Black museums should
celebrate gay blacks
Deb Price, The
Detroit News from the Web, March 2, 2006
In a life of activism that spanned
six decades, Bayard Rustin is best known as the brilliant organizer of the 1963
"I Have a Dream" March on Washington.
The gay African-American who mentored Martin Luther King Jr. on the principles
of nonviolent civil disobedience, used by Gandhi against British rule in India,
organized sit-ins in the 1940s at segregated restaurants and theaters. And
he spent 22 days on a chain gang for organizing the first "Freedom Ride" in
1947.
He embraced other causes, such as the dangers of nuclear weapons, global human
rights and ending anti-gay bigotry.
"Prejudice is of a single bit," Rustin once said, meaning that to him all
oppression was related. He knew this first-hand both as a black and a gay
man.
When Rustin's gifts for organizing peaceful resistance resulted in gain after
gain for the black civil rights movement, its enemies, including segregationist
Strom Thurmond, denounced him for being homosexual, publicizing his 1953 arrest
on a gay sex charge. Later, when the black separatist movement rose,
Rustin, a vocal advocate of racial integration, was similarly gay-baited by
fellow African-Americans.
Rustin's story can't properly be told without acknowledging his homosexuality --
how it shaped him and how it was used against him. That is true of
countless other gay black stars, such as writers James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.
Yet as William Billingsley, executive director of the Association of African
American Museums, acknowledged to me, the nation's 250 black museums are
virtually silent when it comes to truthfully describing the lives of gay
African-Americans.
Black museums have on occasion spotlighted gay African-Americans. For
example, the Charles H. Wright museum in Detroit showed the remarkable black gay
documentary "Tongues Untied" in 2004. And just last week in Virginia, the
Alexandria Black History Museum showed "Brother Outsider," the acclaimed
documentary that explores what Rustin achieved as well as the obstacles put in
his path because of his sexual orientation.
Fortunately, more change is coming. Black lesbian activist Mandy Carter is
launching the "Black Museum Project" to encourage museums to present special
exhibits on influential gay African-Americans like Rustin.
Billingsley welcomes the nudge. "The time has come to do this," he says.
"If we are African-American museums of history, this needs to be covered.
We can't deny it or step around it anymore."
In Rustin's case, the needed scholarship has been done: In 2003, the 40th
anniversary of the March on Washington, "Brother Outsider," was aired by PBS,
and historian John D'Emilio published his much-praised biography, "Lost
Prophet."
That kind of serious scholarship, much of which is being conducted by gay
African-Americans themselves, will be key to ensuring that museums, including
the huge black history museum due to open in 2012 in Washington, D.C., don't
erase the homosexuality of prominent African-Americans who were indeed gay.
The late Essex Hemphill, a black gay poet, once wrote: "The silence
surrounding black gay and lesbian lives is being meticulously dismantled.
Every closet is coming down."
This year's Black History Month is a fitting time to articulate a new dream --
that from here on, the contributions of gay African-Americans will be fully and
truthfully celebrated.
Reach Deb Price at (202) 662-8736 or
dprice@detnews.com.
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