Established in 2005 as part of NLGJA’s 15th anniversary celebration, the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame was launched to honor LGBT journalists who have shown courage and resolve by telling the truth, including their own personal truths, whatever the cost and whatever the difficulties.
Marlon Riggs was inducted in 2006. Here’s an excerpt from his biography for the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame:
“In 1992, Marlon Riggs wrote about the questions the approaching 21st century raised. The challenges to the ‘cozy myths by which America has been ritually defined…In the next century, can we even continue to speak (could we ever?) of a collective ‘we?’
“For the longest time, of course, these questions had simple answers: ‘America was white. America was male. America was heterosexual.’
“Through his work, Riggs sought not to redefine America but to illuminate what it truly was. Before losing his five-year battle with AIDS on April 5, 1994, Riggs used his work to demand attention for those he believed were going unnoticed in American society.”
Click here to read the complete biography.