American writer, editor and activist Joseph Beam was BOTD in 1954. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a working-class family, he studied at Franklin College in Indiana, where he became active in journalism and student politics. After graduation, he returned to Philadelphia, working at the influential LGBT bookstore Giovanni’s Room, and began publishing short stories and articles in Philadelphia Gay News, The Advocate and New York Native. He became heavily involved in Black civil rights causes, befriending and corresponding with luminaries including Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, Pat Parker, Marlon Riggs and Bayard Rustin. He also corresponded regularly with Black male prisoners, which he credited with helping him understand a “deep sense of my own imprisonment as a closeted Gay man and an oppressed Black man“. His political journalism and activism earned him a commendation from The Lesbian and Gay Press Association and the Philadelphia Gay News Lambda Award. In 1995, he joined the executive committee of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, and became the editor of its journal Black/Out. He rose to national attention in 1986 as the editor of In the Life, the first anthology of Black gay writing. Among the authors promoted in the anthology was poet Essex Hemphill, with whom Beam formed a relationship. Beam began work on a second anthology, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men. He died in 1988 from an AIDS-related illness, aged 33. After Beam’s death, Hemphill collaborated with Beam’s mother to finish the anthology, which was published in 1991, winning a Lambda Literary Award.