Beam, Joseph

Born in Philadelphia in 1954, Joseph Beam was an African-American gay rights activist and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

After his graduation from Franklin College in rural Indiana in 1976, Beam began working at Giovanni's Room, a gay and lesbian bookstore in Philadelphia, where he became acquainted with local and national gay figures and institutions. His articles and short stories appeared in numerous gay newspapers and publications, including Au Courant, Blackheart, Changing Men, Gay Community News, Philadelphia Gay News, The Advocate, New York Native, Body Politic, and the Windy City Times. He joined the Executive Committee of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays in 1985, and became the editor of their journal Black/Out. In 1986, he published IN THE LIFE, an anthology of writings by and about black gay men, to counteract the absence of positive images of gay men of color in the media and the subculture of white gay activists. He was working on a sequel to In the Life at the time of his death of HIV related disease in 1989. This work was completed by his mother, Dorothy Beam, and the gay poet Essex Hemphill, and published under the title BROTHER TO BROTHER in 1991.

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