Cheryl L Clarke was born on Washington DC, May 16,1947 and is an American lesbian poet, essayist, educator, and Black feminist community activist.
16 Facts About Cheryl Clarke
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Cheryl Clarke's scholarship focuses on African-American women's literature, black lesbian feminism, and the Black Arts Movement in the United States.
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Cheryl Clarke maintains a teaching affiliation with the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Women and Gender Studies, though retired.
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The daughter of James Sheridan Clarke, a World War II veteran, and Edna Clarke, Cheryl Clarke was born and raised in Washington, DC at the height of the American civil rights movement, one of four sisters and a brother.
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When she was 13 years old, Cheryl Clarke crossed a picket line of African-American activists protesting segregation at Woolworth's on 14th Street.
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At 16, Cheryl Clarke was allowed by her parents to attend the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with them.
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Cheryl Clarke attended parochial schools in the District of Columbia, and matriculated at Howard University in 1965.
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Cheryl Clarke served as the dean of students of the Livingston Campus at Rutgers University from 2010 to 2013, when she retired.
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Cheryl Clarke is the author of five collections of poetry: Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women ; for Firebrand Books, Living as a Lesbian, Humid Pitch, and Experimental Love ; and for Word Works, By My Precise Haircut.
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Cheryl Clarke served on the editorial collective of Conditions, an early lesbian publication, and has been published in numerous anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Conditions, This Bridge Called My Back, Home Girls, The Black Scholar, The Kenyon Review, Belles Lettres, and Gay Community News.
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Cheryl Clarke is the author of "Lesbianism: an Act of Resistance", originally published in 1981 in the feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
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The 1983 book Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology includes one of Cheryl Clarke's essays, titled "The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community".
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Cheryl Clarke argues that homophobia is not unique to the Black community, but is indicative of a larger homophobic culture.
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The oppression and exclusion of Black lesbian women from the Black liberation movement, according to Cheryl Clarke, is counter-revolutionary and only by addressing and eliminating homophobia can the Black community find liberation.
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Cheryl Clarke concludes that Black people must be committed to eliminating homophobia in the community by engaging in discussion with advocates for gay and lesbian liberation, getting educated about gay and lesbian politics, confronting internal and external homophobic attitudes, and understanding how these attitudes prevent total liberation.
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Cheryl Clarke is a member of the Board of Directors of the Newark Pride Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to LGBTQ advocacy and programming in Newark.