Eight LGBT African-Americans Who Changed The Gay Community
Don Lemon
CNN anchorman
With the publication last May of his unflinching memoir, Transparent, Emmy-winning CNN news anchor Don Lemon came out to the world at large. In a interview with The New York Times, he noted, “I guess this makes me a double minority now.”
Born in Louisiana, Lemon made his first on-air inroads as a co-anchor on Chicago’s NBC5 News and as a correspondent for The Today Show and The NBC Nightly News. Joining CNN as a reporter six years ago, he’s gone on to cover the 2008 presidential election (during which he was pushed into a golf cart by Marcus Bachmann) and the accusations of child molestation against Bishop Eddie Long (revealing he had been molested as a child in the process) and hosted a panel on transgender representations on The Joy Behar Show. 
Currently a network correspondent and weekend anchor for CNN Newsroom, Lemon, 45, has won the Edward R. Murrow Award for covering the D.C. sniper’s capture and local Emmys for reports on Craigslist, Chicago real estate and Africa’s AIDS epidemic. In 2009, he made Ebony’s 150 Most Influential African-Americans list.
In an age of sycophantic news coverage, he stands out for his willingness to challenge public figures and his own industry. He certainly didn’t flinch from his own truth in Transparent, revealing the difficulties of being both black and gay. He condemns the “pray the gay away” approach and, in many interviews about Transparent, has called attention to the tragic suicide of gay Rutgers student Tyler Clementi. He has also accepted the mantle of spokesperson for the LGBT community, speaking at events for HRC and GLAAD and receiving honors from the Anti-Violence Project and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association
In a sense, Lemon is the anti-Anderson Cooper: He has come to understand that being honest with the public about who you are and the road you’ve traveled can help, not hinder a journalist. “I abhor hypocrisy,” Lemon once told the Times. “I think if you’re going to be in the business of news, and telling people the truth, of trying to shed light in dark places, then you’ve got to be honest. You’ve got to have the same rules for yourself as you do for everyone else… I think it would be great if everybody could be out. I think if I had seen more people like me who are out and proud, it wouldn’t have taken me 45 years to say it.”
Photos: CNN
NEXT: Frank Ocean changes the rules of love and hip-hop
Frank Ocean has done nothing for the gay community or the music industry. Being gay is not an act of anything. There are far more artists in the last 20 years that have done more than come out of the closet.
As for his talent, he has done nothing Usher or Justin Timberlake have not done. Even the prick Chris Brown did it better.
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@Red Meat: The world disagrees with you:
http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2012/
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@Eric Auerbach: Jazz album that got less than 2000 votes on a website directly about the thing he is in.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves, the world doesn’t give a fuck about Frank Ocean, it’s good that he’s come out and is continuing doing the thing he loves in spite of criticism.
But lets not go assuming he’s up there with MLK, Harvey Milk and countless others.
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@Red Meat: @2eo: Visibility is power. It’s light and truth and transformation. That’s never more true than in black communities that have long been ruled by cultural ignorance, groupthink insecurities and religious intolerance. Ocean’s coming out is significant and potentially huge for young black and minority LGBTQ and their families.
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Did we have a brain fart and just forget James Baldwin? Baldwin had to go off to the safety of Paris to write and publish ‘Giovani;s Room” one of the few gay themed novels around when I came out. He also wrote on the themes of race and sexuality and the intersection of those themes.
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Thank you for including Bayard Rustin on this list! A forgotten hero to the cause is finally getting the recognition he missed out on in life.
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How do Frank Ocean and RuPaul get on this list but not James Baldwin? Speechless.
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I say take Frank Ocean’s name off the list. He played the gay card because it was the only one in his hand. Frank is basically propped by a media who seemed to know what the worst outcome could have been in his coming out, and went out of their way to shield him from it. Behind the forced critical praise, on every blog, message board and real life conversation I’ve been witness to where he’s the topic, I see a stalemate in reaction; he has his defenders, but he also has many callous detractors.
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I’m sure Bayard Rustin would have dreamt that one day all his work would result in being on a list with Don Lemon and Frank “he’s never said he’s gay” Ocean.
I wonder if a similar list is being compiled of white gay people who changed the world. With Harvey Milk, Lance Bass and the Honey Boo Boo dude…
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Very confused, very: how about a column about those who are changing: Don Lemmon, Frank Ocean, Wanda Sykes, et al, and those who have: Bernard Rustin and Mabel Hampton.
Alas, a list of 8 is a list missing too many: No James Baldwin? No Langston Hughes? Where is Alvin Ailey? Long, long before RuPaul — who is making waves for the LGBT community and I applaud that — there was Sylvester.
Barbara Jordan? Alice Walker? Sheryl Swoopes?
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Honorable Mention — Julian Bond, the gay community has no better friend and advocate than the Chairman Emeritus of the NCAAP. An all-out advocate for equality for all; and his advocacy for marriage equality is changing the LGBT community as the walls of resistance from the larger black community crumble.
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Wanda Sykes grew up in suburban Maryland actually. She went to the same High School I did, just about 20 years apart.
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White, gay websites kill me trying to make Frank Ocean into some gay, black hero. He doesn’t even want to be associated with us and the fact that y’all label everything black “hip-hop” is so annoying. Bye.
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When will the click-through photos end???