Tuesday, June 5, 2018

A00040 - Kay Lahusen, First Openly Gay American Woman Photojournalist

Kay Lahusen (born January 5, 1930), also known as Kay Tobin Lahusen or Kay Tobin, is the first openly gay American woman photojournalist.^[1] Lahusen's photographs of lesbians appeared on several of the covers of The Ladder from 1964 to 1966 while her partner, Barbara Gittings, was the editor. Lahusen helped with the founding of the original Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970, she contributed to a New York-based weekly newspaper named Gay Newsweekly, and co-authored The Gay Crusaders with Randy Wicker. She adopted the surname "Tobin"^[when?] as a pseudonym for a period of time, but apparently never legally changed her name.

Katherine Lahusen was born to George H. and Katherine W. Lahusen in 1930, and brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She developed her interest in photography as a child. "Even as a kid I liked using a little box camera and pushing it and trying to get something artsy out of it", she recalled.^[2] She discovered while in college that she had romantic feelings for a woman and she had a relationship with her for six years, but after the woman left "in order to marry and have a normal life", Lahusen was devastated by the loss.^[2]
.Lahusen spent the next six years in Boston working in the reference library of The Christian Science Monitor. She met Barbara Brooks Gittings in 1961 at a Daughters of Bilitis picnic in Rhode Island. They became a couple and Lahusen moved to Philadelphia to be with Gittings. When Gittings took over The Ladder in 1963, Lahusen made it a priority to improve the quality of art on the covers. Where previously there were simple line drawings, characterized by Lahusen as "pretty bland, little cats, insipid human figures,"^[2] Lahusen began to add photographs of real lesbians on the cover beginning in September 1964. The first showed two women from the back, on a beach looking out to sea. But Lahusen really wanted to add full-face portraits of lesbians. "If you go around as if you don't dare show your face, it sends forth a terrible message", Lahusen remembered.^[1]

Several covers showed various women willing to pose in profile, or in sunglasses, but in January 1966 she was finally able to get a full-face portrait. Lilli Vincenz, open and smiling, adorned the cover of The Ladder. By the end of Gittings' period as editor, Lahusen remembered there was a waiting list of women who wanted to be full-face on the cover of the magazine.^[2] She wrote articles in The Ladder under the name Kay Tobin, a name she picked out of the phone book, and which she found was easier for people to pronounce and remember.^{[citation needed]}

^{Lahusen photographed Gittings and other people who picketed federal buildings and Independence Hall in the mid to late 1960s. She contributed photographs and articles to a Manhattan newspaper called Gay Newsweekly, and worked in New York City's Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, the first bookstore devoted to better literature on gay themes, and to disseminating materials that promoted a gay political agenda. She worked with Gittings in the gay caucus of the American Library Association, and photographed thousands of activists, marches, and events in the 1960s and 1970s. Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols and many other gay activists became her subjects.^{[citation needed]}}

In the 1980s Lahusen became involved in real estate, and placed ads in gay papers. She also organized agents to get them to march in New York City's Gay Pride Parade. More recently, her photographs have been featured in exhibits at The William Way Community Center in Philadelphia and the Wilmington Institute Library in Delaware. In 2007, all of Lahusen's photos and writings and Gittings' papers and writings were donated to the New York Public Library.^[3] Lahusen and Gittings were together for 46 years when Gittings died of breast cancer on February 18, 2007, aged 74. Lahusen was working on collecting her photographs for a photography scrapbook on the history of the gay rights movement when Gittings' illness put the plans on hold. Lahusen currently resides in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania in an assisted living facility.

A plot of land at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. has been allotted to Lahusen next to the burial place of Gittings.^[4]

Monday, March 12, 2018

A00039 - Majken Johansson, Swedish Poet and Salvation Army Soldier

Majken Johansson (August 7, 1930, Malmö – December 11, 1993) was a Swedish poet, writer and a Salvation Army soldier.

