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.