Participants were called upon to deliver a salient personal message, and the 100 + stories that were collected are as diverse as they are powerful. The finalized exhibition will include footage of participants coming out to family members, sharing memories of bygone decades, and reaching out to public figures to foster a more inclusive climate.

Meanwhile, in the Family Educational Activity Area, parents and educators engaged children in storytelling activities, supplemented by age appropriate literature that featured themes of diversity and inclusion. While learning about the myriad ways that families are brought together by love, participants decorated picture frames to house photos that they snapped and printed on-site.

As anticipated, the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams community lounge was a gathering place for passersby who sought to cool off, families who needed a rest, and guests who waited for their turn to share their stories in the Time Machine booths. Nearly 1,000 of the Museum’s Here I Am strategic planning pamphlets were disseminated to interested parties, many of whom talked with staff members about opportunities to contribute and volunteer.

Prompted by the success of the Time Machine video booth project, the Museum is creating a national outreach project in order to enable participants from across the country to share their stories and view the 100+ videos that were collected during Pride. If you would like to learn more, visit facebook.com/Nationallgbtmuseum.

THE FUTURE IS HERE pavilion at Capital Pride, including the Time Machine video booths and Family Educational Activity Area, was made possible by the National LGBT Museum’s partnership with Capital Pride, the generosity of our principal sponsor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the support of FLOR, Mintz Levin, Etera Consulting, the Imperial Court, Stoneturn Group, MFM Design, and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. We also want to express our gratitude for the generosity of individual sponsors Patrick O’Connell, Marshall Sanders, Andrew Williams, John R. Pope, Peter Pawlowski, Will Trinkle, Juan Granados, Reggie Van Lee, James Alefantis, Mitchell and Tim Gold, and Alan and Judith Halfenger.  

Click this link to see more pictures on our Facebook page. 

For more information, contact Chris Kane at Tel: (704) 778-7590 or by email at ckane@velvetfoundation.org. Visit www.nationallgbtmuseum.org to learn more. 

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Museum Welcomes New Board Member

The Velvet Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working to build and maintain a National LGBT Museum in Washington, DC, is pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has appointed Javier Morgado as a new member, effective immediately. Mr. Morgado brings a wealth of professional experience cultivated by a 15-year career in journalism with senior management roles at some of the nation’s leading media outlets.

Mr. Morgado is currently the Senior Broadcast Producer at CNN’s new morning show New Day in New York City and serves on the network’s Diversity Council. He joined CNN in 2011, where he now manages the evening production staff and oversees editorial content & bookings for four hours of live programming on the worldwide cable network.

Prior to joining CNN, Mr. Morgado held several management positions at NBC News during his 11-year tenure.  He most recently served as Supervising Producer at the Today show from 2006-2010, where he managed numerous editorial aspects of the show. The program won two Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Morning Program during his tenure.  Mr. Morgado also served as a Senior Editor at the network from 2003-2006 where he managed daily news coverage of domestic, international and political news.  Prior to moving to New York City, Mr. Morgado worked in local news at WTVJ and WPLG in his hometown of Miami, Florida.

Mr. Morgado’s expertise extends beyond television news production.  He was Vice President of Business Development & Communications for Latina magazine from 2010-2011, where he was responsible for the strategic development of print & online properties, crafting the brand’s public relations campaigns, and managing content partnerships and brand extensions.

His passion and commitment to nonprofit organizations is also noteworthy.  Mr. Morgado currently serves on the Leadership Council for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and on the Visiting Committee of his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Miami School of Communication.  For nearly a decade, he has chaired the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association’s (NLGJA) successful & star-studded annual fundraiser and he also served on the organization’s Board of Directors from 2006-2009.

Mr. Morgado holds an MBA from Fordham University and a Master of Science in human resource management from New York University.  In recent years, he has also completed executive education programs at the Harvard Business School and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.“We are eager to welcome Mr. Morgado to the National LGBT Museum’s Board of Directors. His talents in journalism, public relations, branding, and nonprofit fundraising will undoubtedly help us make this museum a reality in the coming years,” says Tim Gold, CEO of the Velvet Foundation.

