag queens, she felt the heat of McCarthyism, being harassed by the police and publicly scorned for her gender presentation and sexuality. Trying to save her career, Bentley published an article in Ebony, claiming that she had been “cured” of lesbianism and was a “woman again.” The singer tragically passed in 1960, but her legacy lives on.
![waheedpix:
Lill & Jack’s Rival
1910’s
[Fisk University Album]
©WaheedPhotoArchive, 2012](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m28v57rUzB1qhljlao1_r1_1280.jpg)
Malik Ambar: Legacy of an Ethiopian Ruler in India
Among the tens of thousands of men, women, and children captured in Africa and sold into slavery in the Middle East and India was an Ethiopian of fierce determination: Malik Ambar. Born Chapu in 1548 in Harar, where the Ethiopian highlands meet the dessert stretching to the Red Sea, Ambar (as he was later called) was stripped of his family, his name, and forever taken from his homeland. Nevertheless, half a century later, and halfway around the world, he had transformed himself into a king-maker in India’s Deccan, leading the most powerful military force against Mughal rule.
The Ethiopian’s contributions to the making of the African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean world are only just beginning to be more widely known, even as pioneering scholars from Jogindra Chowdhuri and Radhey Shyem to Richard Pankhurst and Richard Eaton have been helping to illuminate aspects of the Ethiopian Diaspora for decades. Malik Ambar — along with Bilalibn Rabah (Islam’s first muezzin) and Bava Ghor (a merchant and Sufi mystic) — serves as an exemplar of contributions by Ethiopians to the societies, economies, and cultures of the Arabian Peninsula, southern Iraq and Iran, the Indian subcontinent, and beyond.
Signed postcard of great American jazz and classical pianist and singer Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981).
Lighter skinned slave children of mixed race heritage were used as part of a fundraising campaign to help struggling African American schools in 1860s New Orleans. Campaign organizers believed the lighter complexioned children would help boost donations to their cause.
Maybe the most stylish librarian ever - check out that fascinator! Lucille Baldwin Brown was the first Black public county librarian in Tallahassee, Florida. This photograph is part of the collection at the State Library and Archives of Florida.
Archie Savage photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1942.
“African American actor and choreographer, performed in South Pacific and La Dolce Vita.”
Members of the Nation’s first Negro Navigation Cadets, who will receive their commissions in the Army Air Forces on February 26th, visited City Hall as guests of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia this afternoon. They are shown on the steps of City Hall as the mayor greeted their commanding officer, Maj. Galen B. Price. 02/16/1944
