Black, Gifted and Gay

50-year-old, openly-gay producer/director Lee Daniels is the creative force behind the films Monster’s Ball, The Woodsman, Shadowboxer and Precious – the Academy-Award winning film based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire

An out-lesbian since 1997, Davis currently resides in New York City and is a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University.

Openly-gay 30-year-old Baltimore, Maryland actress Felicia “Snoop” Pearson is a true example of what can happen when you work hard to make your life better.

American author and fashion icon André Leon Talley is perhaps best known for his role as editor for Vogue magazine.

Maurice Jamal is recognized in the entertainment industry as being one of the few contemporary African American filmmakers to consistently profile the lives of the black community in film.

Named one of Out magazine’s 100 Most Influential Gay People in 2002, Emil Wilbekin served as Editor-in-Chief of Vibe magazine for more than 12 years.

Multiple Emmy Award-winning director and producer Paris Barclay currently serves as First Vice President of the Directors Guild of America (DGA). He is the first African American officer in the history of the Guild.

E. Denise Simmons was the first lesbian, African-American mayor in United States history.

LZ Granderson is African American, openly-gay, Christian, and a force to be reckoned with at ESPN.com’s Page 2 and ESPN the Magazine.

Tantalizing sounds, strikingly-authentic structures, and gnawingly raw lyrics lined the albums from the inside out and Ndegeocello’s sound and passion caught immediate fire within the entertainment industry. The musician’s ambiguous demeanor and representation of self further speculated the media’s forward motion into discussing not only music, but sexuality and social practices that were fairly taboo at the time of her arrival on the scene.

Punks director, writer and producer Patrik-Ian Polk paved the way for gay black men and women with his successful grassroots efforts in the film and television mediums.

The gender-bending personality inherent in Aviance came to light when the young performer was in seventh grade donning female clothing for musical numbers he would perform at his junior high school in Richmond, Virginia.

Four-time Grammy Award-winning multi-platinum recording artist Tracy Chapman picked up the guitar at the impressionable age of eight years old and subsequently began to change the world one chord at a time.

2006 California Hall of Fame inductee Alice Walker is best known for her authorship of The Color Purple. The 1982 classic novel based on her own life story won the civil rights activist and essayist both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National book Award in 1983. Walker was the first black woman to ever win either award.

Popularly referenced in the entertainment industry as simply RuPaul, the world’s first drag queen supermodel for MAC Cosmetics (or any other company) hit the ground running with the international dance classic, “Supermodel (You Better Work)” via Tommy Boy Records.

Editor, author, journalist and public speaker Linda Villarosa came out of the closet in the early 1990’s in Essence Magazine. She and her partner live in Brooklyn, New York with their two children.

Noah’s Arc actor Doug Spearman has been a gay rights advocate since he was a child growing up in Washington, D.C. In fact, he was born into the prime time frame of the civil rights movement in 1962 – one year before Martin Luther King, Jr. would share his “I Have a Dream” speech in the very same city.

Born in Brownsfield, Texas in 1971, Swoopes was raised by her mother, Louise Swoopes, and three older brothers. She married her high school sweetheart in 1995 and had a son they named Jordan Eric Jackson in 1997. Almost eight years later in October 2005, Swoopes made the announcement that she was gay. She would quickly become the most decorated WNBA player to ever make this announcement.

Originally met with disbelief and unfortunate wrath by his former teammates and acquaintances, Amaechi’s very public coming out was later recognized within both the LGBT and black communities as a very important step towards equality in America and around the world.

Throwing herself into the tenacious fight for equality, Sykes joined musician Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors Tour as a performer in 2008 and, in that same year, offered her face and likeness to a television ad for the group GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network).