Three LGBTQ folks you should know: Alexander the Great, Alice Walker, and that LGBTQ person in your life
(next in the series!) Today we feature Alexander the Great, author and activist Alice Walker, and that LGBTQ person in your life.
Alexander the Great (356 BCE- 323 BCE)
Conquerer of Persia and numerous other lands, and student of Aristotle, Alexander spread ancient Greece's refined culture and high-minded ethos as much by sheer attraction as by conquest, according to author Joshua J. Mark.
As Mark notes, historian Diodorus Siculus once wrote that Alexander's successes were "not the work of Fortune but of his own force of character, for this king stands out above all others for his military acumen, personal courage and intellectual brilliance.” Although historians point out ad nauseam the so-called inappropriateness of applying modern labels such as "gay," "bisexual," "homosexual," or "queer" to an ancient king like Alexander, no serious historian doubts that history's penultimate warrior-monarch was attracted to men.” (Source: https://www.advocate.com/world/2016/7/08/20-lgbt-people-who-changed-world#media-gallery-media-3)
Alice Walker (1944 - )
“Alice Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She is best known for writing the novel The Color Purple (1982), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction — the first woman of color to win that award. The novel was also adapted into an Oscar-nominated film of the same name in (1985).
Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a student at Spelman College in the early 1960s. She credits King for her decision to return to the American South as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. She took part in the 1963 March on Washington. In 2003 she was arrested, along with 26 others, at an anti-war rally. Walker wrote about the experience in her essay "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For."
In 1967, Walker married Melvyn Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. Later that year, the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi.
In the mid-1990s, Walker was involved in a romance with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, saying: "It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it, and I was completely in love with her, but it was not anybody's business but ours.” (Source: https://bi.org/en/famous/alice-walker)
That LGBTQ Person in Your Life
Do something — anything — to get to know them better. Whether or not they become famous like Alexander the Great or Alice Walker, they’re important and interesting and worth knowing.
For others in this series, see Three LGBTQ folks you should know: Baldwin, Roosevelt, and that LGBTQ person in your life
by Marci McPhee