Jason Paul Collins (born December 2, 1978) is an American former professional basketball player who was a center for 13 seasons in the NBA.
He played college basketball for the Stanford Cardinal, where he was an All-American in 2000–01. Collins was selected by the Houston Rockets as the 18th overall pick in the 2001 NBA draft. He went on to play for the NJ NETS, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, Washington Wizards and Brooklyn Nets.
After the 2012–13 NBA season concluded, Collins publicly came out as gay. He became a free agent and did not play again until February 2014, when he signed with the Nets and became the first publicly gay athlete to play in any off our major North American pro sports leagues. In April 2014, Collins was featured on the cover of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World."
Collins chose to wear No. 98 in honor of Matthew Shepard, whose 1998 murder was widely reported as a hate crime and ultimately led to the passage of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Collins' jersey rose to the top spot for sales in the NBA's online shop, and the NBA announced that proceeds from the sales, as well as proceeds from auctions of Collins' autographed game-worn jerseys, would benefit the Matthew Shepard Foundation, and the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.
Don Lemon (born March 1, 1966) is an American television journalist best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023. He anchored weekend news programs on local television stations in Alabama and Pennsylvania during his early days as a journalist. Lemon worked as a news correspondent for NBC on its programming, such as Today and NBC Nightly News. Lemon is a recipient of three regional Emmy Awards for his special report on real estate in Chicago and a business feature on Craigslist.
Lemon was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Katherine Marie (Bouligney) and Wilmon Lee Richardson. His father was a prominent attorney whose firm was party to a lawsuit that successfully challenged racial segregation of public transportation in Baton Rouge. Lemon has stated he was sexually molested as a child by a teenage boy who lived nearby, and that he knew he was gay prior to this incident.
Lemon's outspoken criticism of Donald Trump made him a target of the president. In January 2018, after Trump controversially referred to countries such as El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras as "shitholes" during a meeting on immigration, Lemon opened CNN Tonight with a proclamation that "the president of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that."
In his 2011 memoir, Transparent, Lemon publicly came out as gay — having been out in his personal life and with close colleagues — becoming "one of the few openly gay black men in broadcasting." He also discussed colorism in the black community and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. He dedicated the book to Tyler Clementi, a college student who killed himself after his roommate outed him online.
Mary Anne Adams (born September 25, 1954) is an African American lesbian activist, social worker, and public health researcher who has focused on the health disparities within the lesbian and Black community. She also works at Georgia State University as the Director of the Community Engagement Core. Adams is most known for being the founder of ZAMI NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging), an organization that provides resources to aid the coming-of-age process for Black lesbians over the age of 40.
Adams was born on September 25, 1954, as the second oldest of 10 children in Oxford, Mississippi, specifically Freeman's Town, just soon after the start of the United States Civil Rights Movement. As a child, when she was not in school, she was spending her summers at her grandmother's (whom she was named after) house reading anything she could get her hands on. Adams used reading as a means of mental escape from her feelings of seclusion. One of the biggest turning points in her life was discovering youth activism where she banded together with other activists, lawyers, and social workers to fight for civil rights for people of color, specifically African American people.
Adam's activism journey began when she was 12 years old in her hometown. A minister named Reverend Wayne Johnson launched the "Black House" where civil rights activists, social workers, organizations, attorneys, and students came together organize plans. She quickly became engulfed in the Black House where she was taught to embrace her blackness. She also aided in the creation and distribution of The Soul Force newspaper which was created in the Black House. Learning about Black history, protesting, and advocacy at the Black House from experienced activists became a regular occurrence for Adams. Her leaders there encouraged her to pursue higher education at Ole Miss to aid in the integration of the university.
After graduating from Ole Miss, she launched the Audre Lorde Scholarship Fund, with the help of the nonprofit organization ZAMI, to help financially support struggling Black lesbians ($1,000 per recipient) who openly expressed their sexuality and were also seeking higher education.
Norris Bumstead Herndon (July 15, 1897 – June 7, 1977) was a prominent African American businessman, Harvard Business School MBA graduate, philanthropist, member of Alpha PHI Alpha fraternity, and second President of the historic African-American-owned Atlanta Life Insurance Co.
Herndon was the only child of Atlanta, Georgia's first African-American millionaire businessman Alonzo Herndon who rose out of chattel enslavement and sharecropping in rural Georgia and founded Atlanta Life in 1905.
The Atlanta Life Insurance Company, founded in the era of violent white racial animosity and vitriolic Jim Crow segregation, cemented its operational success through a commitment to sustained financial solvency and promptness in paying claims.
