Duberman, Martin B.

Martin Bauml Duberman (1930- ), American historian and playwright, has taught history at Yale University, Princeton University and Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York.

He wrote biographies of Charles Francis Adams, James Russell Lowell and Paul Robeson as well as historical studies, plays, essays, and reviews. His plays include In White America (1963) about the struggle of African-Americans for freedom and civil rights. Since 1972 he has been active in the gay rights movement and the study of gay and lesbian history. He was a founder of the Gay Academic Union and the National Gay Task Force and has been the director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York.

Historian and playwright Martin Bauml Duberman was born in 1930 in New York City and grew up in the suburb of Mount Vernon. He graduated from the Horace Mann School in 1948, received a B.A. from Yale in 1952 and Ph.D from Harvard in 1957. He taught American history at Yale from 1957 until 1962 when he joined the department of history at Princeton University. Duberman remained at Princeton for nine years before accepting an appointment as Distinguished Professor of History at Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York, in 1971.

Among his historical works are the biographies Charles Francis Adams (1961), James Russell Lowell (1966), and Paul Robeson (1989) and Black Mountain (1972), a history of the experimental Black Mountain College. He is also the author of numerous essays and book reviews, many of which were collected in The Uncompleted Past (1969).

Duberman became renowned outside of academic circles as well. His documentary play, In White America (1963) about the black struggle for freedom and civil rights, brought him critical acclaim and established his reputation as a playwright. Among his other plays are The Memory Bank, Metaphors, Payments, and Visions of Kerouac.

Since 1972 he has been active in the gay rights movement and a pioneer researcher in the area of gay and lesbian history. His works in this area include About Time (1986), Hidden from History (1989) [with Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr.], Stonewall (1993), and an autobiography, Cures (1991). He was a founder of the Gay Academic Union, the National Gay Task Force and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York.