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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)
(via 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.
(via gray37)
Akram Zaatari, Studio Shehrazade, Saidam Lebanon, 1950s. Courtesy Hashem el Madani and the Arab Image Foundation
(via sisterwolf)
(via Réunion des musées nationaux)
![waheedpix:
Lill & Jack’s Rival
1910’s
[Fisk University Album]
©WaheedPhotoArchive, 2012](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m28v57rUzB1qhljlao1_r1_1280.jpg)
“Studio portrait of the celebrated Parsee traveller Manickjee Antarya in Bombay, posed against a painted backdrop of a rustic scene. This photograph was taken by Hurrichund Chintamon and is one of a series of Ethnographical images from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections, shown at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Parsees are followers of Zoroaster, and descendants of Persians who fled to India in the seventh and eighth centuries to escape Muslim persecution.”
