The purpose of this research is to uncover the experiences of queer Black girls during the first half of the twentieth century. At a time when Black people were defining, understanding, and questioning what it meant to be Black in America, I query what queer Black girlhood looked like during this time. Black girlhood historians agree that Black girls during the first half of the twentieth century regularly faced the sexualization and adultification (the attribution of adult characteristics onto young people) of their bodies and the impartation of respectability politics by the Black community. This research investigates the ways in which these politics played out in conjunction with the homosexual identity. How did respectability fail queer Black girls? How did respectability liberate queer Black girls? In doing this work, I employ Black queer theory as a theoretical framework, as well as rely on oral histories due to the erasure of queer Black women’s experience in dominant discourse.
