Bayard Rustin, the openly gay African American who was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s right hand man responsible for a good deal of the civil rights activist’s tactical and strategic success has been awarded a proclamation by Tom Bates, the Democratic 74-year old highly-popular mayor of the City of Berkeley, California, to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of Rustin’s 100th birthday. Bayard Rustin was born March 17, 1912, and died August 24, 1987, in New York City.

The proclamation was presented last night by Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore at the Berkeley City Council meeting, and a copy of the proclamation (image, above; full size, here,) once signed by Mayor Bates, was sent, along with the statement below, directly to The New Civil Rights Movement.


Dr. King (L) and Bayard Rustin (R)

“Bayard Rustin was one of the lead organizers and strategists for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August of 1963, who also brought Gandhi’s nonviolent protest techniques to the American Civil Rights Movement, and helped mold Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence,” Councilmember Moore said in a statement to The New Civil Rights Movement. “Bayard Rustin has gone largely unrecognized for his role in the Civil Rights Movement because he was openly gay. It was feared that having an openly gay advisor would discredit the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other leaders of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.”

Councilmember Darryl Moore, who also serves as Board Chair of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), the leading national black LGBT civil rights organization, wanted to take the opportunity during Bayard Rustin’s 100th Birthday to shine a light on his lifetime of accomplishments. “Bayard Rustin is best known for his role in the Civil Rights Movement, but he was also hugely involved in the labor movement, international human rights and was a stalwart of the LGBT community,” says Moore. “He really was an incredible person who has changed our world in ways that we have not properly recognized nor appreciated.”

For gays of color, though, there can be more obstacles: When he came out, CNN news anchor Don Lemon jested that he was “a double minority,” but tensions between the two communities have strained in recent years. (Whether true or not, the perception that black churches were heavily involved in the campaign to pass Proposition 8 opened old wounds on both sides.)

African-Americans, though, have always been a party of the gay community—both as members and as allies. NAACP president Benjamin Jealous told the audience at the recent Conference on LGBT Equality, “if you pick a fight with my brother—whether it is because you say we ain’t like you or he ain’t like us—you have picked a fight with me.”

Many gays of color have made their mark on America, including writers James Baldwin (above), Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde and E. Lynn Harris; directors Patrik Ian-Polk (Noah’s Arc), Paris Barclay (Glee, Sons of Anarchy) and Lee Daniels (Precious); pro basketball players Sheryl Swoopes and John Amaeche (right); singers Meshell Ndegeocello and Kele Okereke (Bloc Party)—and even a Republican mayor, Bruce Harris of Chatham, NJ.

Today is the start of Black History Month, and Queerty is taking a look at seven gay African-Americans who weren’t just pioneers in their chosen fields, but who paved the way for all of us.

Our story begins in Philadelphia in 1889, with the birth of a girl named Inez Brown.

Inez was born into a poor family, and by all accounts her childhood was difficult. At a young age, she was forced to quit school to work in a pickle factory. Her father abandoned the family when Inez was just a few years old, leaving her mother to raise her and her three siblings.

When Inez was a teenager, her mother remarried, and the family moved to San Francisco. There, Inez got a job working as a manicurist at the Palace Hotel.

Described as striking and shapely, Inez quickly garnered many regular male customers eager to take advantage of her manicuring services. One of these men was an elderly physician by the name of Dr. West. He was a full-time abortionist, and he would change the course of Inez’s life.

Liberty and justice for all is not yet a reality in America. Despite the election of our nation’s first African American president, black Americans continue to trail behind their white counterparts in education, employment, and overall health and wellbeing. And while some states and the federal government continue to expand protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, more than half of all states still deny them basic civil rights. Such systemic inequities render people of color who are also gay and transgender among the most vulnerable in our society.

Black gay and transgender Americans in particular experience stark social, economic, and health disparities compared to the general population and their straight black and white gay counterparts. According to the data we currently have, families headed by black same-sex couples are more likely to raise their children in poverty, black lesbians are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases, and black gay and transgender youth are more likely to end up homeless and living on the streets.

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In short, black gay and transgender people fall through the cracks when lumped under either a gay or black umbrella. Such categorical thinking ignores the fact that black gay and transgender people are at once both gay and transgender and black. As a result they experience complex vulnerabilities that stem from the combination of racial bias and discrimination due to their sexual orientation and/ or gender identity. So advocacy agendas that prioritize the eradication of one bias over the other do not fully respond to the needs of the population—nor will they eliminate the inequities discussed in this report.

Going forward, it is necessary to find policy solutions that will empower black gay and transgender people rather than fragment them. And we need to move beyond the dichotomy of race versus sexual orientation or race versus gender identity to do so. Scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw, Cathy J. Cohen, and C. Nicole Mason offer frameworks for applying this intersectional lens to policy analysis and advocacy in order to understand how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity influence public policy choices at the national, state, and local levels, as well as individual outcomes. Our analysis is drawn in part from their theories.

Historian Trent Kelly has collected 146 rare vintage photographs of black male couples from the past 150 years.

Although the large majority of the pictures depict gay couples, the collection also includes images of families and friends but they all have one thing in common: they capture images of love.

Below is a snippet of why Kelly started the collection along with a few photos from his archive.

Historically, the Afro American gay male and couple has largely been defined by everyone but themselves. Afro American gay men are ignored into nonexistence in parts of black culture and are basically second class citizens in gay culture. The black church which has historically played a fundamental role in protesting against civil injustices toward its parishioners has been want to deny its gay members their right to live a life free and open without prejudice. Despite public projections of a “rainbow” community living together in harmonious co-habitation, openly active and passive prejudices exist in the larger gay community against gay Afro Americans.