Racism

Author & Poet

b. September 15, 1889
d. May 22, 1948

“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.”

Claude McKay was a prominent bisexual Jamaican poet and author who earned international renown during the Harlem Renaissance — an awakening of African-American arts and culture in the 1920s and ’30s. McKay’s writing, which illuminated the Black experience, made a historic impact on the literary world.

Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889 to a family of “peasant” farmers. Educated by his brother, a schoolteacher, and an English family friend who was well-versed in British literature and European philosophy, McKay used his formative experiences as inspiration for his writing and use of Jamaican dialect.

At age 17, McKay moved to Kingston, Jamaica, to earn money as a constable while he worked on his poetry. He left the job soon after, having experienced constant racism in the predominantly white capital city.

McKay returned to his hometown, then moved to London in 1912, where he published his first poetry collections, “Songs of Jamaica” and “Constab Ballads.” The works stood in stark contrast, as “Songs” romanticized Jamaican peasant life, while “Constab” painted a dark portrait of the racism and inequities faced by Black Jamaicans. McKay attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, then transferred to Kansas State University. He moved to Harlem, New York, in 1914.

In 1925 “The New Negro,” an anthology edited by Alain Locke, showcased McKay’s writing alongside other gifted Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay published his first book, “Home to Harlem” three years later. Largely a romantic novel, it also portrayed working-class struggles and McKay’s perspective on life as a Black man in America.

During the 1920s, communist ideology captivated McKay, and he traveled to Russia and France. In France he met two other notable writers, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sinclair Lewis. In 1933 he wrote “Romance in Marseille,” the fictional account of an enslaved man who, after receiving reparations, moves to Marseille, France, to live in a society that views homosexuality the same as heterosexuality. 

Considered his most controversial prose, the novel was nearly lost to history. McKay’s editors deemed it too shocking to release. Penguin Classics finally published it, seven decades after McKay’s death.

McKay returned to Harlem in 1934. He had grown critical of communism and wrote of his disillusionment. He completed “Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem” in 1941, but the book remained unpublished until 2017.

Although McKay never came out publicly, he had relationships with both men and women and found community in New York’s LGBT circles. He died of a heart attack at age 58.

Author & Activist

b. July 19, 1875
d. September 18, 1935

“Unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a racially-mixed bisexual poet and author whose career spanned multiple literary genres and culminated during the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a lifelong educator and activist who fought for women’s suffrage and equality for Black Americans.

Dunbar-Nelson (née Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 years after her enslaved mother gained freedom. Her father, who was rumored to have been a white merchant, left when she was young.

An exceptional student, Dunbar-Nelson graduated from high school at age 14. She attended Straight College (now Dillard University) and received her teaching certificate in 1892. She later attended Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Initially, Dunbar-Nelson taught in the Louisiana public school system and worked on her writing. In 1895 she published her first book, a collection of stories and poems titled “Violets and Other Tales.” Soon after, she moved to Boston to pursue a literary career. Her work for the Boston Monthly Review captured the heart of a fellow writer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and they began a two-year correspondence.

During this period, Dunbar-Nelson relocated to Harlem where she cofounded and taught at the White Rose Mission, a “home for Black girls and women.” In 1898 she married Paul Dunbar in New York, and they settled in Washington, D.C.

In 1899 her second book, “The Goodness of St. Rocque and Others,” about Creole life, launched Dunbar-Nelson’s career-long exploration and critique of American culture and racial oppression. She wrote novels, stories, essays, poems, and reviews and kept a diary.

Dunbar-Nelson’s husband physically and emotional abused her. She divorced him in 1902 and moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where she taught at various high schools and colleges. She created the Wilmington Advocate, a newspaper promoting racial uplift. She quietly married and divorced a second time and explored relationships with women, including Edwina Kruse, a high school principal, and Fay Jackson Robinson, a journalist and activist.

In 1916 Dunbar-Nelson married the journalist Robert J. Nelson. His activism further ignited her own. Among other pursuits, she served on the Delaware Republican Committee and championed civil rights and women’s suffrage.

