A Black Queer History of the United States (Revisioning History)

The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day.

Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle. In this latest book in Beacon's award-winning ReVisioning History series, Professors C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost unearth the often overlooked history of the Black queer community in the United States.

Arguing that both gender and sexual expression have been an intimate and intricate part of Black freedom struggle, Snorton and Bost present historical contributions of Black queer, trans, and gender non-conforming Americans from slavery to the present day to highlight how the fight against racial injustice has always been linked to that of sexual and gender justice.

C. Riley Snorton is professor of English Language and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and the author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low and Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, which won numerous awards including the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction, the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and an honorable mention from the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award Committee.

Darius Bost is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago . Bost is the author of the award-winning book, Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and The Politics of Violence (University of Chicago Press, 2019).