Between 2003 and 2015, various media outlets perpetuated comparisons between the intensifying movement for marriage equality and the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Using these comparisons as a starting point, this talk interrogates the ambivalent history of Blackness and homosexuality as mutually referential concepts in American politics from the end of World War II through the 1980s. In doing so, this talk offers a queer political history that troubles popular and historiographical stories we tell about postwar gay and lesbian rights movements, Black freedom struggles and polyvocal opposition to both.

Jennifer Dominique Jones is an assistant professor of history and women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan. Her areas of research and teaching expertise are African American history after 1877 and the history of gender and sexuality in the United States in the twentieth century with a focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics and community life. Her forthcoming monograph is Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality After World War II (University of North Carolina Press).

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.