Majken Johansson was born out of wedlock in Malmö, and spent her childhood in foster care with an abusive foster mother. At the age of 9, she was evacuated from Malmö at the outbreak of World War II and lived with relatives in Småland. Despite her difficult childhood she went through school with good grades and managed to get in at the prestigious Lund University, where she graduated. During her tenage and university years she also suffered from alcoholism. In 1956, after a stormy relationship with another woman, which ended with the woman committing suicide, Majken Johansson suffered a life crisis which would lead to her decision to join the Swedish section of the Salvation Army in 1958.

She began to write in the early 1950s, both socially debating articles in newspapers, and poetry. Her first volume of poetry was the critically acclaimed Buskteater in 1952. She published 8 volumes of poetry between 1952 and 1989. Her poems are not only concerned with life, love and God, but also on everyday reflections in a very simple and keen way, often with a lot of humor.

Her life partner was the Salvation Army officer and hymn writer Karin Hartman, who in 2002 published Bottenglädjen, a book about Majken Johansson's life.

In recent years Johansson's poetry has been published in new editions and gained a generation of new readers. She is today regarded as one of Sweden's greatest poets of the mid-20th century, alongside names such as Hjalmar Gullberg and Werner Aspenström. In 1970 she was awarded the Large Prize by Samfundet De Nio.^[1] She was also awarded a literary prize by the magazine Vi in 1958, the Sveriges Radios poetry award in 1965, the Deverthska kulturstiftelsens Forsethpris in 1972, and the Sydsvenska Dagbladets kulturpris in 1975.

Monday, March 5, 2018

A00038 - Daniela Vega, Transgender Star of "A Fantastic Woman"

Daniela Vega

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniela Vega
Vega at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017
Born	June 3, 1989 (age 28) San Miguel, Santiago, Chile
Other names	Dani Vega
Occupation	Actress Singer
Years active	2011–present

Daniela Vega Hernández (born June 3, 1989), known as Daniela Vega (Spanish pronunciation: [daˈnjela ˈβeɣa]) is a Chilean actress and lyrical singer. Vega received critical acclaim for her acting debut in Sebastián Lelio's Oscar-winning film A Fantastic Woman.^[1]^[2]

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Early life[edit]

Daniela Vega Hernández was born on June 3, 1989 in San Miguel, Santiago, to Igor Vega, a print owner, and Sandra Hernández, a housewife.^[3] After a while, the family moved to Ñuñoa, where her brother, Nicolás, was born.^[3] At the age of eight, one of her teachers discovered her talent for singing opera.^[3]^[4] She began to play in small productions in Santiago, that developed in itself a taste for the arts.^[3] In her free time and without any other formal education, she got involved with the local acting environment.^[3]

Career[edit]

Early roles and breakthrough (2011–2017)[edit]

Eventually, Vega met a writer and director who suggested that they collaborate on a stage piece about her experience of transitioning.^[5] This resulted in her career debut in 2011 in the play La mujer Mariposa (The Butterfly Woman), a biodrama of transfiguration by director Martin de la Parra. This piece, where she also had the opportunity to sing, ran for eight years in Santiago. During this time, she participated in more pieces, most notably in Migrante(Migrant), a piece about migration.^[6]^[7] Vega gained notoriety when she appeared in the video clip of the famous song "Maria" by Manuel García in 2014. She made her screen debut in 2015 in a drama called La Visita (The Guest), playing a trans woman at her father’s wake.^[8]^[5]

Vega at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival in 2017.

The 67th Berlin International Film Festival saw the release of A Fantastic Woman (2017), directed by Sebastián Lelio, a film for which her performance was acclaimed by critics.^[9]^[1] A Fantastic Woman tells the story of Marina (played by Vega) and Orlando (played by Francisco Reyes), an older man with whom she is in love and planning a future. After Orlando falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to face family and society, and fight again to show who she is: a fantastic woman.^[10] Critic Guy Lodge in a review for Varietypraising Vega's performance said: "Vega's tough, expressive, and subtly distressed performance deserves far more than political praise." He continued to note that "It’s a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting, nurtured with pitch-perfect sensitivity by her director, who maintains complete candor on Marina’s condition without pushing her anywhere she wouldn’t herself go."^[11]Her name was strongly mentioned for an Oscar nomination as Best Actress.^[12]^[13]^[14] She won an award for her performance at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for Best Actress in a Foreign Language Film.^[15] Vega became the first openly transgender person in history to be a presenter at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.^[16]^[17]