Under Norris Herndon, A.L.I. grew from $1 million at the time of his father's death in 1927, to $84 million in assets at the time of Herndon's retirement in 1973. Operating today as the Atlanta Life Financial Group, it is currently valued at around $250 million. Under Herndon's leadership, the Atlanta Life Insurance co held the first and only insurance policy on noted Civil Rights leader and icon MLK Jr.
Herndon played a significant behind-the-scenes role in the 1950s'Civil Rights Movement. He regularly funded the solvency of many civil rights efforts, including the NAACP, United Negro College Fund, Phyllis Wheatley YMCA, First Congregational Church in Atlanta and the National Urban League.
Herndon was extraordinarily reclusive. Herndon rarely spoke publicly, avoiding appearances at national conventions or on society pages. Herndon was generally considered incognito by his Atlanta Life Insurance employees.
Deemed by many gossip columnists as "the world's most eligible bachelor," Herndon was never linked to any women. Many stories regarded him as elusive and mysterious.
Although the public had no idea Herndon was gay, his close friends and business colleagues acknowledged Herndon as an ultra-private gay man. Like many prominent gay African-American men of this era, Herndon's sexuality was largely considered an "open secret," with efforts made to minimize "hint of any scandalize behavior" to threaten the precarious image of larger African American community.
Frances Thompson (1840 - 1876) was an American, formerly enslaved Black trans woman and anti-rape activist. She was one of the five Black women to testify before a congressional committee that investigated the Memphis Riots of 1866. She is the first known trans woman to testify before the U.S. Congress. Thompson and a housemate, Lucy Smith, were attacked by a white mob and were among manyfreed women who were raped during the riots. In 1876, Thompson was arrested for "being a man dressed in women's clothing," leading to national news attention.
Frances Thompson was born into slavery around 1840 She was assigned male at birth and later transitioned into a woman. The slave owner's family allowed her to dress in dresses and recognized her as a girl. She was known to wear bright colored dresses, keep a clean-shaven face and dress in feminine apparel. Since she was a child, she used mobility aids and crutches due to cancer in her foot. Newspapers often referred to her as "crutchy."
Since she was a young woman, she was a figurehead for women's rights, and brought awareness to black women's rights in the south post reconstruction. Despite the aggressions she faced after the Memphis Massacre she continued to fight.
Since the majority of her master's family was killed, she was a free woman in Memphis at the age of 26. She rented an apartment on Gayoso Street which was a majority black neighborhood known as "Hell’s Half Acre."
Since she was a young woman, she was a figurehead for women's rights, and brought awareness to black women's rights in the south post reconstruction. Despite the aggressions she faced after the Memphis Massacre she continued to fight, in just 36 years of life she became one of the first black women, former slaves, and transgender women to testify in front of Congress. She also became an advocate for both bodily autonomy. Thompson's testimony would lead the government to enact legislation that protected the civil rights of newly emancipated African Americans.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey ne'e Pridgett (April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early-blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of Blues," she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. Her qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues."
Gertrude Pridgett began performing as a teenager and became known as "Ma" Rainey after her marriage to Will "Pa" Rainey in 1904. They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group, Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. Her first recording was made in 1923. In the following five years, she made over 100 recordings, including "Bo-Weevil Blues" (1923), "Moonshine Blues" (1923), "See See Rider Blues" (1925), the blues standard "Ma Rainey's "Black Bottom " (1927), and "Soon This Morning" (1927).
In 1924, Rainey recorded with Louis Armstrong, including on "Jelly Bean Blues," "Countin' the Blues" and "See, See Rider." In the same year, she embarked on a tour of the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA) in the South and Midwest of the United States, singing for black and white audiences. Rainey claimed she created the term "blues" when asked what kind of song she was singing.
She has been posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, as well as the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Rainey has been portrayed in several films including the 2020 Academy Award- winning film Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. In 2023, she was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Although most of Rainey's songs that mention sexuality refer to love affairs with men, some of her lyrics contain references to lesbianism or bisexuality.
In her lyrics, Rainey portrayed the black female experience like few others of the time reflecting a wide range of emotions and experiences. In her 1999 book “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism,” Angela Davis wrote that Rainey's songs are full of women who "explicitly celebrate their right to conduct themselves as expansively and even as undesirably as men." In her songs, she and other black women sleep around for revenge, drink and party all night and generally live lives that "transgressed these ideas of white middle class female respectability." The portrayals of black female sexuality, including those bucking heteronormative standards, fought ideas of what a woman should be and inspired Alice Walker in developing her characters for The Color Purple.