During the Harlem Renaissance — the golden age of African-American art and expression in 1920s and ’30s — Dunbar-Nelson lectured and wrote prolifically. Her work inspired influential writers of the era.

Dunbar-Nelson died from a heart condition. Fifty years later, W.W. Norton & Co. published her journal, “Give Us Each Day.” It is one of only two African-American women’s journals published in the 20th century.

Pioneering Ballet Dancer

b. March 27, 1934
d. September 19, 2018

“The myth was that because you were black that you could not do classical dance. I proved that to be wrong.”

Arthur Mitchell was the first African-American to become a principal dancer with a major ballet company, opening the door to classical dance for people of all races. After achieving international stardom, he founded the Dance Theater of Harlem, the first black classical ballet company in the United States.
 
Mitchell was born in Harlem, New York. After his father’s incarceration, he became the primary provider for his family at age 12. When Mitchell was in junior high, a guidance counselor spotted him dancing the jitterbug and encouraged him to audition for the High School of Performing Arts. The school accepted Mitchell on a full scholarship. There, he explored modern dance and choreography and first encountered the racism inherent in the dance world. Though he was often passed over for projects in favor of less qualified white students, his exceptional talent and determination prevailed.

At 18, Mitchell was offered a scholarship from the preeminent School of American Ballet in New York. Despite the prevalent racism in classical dance and the urgings of his instructors to pursue other genres, Mitchell accepted.

He was determined “to do in dance what Jackie Robinson did in baseball.” He would later describe himself as a “political activist through dance.”

In 1955 Mitchell became the first African-American permanent dancer for the renowned New York City Ballet (NYCB). One year later, he rose to the top-ranked position of principal dancer. His career-defining roles included the lead in “Agon” and Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Both were choreographed specifically for him by George Balanchine, the NYCB’s celebrated director. In “Agon,” the pairing of Mitchell with Diana Adams—a white Southern ballerina—was considered scandalous, but Balanchine persisted. Mitchell performed the role with white female partners worldwide.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. marked a turning point in Mitchell’s career. Determined to provide his community with the same opportunities he had received, Mitchell and Karel Shook—Mitchell’s famous former ballet teacher—founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. It became the first permanent black ballet company in America. Today, it is a multicultural dance institution with more than 300 students.
 
Mitchell received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993 and the MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. In 1995 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the School of American Ballet and the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton.

Attorney and Civil Rights Activist

The Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray was a lifelong civil rights attorney and activist against racial and sexual discrimination. She was the first African-American female Episcopal priest.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Murray lost her mother when she was 3. She was sent to Durham, North Carolina to live with her maternal grandparents and aunts. Raised by older relatives, Murray grew up with a strong sense of independence and self-reliance.  

In 1933, Murray graduated from Hunter College and taught for the WPA Worker’s Education Program. Wishing to pursue legal studies, she applied to the University of North Carolina, but was rejected on the basis of race. This discrimination impelled Murray to pursue a Bachelor of Law degree at Howard University and become active in the civil rights movement. She joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and organized sit-ins to end segregation at restaurants in Washington, D.C. Murray cofounded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), along with Bayard Rustin, who was openly gay.

Denied admission to Harvard Law School due to her gender, Murray earned her master’s degree at the University of California, where she focused on equal rights for women. She became the first African-American female deputy attorney general of California.

Murray returned to New York and practiced law privately for five years. Her book “States’ Laws on Race and Color” (1951) was described by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as the bible for civil rights lawyers. In 1956, Murray published “Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family,” a biography of her grandparents’ struggle with racial prejudice.

In the 1960’s, President Kennedy appointed Murray to the Committee on Civil and Political Rights. She worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Murray spoke out against the marginalized role black women played in movement leadership.

Though Murray never identified as a lesbian, her longest lasting relationships were with women.  Refusing to accept her homosexuality due to its association at the time with mental illness, she ultimately self-identified as a heterosexual man.

In 1977, Murray became the first African-American female ordained an Episcopal priest. She died at age 74. Her autobiography “Songs in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage” (1987) was published posthumously.

