Essex Hemphill, A Remembrance

I encountered the poet Essex Hemphill's writing in 1983. That was when I read his essay, "I am a Homosexual" in the November Men's Issue of Essence, a black women's magazine. (I later reprinted this piece in Fighting Words: Essays by Black Gay Men, an anthology I edited that was published in 1999 by Avon Books/HarperCollins.) I was very impressed  and moved by his straightforward and unapologetic stance on being a black  gay man. I immediately wrote to him at the address that appeared at the end of the essay. I requested an interview, possibly for publication in the New York Native, a weekly gay newspaper. Essex wrote back and included in the package two issues of the black culture magazine Nethula Journal, which he no longer co- published, and two limited-edition boxed chapbooks (Diamonds Was in the Kitty and Plums). Each chapbook came with a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by Essex.

Although I never got to do the interview, I did get the opportunity to publish his poetry a short time  later, along with the work of four other poets, in a special black gay supplement in the Native called "Celebrating Ourselves." (The title was suggested by Melvin Dixon, one of the other poets in it.) The rest of the supplement consisted of essays by Joseph Beam, David Frechette, Craig G. Harris, and others, most of whom are now deceased. 

I also got the chance to hear Essex read his poetry in the flesh at Hunter College in New York and at the Friends Center in Philadelphia. At the New York reading (which I think he shared with the lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde), he went on stage after leaving a nearby men's room where he vomited up a tainted tuna sandwich he bought at the train station in D.C. A real trouper,  Essex gave, as always, a marvelous performance. 

At the Philadelphia reading in 1985, he shared the program with the black lesbian poet Pat Parker. As Essex read his poetry, he stood barefoot at the podium before a gathering of attentive, admiring listeners. His barefoot performance brought to mind those members of my mother's Pentecostal church in Harlem, who, feeling right at home, would walk around the church and among the pews in their stockinged feet. Another fond memory that night was his reading of "Black Beans," a celebration of romantic black gay love.

After the Philadelphia reading, which Joe Beam had invited me to, he led a group of us to a restaurant in nearby Chinatown. Those at the table were Joe; Colin Robinson, a New York writer of Trinidadian heritage; Essex; two other men; and myself. Later we went to a bar/disco called the Smart Place, which primarily catered to a black gay clientele. At the club Joe asked if I wanted to dance. I told him no. From there, the four of us went back to Joe's tiny apartment in the Center City section of Philadelphia. Joe told us that the area was called The Merry-Go-Round because of the constant gay cruising that went on at night. At the apartment, Essex, Colin, and I stayed overnight. Essex and Joe slept on one side of the room, Colin and I on the other.

The next day Essex and Colin left Philly for D.C. and New York respectively. I stayed in town a little while longer. That gave Joe enough time to introduce me to the owner of Giovanni's Room, the gay bookstore where he worked and discovered my writing in the pages of the New York Native. (The bookstore sold the Native each week.) When we got back to his apartment, he let me leaf through the manuscript of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, to which I had contributed an article about the Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent. I remember Joe, who was the book's editor, asking me before letting me touch the manuscript, "Are your hands clean?"

Before Essex and Colin left Philly, we ate at a nearby black-run restaurant. I had scrambled eggs and hash brown potatoes, which Colin paid for. I clearly remember Essex, upon hearing one of the women behind the counter singing, say appreciatively, "Go on and sing it, sister!" As we left the restaurant, Essex gave me a copy of his third chapbook Earth Life. I still have it. Alas, I neglected to have him sign it. But its importance to me has not been diminished.

 In the years since Essex's death in 1995, his name has popped up in several books. One of those books is a Felice Picano novel called The Book of Lies. It's loosely based on the members of the Violet Quill, a real-life white gay literary group that included Picano. In the novel, a character recalled the time in the 1980s when "Essex Hemphill had come up from DC" to do a reading at the Gay Community Center in New York. The character also stated that at the reading "Essex was still doing his fire and brimstone act." Picano's characterization does Essex's memory a disservice. It makes Essex sound like a demagogue, an approach that would have turned off many black gay men. Instead, his eloquent, healing words boosted the morale and self-esteem of black gay men, thereby making him the foremost black gay poet in America, whose work has been widely anthologized and celebrated.

Note: I wrote this essay for Art Mugs the Reaper, an unpublished anthology of literary and visual work by gay men who had died of AIDS. Each individual's work was to be accompanied by a biographical essay. Unfortunately, the editor of the collection, Jeffrey Lilly, a gay San Francisco poet, who had battled health challenges over the years, died in 2019.

This essay, written in December 2000, appears here with several changes to the original text.