As a young man growing up in Hickory, North Carolina, E. Patrick Johnson didn’t have any gay role models. So decades later, after landing a grant and a teaching job at Northwestern University he made it his mission to collect the stories of Southern gay black men. Johnson traveled across 15 southern states to interview more than 60 gay black men about their lives. Their experiences are chronicled in the book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South. And now, Johnson is bringing those real-life stories to life on stage in a one-man play at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago. Johnson talks about the production the people and the pull of the South.

Web Extra:
E. Patrick Johnson Takes a Different Course as Stories of Gay Men Unfold

Performance:
Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men in the South
Through May 29
Viaduct Theatre