Father of the Harlem Renaissance

b. Sept. 13, 1885
d. June 9, 1954

“Art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid.”

Alain Locke was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, a writer, an educator and a philosopher of race and culture. He is considered the father of the Harlem Renaissance.

Locke graduated second in his class from Philadelphia’s Central High School and earned an undergraduate degree with honors from Harvard University. He received a Rhodes Scholarship—the prestigious international award for study at the University of Oxford in England.

At Oxford Locke faced rampant racial discrimination. He was denied admission to several colleges at the university before Hertford College admitted him. Thereafter, he studied at the University of Berlin.

Locke worked as an assistant professor at Howard University, then an all-black college, before leaving to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the theory of social bias and returned to Howard in 1918 as chair of the Philosophy Department. He held the position until he retired in 1953. Locke introduced the first classes taught on race relations.

Locke wrote for journals and guest edited a special issue of Survey Graphic devoted to the Harlem Renaissance—an African-American literary and artistic movement that flourished in New York City during the ’20s and ’30s. He published “The New Negro” in 1925, an anthology of work by black writers, including his own. It remains one of the most influential projects of his career, helping to define the cultural period.

Locke wrote, reviewed or edited scores of important books and publications by or about African-Americans. He influenced and promoted blacks in the arts and urged them to look to Africa for inspiration and identity. He used “cultural pluralism” to define his philosophy, calling for a “new spirit” among African-Americans that would defy social and racial impediments. His work helped launched the careers of legendary black writers, including Zora Neale Hurston.

Although he never publically disclosed his sexual orientation, Locke once referred to being gay as his point of “vulnerable/invulnerability;” it brought him both risk and strength.

Locke’s ashes are buried in the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The memorial inscription calls him a “Herald of the Harlem Renaissance” and an “Exponent of Cultural Pluralism.” It also features a lambda, a symbol of gay rights.

Howard University named Locke Hall in the College of Arts and Sciences in his honor and public schools across the country bear his name. In 2002 Locke was included in the 100 Greatest African Americans and The Black 100.

Black Lives Matter Cofounder

b. January 4, 1981

“We understand organizing not to happen online but to be built through face-to-face connections.”

Alicia Garza is an African-American activist and writer who cofounded the racial justice movement Black Lives Matter.

Garza (née Schwartz) grew up with her African-American mother and Jewish stepfather in Marin County, California. Her activism began early. In middle school she worked to make birth control information available to  San Francisco Bay Area students.

Garza attended the University of California San Diego. At 22, she met Malachi Garza, a biracial transgender male activist and organizer. A year later she came out to her family. She married Garza in 2008.

In 2013 Garza cofounded #BlackLivesMatter following the the not-guilty verdict in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth. The hashtag derives from a post she published on Facebook.

In 2014 Garza led the Freedom Ride to Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting death of Michael Brown—another unarmed black youth—by a police officer. She also attempted to stop a Bay Area Rapid Transit train to memorialize Brown’s death. She and other protestors chained themselves to the train before police arrested them. The Ferguson-shooting protests coincided with the development of Black Lives Matter chapters across the country.

Garza works in Oakland, California, as a community organizer around issues of health, student rights, domestic worker rights, police brutality and anti-racism. She identifies as a queer woman and has been an outspoken advocate against violence aimed at transgender and gender-nonconforming people of color. Her writing has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Nation, The Guardian, The Huffington Post and other publications.

Garza served as director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights in San Francisco and won the right of youth to use the city’s public transportation for free. She also fought gentrification and helped expose police brutality in the Bay Area. She serves on the board of directors of Forward Together, a grassroots organization that trains people for leadership, and she is involved with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. She also directs special projects for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

Along with other honors, Garza received the Bayard Rustin Community Activist Award and twice received the Harvey Milk Democratic Club Award. She was named to The Root 100 list of African-American Achievers between the ages of 25 and 45 and to Politico’s 2015 guide to thinkers, doers and visionaries. In 2015 the Advocate selected her among its nominees for Person of the Year.

Garza's first book, "The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart," was published in October 2020. She lives in California with her spouse.