Anita Cornwell - Nominee

“Black women have always been feminists. I mean that’s the only way we survived, that we were feminists. See a lot of people think being feminist means you hate men. And straight women hate men more. Most gay women are feminists, to some extent, I think. Well, naturally I was very interested in the women’s movement because that was the only movement that I saw that might include me.”

– Anita Cornwell

Groundbreaking lesbian feminist author, journalist and LGBTQ+ activist Anita Cornwell was the first Black woman writer to publicly identified as a lesbian in print. This took place in the 1950s when it was dangerous to be an out LGBTQ+ person in the United States. Cornwell’s openness about her lesbian identity was radical. She was born in 1923 in Greenwood, South Carolina and moved to Pennsylvania at age 16. In 1948, Cornwell graduated from Temple University with a B.S. in journalism and the social sciences. Cornwell remained in Philadelphia after college and worked for The Philadelphia Tribune and The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and also did clerical work for private companies and government agencies including the Air and Signal Corps and the Philadelphia Department of Public Assistant. In the 1950s, Cornwell was a contributor to lesbian publication The Ladder and the Negro Digest. She also contributed to Feminist Review, Labyrinth, National Leader, the Los Angeles Free Press, Azalea: a Magazine for Third World Lesbians, and BLACK/OUT Additionally, Cornwell published Black Lesbian in White America, a first-ever trailblazing essay collection by a Black lesbian American, in 1983 which many people called courageous over the years. This collection included an interview with Audre Lorde, with whom she also corresponded. She also interviewed and corresponded with Pat Parker and Barbara Smith. Most of her prolific essays, poetry, fiction, and journalism went unpublished due to its content that publishing houses said didn’t match their image. Her writing spoke about heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, the Jim Crow South as well as intersectionality and misogynoir years before they were in the literary and social lexicon. Cornwell was also a member of the Daughters of the Bilitis and was a co-founder of the Philadelphia chapter of Radicalesbians, a progressive activist group, founding member. She also read her works at the University of Pennsylvania, the William Way LGBT Community Center (which houses her papers in the John J. Wilcox Archives), Giovanni’s Room and other local Philadelphia venues. In 2000, Cornwell was honored by the Annual Lambda Literacy Festival. Cornwell suffered from dementia in her later years. She died at age 99 at the Wesley Enhanced Living Center at Stapeley in Germantown surrounded by members of her chosen family in 2023.