RICHARD BRUCE NUGENT aka Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent,
born on this date, was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem
Renaissance. Despite being a part of a group of many gay Harlem artists,
Nugent was among only a few who were publicly out. Recognized initially
for the few short stories and paintings that were published, Nugent had
a long productive career bringing to light the creative process of gay
and black culture.
Nugent was born
in Washington, DC to Richard H. Nugent, Jr. and Pauline Minerva Bruce.
He completed his schooling at Dunbar High School in 1920, and moved to
New York following his father's death. After
revealing to his mother that he decided to devote his life to only
making art she worried about his lack of interest in getting a stable
job, so she sent him to Washington, DC, to live with his grandmother. To
earn enough money to sustain the family, Nugent would pass as
white to earn higher wages. While there, he also experimented with
passing, and went by the name Ricardo Nugen di Dosocta, even going as
far as giving an address located in the Spanish legation in Washington.
In an interview, he claimed he did this for its "convenience" as it
allowed him to avoid "bearing the stigma" of being African American. At
that time, he met famous writers like Langston Hughes and Georgia
Douglas Johnson. They became friends, influenced each other's works, and
collaborated on works.
During his career
in Harlem, Nugent lived with writer Wallace Thurman from 1926 to 1928,
which led to the publishing of "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade" in Thurman's
publication Fire!!. The short story was written in a modernist
stream-of-consciousness style. Its subject matter was bisexuality and
more specifically interracial male desire. Before
committing his life to his art, Bruce Nugent worked several ordinary
jobs, including hat seller, delivery boy, and bellhop. During his time
as a bellhop he fell deeply in love with a hotel kitchen employee. It is
believed that the character of Beauty from "Smoke, Lilies and Jade" is
based on this man.
Many of Nugent's illustrations were featured in publications such as Fire!!,
along with his short story. Four of his paintings were included in the
Harmon Foundation's exhibition of Negro artists, one of the few venues
available for black artists in 1931. His only stand-alone publication, Beyond Where the Stars Stood Still, was issued in a limited edition by Warren Marr II in 1945. In 1952, he married Marr's sister, Grace.
His marriage to
Grace Marr lasted from 1952 until her suicide in 1969. Nugent’s
intentions with the marriage were unclear as they were not romantic due
to his clearly stated interest in other men. Thomas Wirth, a
contemporary and personal friend of Richard Nugent claimed that Grace
loved Richard and was determined to change his sexuality in his book
“Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of
Richard Bruce Nugent” (2002).
In the late 1930s
Nugent worked with other iconic Harlem Renaissance writers, Claude
Mckay and Ralph Ellison, on the Federal Writers Project. In this project
he was employed to write biographical sketches.
While he was more
more well known for his writing and illustrations, Nugent also spent
many of his years touring as a dancer. He appeared in shows like Run, Little Chillun (1933) and even toured for two years in a production of Porgy in
1929. In the 1940s he became a member of the William's Negro Ballet
Company. He was also a part of other dance companies, including Hemsley
Winfield and Asadata Dafora, even dancing in drag with the New Negro Art
Theatre Dance Troupe.
Brother to Brother is
a film written and directed by Rodney Evans and released in 2004. It
debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival before playing the gay and
lesbian film festival circuit, with a limited theatrical release in late
2004. The film concerns an art student named Perry (Anthony Mackie) who
befriends an elderly homeless man named Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson),
who turns out to have been an important figure in the Harlem
Renaissance. Through recalling his friendships with other important
Harlem Renaissance figures such as Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas,
Wallace Thurman and Zora Neale Hurston, Bruce chronicles some of the
challenges he faced as a young, black, gay writer in the 1920s. Perry
discovers that the challenges of homophobia and racism he faces in the
early 21st century closely parallel Bruce's.
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