5 Black Queer Folks Who Influenced Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Although Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died more than a year before the Stonewall Uprising and the start of the Gay Liberation Movement, he was friends, colleagues, and acquaintances with numerous LGBTQ+ folks during his lifetime. From advisors to legal theorists to donors, here are five Black queer folks who influenced Dr. King's work and contributed to the Civil Rights Movement.

Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray was a civil rights activist, lawyer, author and Episcopal priest whose work lived at the intersection of gender, racial, and economic justice. They were arrested for refusing to sit at the back of a bus 15 years before Rosa Parks, and their legal scholarship laid the groundwork for much of the Civil Rights Movement. Their book States’ Laws on Race and Color became known as the “Bible of civil rights law,” and their work as a legal theorist influenced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped win the fights for public school desegregation, women’s rights in the workplace, andLGBTQ+ rights. 

Murray worked closely with Martin Luther King and cofounded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) with Bayard Rustin, but was often critical of the way that men dominated the leadership of these civil rights organizations.

Norris B. Herndon

Norris B. Herndon was a prominent businessman and philanthropist in Atlanta. He was the President of Atlanta Life Insurance Company and was once the wealthiest Black person in America. He amassed a $100 million fortune during his lifetime and became a major financial backer of the Civil Rights Movement.

He wrote checks to Dr. King and was a donor to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and many other Black equality efforts. He even turned his office into a financial headquarters and training center for the Civil Rights Movement.

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was a playwright, activist, and writer. Best known for her iconic play “A Raisin in the Sun,” she became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Her public work focused on Black liberation and her private writings discussed her queerness. 

Hansberry inspired artists like Nina Simone, authors like James Baldwin, and activists like Malcolm X and MLK. In a message read at Hansberry’s funeral, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: “Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn.”

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was a once-unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement who has finally started to receive his flowers in recent years. He was one of Dr. King's closest friends and advisors and introduced King to the concept of nonviolent resistance as a tactic for movement building. He was the chief organizer behind and also co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

James Baldwin

James Baldwin was an author and civil rights activist who was friends with Dr. King. He wrote about King, and while the two shared a mutual respect and admiration for each other, they had a complicated relationship. Baldwin was sometimes critical of King’s nonviolent approach, and if Malcolm X and MLK represented the two poles of the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin was somewhere in the middle.

Nevertheless, his respect for King was such that Baldwin said at his funeral he wouldn’t allow himself to cry because “if I began to weep, I would not be able to stop.”