My Black Queer Influences: James Baldwin, Joseph Beam, and Billy Strayhorn

I discovered Black LGBTQ+ excellence when I grabbed American author James Baldwin’s 1953 debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, from the shelf at the Fresno County Public Library in Fresno, California. As a teen who had moved to the “Raisin Capital of the World” for a time during the mid-1980s with my emotionally distant mother and alcoholic and abusive stepfather from Phoenix, Arizona, reading about the struggles of the novel’s 14-year-old protagonist was like seeing my thoughts come to life on paper. Although the character existed within a 1930s Harlem, New York, I saw pieces of myself in James Baldwin’s words. For the first time, I didn’t feel alone.

Reading Baldwin’s first novel ignited a hunger to learn as much as I could about him, which led me to uncover that he lived most of his adult life in France. I believe it was part of what motivated me to sign up for a spring break trip to England in my senior year of high school. Baldwin’s life fuelled my desire to live abroad as an urbane writer.

As an essayist, novelist, and playwright, Baldwin was unafraid to use his experiences to write on racism, xenophobia, and same-gender-loving relationships. Notes of a Native Son (1955) is his collection of short essays that detail his observations as a Black man living in the United States and Europe.

“I don't like people who like me because I’m a Negro,” he wrote in Notes of a Native Son. “Neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt.”

Baldwin’s 1956 novel, Giovanni’s Room, is about an American man’s sexual relationship with another man in France. It was illegal to be queer in over 80 countries when the book was written and published. A time when one could be ostracized, arrested or worse for even being suspected of being same-gender loving.

When I read Go Tell It on the Mountain at age 14, I was waiting to feel the opposite-gender attraction I heard the other boys brag about. The only person I knew of who could be gay was a relative of my stepfather. But my assumption was based on barbed whispers and an uncomfortable feeling I had when the relative looked me up and down one Sunday after church. Publicly, he was a married heterosexual man with a daughter my age. The only thing I was clear about was that I never wanted to spend alone time with him.

Not long after coming out when I was 28, I learned about Joseph Beam, an American gay rights activist, writer, and poet. His friendship network included Black LGBTQ+ notables, such as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, Sonia Sanchez, and Bayard Rustin.

Beam was a board member of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG), the first queer U.S. organization for Black Americans and third-world gay rights. He was also the founding editor of Black/Out, a quarterly literary magazine sponsored by NCBLG, which provided a space for Black LGBTQ+ people and writers excluded from Black and queer publications.

His most well-known literary contribution is editing 1986’s In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, the first published collection of poetry and prose by Black gay men. In the anthology’s introduction, Beam wrote, “As I looked around the well-stocked shelves of Giovanni’s Room, Philadelphia’s gay, lesbian, and feminist bookstore where I worked, I wondered where was the work of Black gay men?”

Beam was working on a second anthology, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, when he died of an AIDS-related illness on December 27, 1988. The collection was completed by Poet and Activist Essex Hemphill and published in 1991.

I was 19 when I started wearing glasses. Twenty years later, I saw myself in the look of American Composer, Pianist, and Arranger Billy Strayhorn on the cover of David Hajdu’s Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (1997). The biography’s title is from one of Strayhorn’s most well-known jazz standards of the same name. Reading the book, I related to Strayhorn’s quiet, unassuming, and modest personality. And his tenacity when pursuing his musical aspirations.

Born in 1915, Strayhorn was a musical prodigy who met jazz legend Duke Ellington in December 1938 and collaborated with him for nearly three decades. Living in the shadows of one of the most well-known jazz artists, it is estimated that Strayhorn wrote about 40% of Ellington’s repertoire. Their songs include Take the ‘A’ Train, Chelsea Bridge, A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing, and the aforementioned Lush Life.

Like James Baldwin, Strayhorn was open about his same-sex orientation. It didn’t get in the way of him being friends with Ellington, American singer, actress, and activist Lena Horne, or Civil Rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Horne acknowledged Strayhorn’s influence on her music career and considered him her only soulmate. However, some contemporary critics speculate that Strayhorn’s openness about his romantic attractions contributed to his being overlooked during and after his lifetime.

After moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting in my early 20s, I lived in someone’s shadow for several years. My struggles with accepting myself as a gay man eroded my belief in myself and my abilities. Making it easy for me to hand over my self-worth to someone I hoped could love me more than I loved myself. It wasn’t until I acknowledged the ways I was self-destructing that I was able to remove myself from a toxic relationship and heal.

Strayhorn’s story of living outside of the limelight he deserved struck a chord with me. With his partner, Bill Grove, by his side, he died from esophageal cancer on May 31, 1967. He was in the hospital when he gave Ellington his final composition. Blood Count was the third track on the Strayhorn memorial album, ...And His Mother Called Him Bill.

I came late to being public about my love of Black queer history. Today, I use my skills to create, host, and produce Our Black Gay Diaspora Podcast, a biweekly platform where I interview Black LGBTQ+ citizens who share about who they are in their countries and professions. In over 110 episodes, 25 countries and 43 professions have been represented.

Highlighting a global population often overlooked by mainstream, LGBTQ+, and Black media outlets is important to me. Because if we don’t know where we came from, we don’t know who we are. And that we can build on what was given to us. We are deserving of being loved, valued, and heard.