Lake View East in Chicago in Cook County, Illinois — The American Midwest (Great Lakes)

Audre Lorde

The Legacy Walk

Photographed By Andrew Ruppenstein, August 26, 2021

1. Audre Lorde Marker

Inscription.

Audre Lorde. The Legacy Walk. Audre Lorde Lesbian U.S. Poet and Activist (1934 - 1992), . "It is not our differences that divide us. it is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences." - Audre Lorde , Audre Lorde was a black lesbian of Caribbean descent who fought for social justice through her poetry, teaching, radical feminism, and civil rights activism; declaring “I am defined as other in every group I'm part of… my sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds.” In her groundbreaking essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, she criticized Second Wave white feminists who portrayed womankind as an undifferentiated bloc, stunning them with her claim that racism, classism, sexism and homophobia were linked by a collective failure to recognize and tolerate difference. In 1977 Lorde became the poetry editor for the lesbian journal, Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and breathtakingly chronicled her struggles against and resistance to the disease in The Cancer Journals (1980). In 1979 she was a featured speaker at the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Together with fellow writer Barbara Smith, Lorde co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in the late 1980s in order to promote the writings of black feminists. Concerned with global as well as local events, she co-founded Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa (SISA) to raise concerns about black women under apartheid. After accepting an offer to serve as a guest professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin in 1984, she remained there as a U.S. expatriate until 1992 to pursue activist work with the Afro-German population. Lorde received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit in 1991, which recognized her as poet laureate of New York State. She took the name “Gambda Adisa” – which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known” – in an African naming ceremony shortly before she passed away from liver cancer on November 17, 1992 in St. Croix. Audre Lorde, self-proclaimed “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet,” was 58.

Audre Lorde
Lesbian U.S. Poet and Activist
(1934 - 1992)

"It is not our differences that divide us. it is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
- Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was a black lesbian of Caribbean descent who fought for social justice through her poetry, teaching, radical feminism, and civil rights activism; declaring “I am defined as other in every group I'm part of… my sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds.” In her groundbreaking essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, she criticized Second Wave white feminists who portrayed womankind as an undifferentiated bloc, stunning them with her claim that racism, classism, sexism and homophobia were linked by a collective failure to recognize and tolerate difference. In 1977 Lorde became the poetry editor for the lesbian journal, Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and breathtakingly chronicled her struggles against and resistance to the disease in The Cancer Journals (1980). In 1979 she was a featured speaker at the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Together with fellow writer Barbara

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Smith, Lorde co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in the late 1980s in order to promote the writings of black feminists. Concerned with global as well as local events, she co-founded Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa (SISA) to raise concerns about black women under apartheid. After accepting an offer to serve as a guest professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin in 1984, she remained there as a U.S. expatriate until 1992 to pursue activist work with the Afro-German population. Lorde received the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit in 1991, which recognized her as poet laureate of New York State. She took the name “Gambda Adisa” – which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known” – in an African naming ceremony shortly before she passed away from liver cancer on November 17, 1992 in St. Croix. Audre Lorde, self-proclaimed “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet,” was 58.

Erected 2014 by The Legacy Project.

Topics and series. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: African Americans • Arts, Letters, Music • Civil Rights • Women. In addition, it is included in the The Legacy Walk series list. A significant historical date for this entry is November 17, 1992.

Location. 41° 56.968′ N, 87°

Audre Lorde Marker - wide view image. Click for full size.

Photographed By Andrew Ruppenstein, August 26, 2021

2. Audre Lorde Marker - wide view

The Lorde marker is visible here mounted to the rainbow pylon that it shares with the marker for Oscar Wilde.

38.969′ W. Marker is in Chicago, Illinois, in Cook County. It is in Lake View East. Marker is on North Halsted Street, on the right when traveling north. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 3707 North Halsted Street, Chicago IL 60613, United States of America. Touch for directions.

Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Oscar Wilde (here, next to this marker); James Baldwin (a few steps from this marker); Josephine Baker (a few steps from this marker); Dra. Antonia Pantoja (about 300 feet away, measured in a direct line); Marsha P. Johnson (about 300 feet away); Sylvia Rivera (about 300 feet away); David Kato Kisule (about 600 feet away); Lorraine Hansberry (about 600 feet away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Chicago.

Also see . . .
1. About Audre Lorde (The Audre Lorde Project).

The Black feminist, lesbian, poet, mother, warrior Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a native New Yorker and daughter of immigrants. Both her activism and her published work speak to the importance of struggle for liberation among oppressed peoples and of organizing in coalition across differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age and ability. An internationally recognized activist and artist, Audre Lorde was the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, which conferred the mantle of New York State poet
Photographed By Andrew Ruppenstein, August 26, 2021

3. Marker inset: Audre Lorde
for 1991-93. In designating her New York State’s Poet Laureate, Governor Mario Cuomo observed: “Her imagination is charged by a sharp sense of racial injustice and cruelty, of sexual prejudice…She cries out against it as the voice of indignant humanity. Audre Lorde is the voice of the eloquent outsider who speaks in a language that can reach and touch people everywhere.”...

(Submitted on September 4, 2021.)

2. Audre Lorde (National Women's History Museum).

"Poet and author Audre Lorde used her writing to shine light on her experience of the world as a Black lesbian woman and later, as a mother and person suffering from cancer. A prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, her writings called attention to the multifaceted nature of identity and the ways in which people from different walks of life could grow stronger together."

(Submitted on September 4, 2021.)

Additional keywords. lgbt lgbtq

Credits. This page was last revised on January 30, 2023. It was originally submitted on September 4, 2021, by Andrew Ruppenstein of Lamorinda, California. This page has been viewed 194 times since then and 32 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3. submitted on September 4, 2021, by Andrew Ruppenstein of Lamorinda, California.