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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, Univ. of Chicago Press, 193-94, 211-14; this essay is a much-condensed, re-written version of material in Duberman, Hold Tight Gently, The New Press, 2014. For additional material I’m indebted to Frances Goldin, Essex’s literary agent (and at the time, my own), who located Essex’s early poems for me in her back files, as well as the manuscript of his long-lost novel, “Standing in the Gap.”
2. For this and the following paragraph: Sidney Brinkley, “Making History,” in Smash the Church, Smash the State, ed. Tommi Avicolli Mecca, City Lights, 2009; Cathy J. Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, Univ. of Chicago, 1999.
3. Hemphill, “Miss Emily’s Grandson Won’t Hush His Mouth,” Outweek, Aug. 8, 1990; “Where We Live: A Conversation with Essex Hemphill and Isaac Julien,” in [speak my name] Black Men On Masculinity and the American Dream, ed. Don Belton, Beacon, 1995; interview with Wayson Jones, May 2009; Wayson Jones to me, April 15, 2013.
4. See Hemphill’s chapbooks: Diamonds Was in the Kitty; Some of the People We Love Are Terrorists; Earth Life, and the best known of them: Conditions. See also Hemphill, Ceremonies, Cleis, 1992.
5. Interviews with Miller, Ron Simmons, Chris Prince, Wayson Jones, and Michelle Parkerson, May 2009.
6. Interview with Michelle Parkerson, May 2009. For the historical dimension, see Peter Lewis Allen’s fine study, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present, Univ. of Chi. Press, 2000.
7. Eric Brandt, Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality, The New Press, 1999; Cathy J. Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, ch. 4; Elinor Burkett, The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the Age of AIDS, Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
8. Jennifer Brier, Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2009; John-Manuel Andriote, Victory Deferred, rev. ed. (2011.)
9. Beam to Hemphill, Aug. 11, 1985, Hemphill to Beam, Dec. 5, 1985, Feb. 18 [1986?], Joe Beam Papers, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The NCBLG Statement of Purpose is printed in Black/Out 1, nos. 3-4 (1987.)
10. Hemphill, “O Tell Me, Brutus” initially appeared in his 1986 chapbook Conditions and was then reprinted in Ceremonies, 168. In mid-1993 Essex appeared on a panel, “AIDS: Images and Analysis in the Arts and Media” ([email protected], November 7, 1995) in the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People of Color list GLBPOC “Tribute.”
11. Cohen, Boundaries, 95-102.
12. Hemphill, Domestic Life, private edition, 1994, courtesy Wayson Jones.
13. Amin Ghaziani, The Dividends of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008.
14. archivistssociety.wordpress.com; Hemphill to Barbara Smith, Aug. 1, 1989, courtesy Smith.
15. Hemphill, ed., Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, conceived by Joe Beam, project managed by Dorothy Beam, Alyson, 1991; “Black Talk: A Personal Interview with Essex Hemphill … ,” Au Courant, July 29, 1991.
16. For this and the following paragraph: Frank Broderick interview with Hemphill, n.d., Joe Beam Papers, Schomburg Library; Publishers Weekly, May 10, 1991; Windy City Times, March 21, 1991; Lambda Book Report, May-June 1991; Hemphill, “If Freud Had Been a Neurotic Colored Woman,” Gay Community News, Feb. 25-March 3, 1991. In Brother to Brother, see “Looking for Langston: An Interview with Isaac Julian,” Ron Simmons, “Tongues Untied: An Interview with Marlon Riggs,” and Marlon Riggs, “Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a Snap! Queen.”
17. As quoted in Andriote, Victory Deferred, 195, and Brier, Infectious Ideas, 163-71, 184 (Agosto).
18. Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS, Univ. of Chicago, 2009, ch. 4; Harlon L. Dalton, “AIDS in Blackface,” Daedalus, Summer 1989.
19. Hemphill to Barbara Smith, Aug. 27, 1991, enclosing the exchange of letters regarding the Book World controversy, courtesy of Smith.
20. For this and the following three paragraphs: Michelle Parkerson to me, April 8, 2013; Hemphill to Assotto Saint, June 10, 1993, Assotto Saint (Yves Lubin) Papers, Schomburg Library; Goldin to Hemphill, Sept. 1, 1992, Jan. 13, 1993; Goldin to Peter Borland (NAL), Nov. 4, 1992; Hemphill to Goldin, Dec. 21, 1992, Feb. 16, July 28, Sept. 1993–all courtesy Goldin. I discovered the draft manuscript of Essex’s novel in the files of the Goldin Agency. My own assessment of the novel agrees with that of Goldin and Borland.
21. For this and the following paragraph: Hemphill, “Vital Signs,” in Life Sentences, edited and with an introduction by Thomas Avena, 21-57, Mercury House, 1994; Hemphill to Barbara Smith, Dec. 12, 1994, May 15, 1995, courtesy Smith.
22. For this and the following paragraph: Hemphill, Domestic Life, courtesy Wayson Jones; interviews with Jones, Chris Prince and Ron Simmons, May 2009.