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

A00037 - Laud Humphreys, Sociologist Who Researched Gay Sexual Encounters

Robert Allen "Laud" Humphreys (October 16, 1930 – August 23, 1988) was an American sociologist and author. He is noted for his research into sexual encounters between men in public toilets, published as Tearoom Trade (1970).

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Biography[edit]

Robert Allen Humphreys was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, to Ira Denver Humphreys and Stella Bernice Humphreys.⁵ "Laud" was chosen as his first name when he was baptized again upon entering the Episcopal Church. He graduated from the Seabury-Western Episcopal Theological Seminary in 1955, and served as an Episcopal priest. He earned his Ph.D from Washington University in St. Louis in 1968.^[1] Due to the perceived dishonesty of his research methods, there was a failed attempt by some faculty members at Washington University to rescind his PhD.^[2] He served as professor of sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, California from 1972–1988 and died of lung cancer in 1988.

Humphreys was married to a woman from 1960 to 1980 and eventually came out as a gay man.^[3] Humphreys was a founder of the Sociologists' Gay Caucus, established in 1974.^[4]

His biography was published in 2004, under the title Laud Humphreys: Prophet of Homosexuality and Sociology.^[5]

Tearoom Trade[edit]

Humphreys is best known for his published Ph.D. dissertation, Tearoom Trade (1970), an ethnographic study of anonymous male-male sexual encounters in public toilets (a practice known as "tea-rooming" in U.S. gay slang and "cottaging" in British English). Humphreys asserted that the men participating in such activity came from diverse social backgrounds, had differing personal motives for seeking homosexual contact in such venues, and variously self-perceived as "straight," "bisexual," or "gay."

Because Humphreys was able to confirm that over 50% of his subjects were outwardly heterosexual men with unsuspecting wives at home, a primary thesis of Tearoom Trade is the incongruence between the private self and the social self for many of the men engaging in this form of homosexual activity. Specifically, they put on a "breastplate of righteousness" (social and political conservatism) in an effort to conceal their deviant behavior and prevent being exposed as deviants. Humphreys tapped into a theme of incongruence between one's words and deeds that has become a primary methodological and theoretical concern in sociology throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.^[6]

Humphreys' study has been criticized by sociologists on ethical grounds in that he observed acts of homosexuality by masquerading as a voyeur, "did not get his subjects’ consent, tracked down names and addresses through license plate numbers and interviewed the men in their homes in disguise and under false pretenses."^[7]

Still, according to Jack Nusan Porter, a sociologist who knew Humphreys and studied under Howard S. Becker at Northwestern University from 1967-1971: "Humphreys was enormously influential on graduate students and younger scholars in the field of deviance, ethnography, and what we called 'participant observation'. True, today one could not do such research because there was no 'informed consent' but then again, in many cases, when doing research on deviant behavior, one will never get 'informed consent' so we miss out on a lot of important findings. He was a true pioneer and a hero to all of us in these fields."

Humphreys' research materials, including detailed diagrams and maps of tearoom activity he observed, are housed in the collections at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

A00036 - Lorraine Hansberry, Author of "A Raisin in the Sun"

*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago (May 19),

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".

She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn and Roosevelt University. She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's. In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway. It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience.

The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame. She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie. Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".

Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.

The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’

Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.

Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.

She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.

She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.

In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.

One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.

She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.

Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."

In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.

On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.

It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.

A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.

Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.

Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.

In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.

In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.

In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.

Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.

On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.

While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.

Hansberry was an atheist.

Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."

Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."

In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.

Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."

Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.

Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.

Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.

In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).

In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.

In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

LGBT Biographies