Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance...and Friends

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Homosexuality in the Harlem Renaissance

Originally, when I decided to write a post about homosexuality during the Harlem Renaissance, it was to kill two birds with one stone. I wanted to be a part of the Classics Circuit and when I saw Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance on the book list, I realized that I could also use this book for the GLBT Challenge. I had no real burning interest in the subject, and I had never heard of Richard Bruce Nugent before.

I am absolutely thrilled my laziness led me down this path. The prominence of homosexuals and homosexual literature during this time period surprised me. I’ve always thought of the early 20th century as a super conservative era. Even the Swinging Twenties seemed quaintly rebellious. I was extremely wrong, suffering from a modern person’s arrogance towards the past.

An article on GLBTQ.com finds it “surprising that discussions of the Harlem Renaissance have not involved in-depth investigations of homosexuality when, in fact, the major male figures of the period were gay or bisexual: Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, and even the famous white sponsor Carl Van Vechten.” For those of you who don’t know, these men (with a few others) were the Harlem Renaissance. They were the movers and shakers and literary makers of the time.

Despite the fact that so many of the key players were gay, among the intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance homosexuality was only flirted with publically; appearances of heterosexuality were still maintained outside of the gay subculture. In the words of Richard Bruce Nugent however: “You didn’t get on the rooftop and shout, ‘I fucked my wife last night.’ So why would you get on the roof and say ‘I love prick’? You didn't. You just did what you wanted to do. Nobody was in the closet. There wasn't any closet."

At the time of the Harlem Renaissance, New York still had anti-homosexual laws, and places which were considered hang outs for gays were raided often. But in Harlem, gay or bisexual parties, bars, and clubs were not much of a secret. The best known of these clubs was the Clam House, which was described in Vanity Fair as "a popular house for revelers but not for the innocent young."

Steve Watson of the University of Virginia, writes that even though the Clam House was the best known, the real star of Harlem’s homosexual scene was the costume ball. "Of course, a costume ball can be a very tame thing," reported the gossipy black weekly The Inter-State Tattler, "but when all the exquisitely gowned women on the floor are men and a number of the smartest men are women, ah then, we have something over which to thrill and grow round-eyed." At these costume balls – um, can we say drag balls? – the women dressed in loose-fitting, boring colored men’s suits and the men lived it up in extravagant ensembles of black lace and red fans, flitting around in backless dresses, and then there was “a creature called ‘La Flame’ who wore only a white satin stovepipe hat, a red beaded breast plate, and a white sash. Sexy, sexy.

The amount of information I discovered warrants an entire blog all on its own, but I’ll stick to telling you about Richard Bruce Nugent and the book I read, Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance edited by Thomas H. Wirth. This anthology contains the work of Nugent as well as a wonderfully interesting and informative 61 page introduction by Wirth.

Nugent's writing displays a come-one-and-all style of sexuality.  While his flings seem to be predominantly of the male variety, and his love stories are boy meets boy, he does not exclude heterosexual activity from his stories or apparently from his life.

One of the most fascinating stories in my opinion is "Smoke, Lillies, and Jade", a stream-of-consciousness story that substitutes fragments for sentences and ellipsis for periods.  A selection:

...they walked in silence...the castanets of their heels clicking accompaniment...the stranger inhaled deeply and with a nod of content and a smile...blew a cloud of smoke...Alex felt like singing...the stranger knew the magic of blue smoke also...they continued in silence...the castanets of their heels clicking rhythmically...Alex turned in his doorway...up the stairs adn the stranger waited for him to light the room...no need for words...they had always known each other.......as they undressed by the blue dawn...Alex knew he had never seen a more perfect being...his body was all symmetry and music...

Beautiful.  Not all of Nugent's work is written in this fashion - which is good in my opinion as it gets frustrating - but this is probably Nugent's most important work.  Underground homoerotica was well established by the time Nugent wrote the story, but Smoke, Lilies, and Jade celebrates the main character's sexuality, showing him in a homosexual relationship but leaving out all of the guilt that dominated representations of male same-sex relationships.  Go Nugent!  For him, "same-sex desire required no justification - it was a fact of life".

The more elitist members of the Harlem Renaissance were not thrilled with Nugent and others like him.  Many, at the time, wanted African-Americans to be portrayed in a positive, socially acceptable light to help promote race relations and the social acceptance of the culture.  Some felt that black authors writing about prostitution, homosexuality, abuse, and other social ills were defying the purpose of the Renaissance.  Those authors who insisted on writing what they considered the truth instead of sugar coating the world, referred to themselves and the Niggerati, and Nugent was one of them.

Nugent did more than write; he was a true Renaissance man. He acted in both theatre and film productions, he was a dancer, a traveller, a philanderer, a nomad, a vagabond, an artist, and a writer. For 30 years, Nugent stood out as the only African-American to write from the perspective of an openly homosexual man.  It wasn't until James Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956 that another self-defined gay writer appeared.

Richard Bruce Nugent died of congestive heart failure in 1987.

Collage: (left to right) 

Row 1 Countee Cullen and Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Row 2 Angelina Weld Grimk and Langston Hughes
Row 3 Alain Locke and Claude McKay

Row 4 Wallace Thurman and Carl Van Vechten