To learn more about the National LGBT Museum, please visit our website at www.nationallgbtmuseum.org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter @lgbtmuseum. You may also click here to make a contribution. 

As it prepares to move to the High Line in 2015, The Whitney asked its curators to mine its permanent collection to see if there were periods of time that might have been overlooked in the shows of recent years. I, YOU, WE is the answer: the difficult, searching, and searing work produced by the passionate and disenfranchised denizens of New York’s tumultuous 1980s and early 1990s.

Works feature the flip side of Warhol’s Interview magazine and Studio 54 – people struggling with identities, illness, injustice, and the consequences of Washington’s culture wars against innovative art. It’s hard to remember that 28,000 people died of HIV before the U.S. government ever acknowledged it, but the artists of the day were well aware of that disassociation between the official line and the tragedies that were befalling friends around them. One gallery is filled is protests, guerilla advertising, and testaments to this particular struggle. Here is a link to images of several works. Pay close attention to those by David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Katherine Opie for a feeling of what life was like at that time.

For a close, personal account of those times, listen and watch as artist/social critic Sue Coe recollects what it was like to draw portraits in the time of AIDS. In another Whitney video, author and former The Village Voice staffer Cynthia Carr discusses the philosophy that shaped the writer, artist, and activist David Wojnarowicz and his unforgettable reactions to the injustices he saw around him.

Other sections of the Whitney show focus on artists’ exploration of race and gender. Tough stuff, but not tougher than the lives these artists lived during that decade. Congratulations to the Whitney for not forgetting and presenting this work to the next generation.

The show runs through September 1 in New York.

About the author:

Susan B writes an arts and culture blog, ItsNewsToYou.me, and contributes posts here about exhibitions around the US that prompt discussion relevant to the history and culture of the communities that the National LGBT Museum seeks to reach.

Belles of the Battlefield:

Female Soldiers and Gender Identity in the Civil War

By Mel White, Co-Founder of Soulforce

Author: Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America and Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tell to Deny Gay Equality

The final body count reached 918 men, women, and children.  The nation was horrified. Deceived by their pastor, Jim Jones, on November, 18, 1978, almost a thousand members of “The People’s Temple Agricultural Community” committed suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.  Newspapers around the world featured photos of their bodies lying face down in the jungle.  In the center of that hellish scene there was a chair on a platform where Jones had sat preaching paranoia and urging his people to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid.  Above the platform was a sign reading: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  It is ironic that Jones had posted that famous Santayana quote permanently above his pulpit.  If only 918 men, women and children had taken those words seriously. Unfortunately they did not.

People were stunned by the tragedy but at the same time most observers were certain that it could never happen to them.  “Jones was a phony,” they assumed. “Any person with half-a-brain would not be deceived by San Francisco’s Elmer Gantry.” In fact Jones was an ordained minister of good standing in the United Church of Christ. In the beginning his sermons were Bible-based and socially progressive.  Famous guests at his Sunday morning services included Vice President Walter Mondale and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.  Long before leading his congregation to Guyana, Jones was appointed Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Commission and honored for his work on behalf of race relations, public housing and hunger alleviation in an impressive testimonial dinner attended by the Governor of California and other powerful political and religious figures.

People who were stunned by those photos from Jonestown also assumed quite incorrectly that Jones’ victims were poor, uneducated and vulnerable to deception.  In writing a book and filming a documentary on Jonestown[i] (“Deceived: the Jonestown Tragedy”) I was surprised to learn that many of Jones’ victims were intelligent men and women with grad school degrees and impressive career records. How easy it is even for the so called well-informed to forget the lessons the past has taught us. This one lesson alone might have saved them: “No matter how much you love and trust an authority figure when he isolates you from your friends and family, when he uses fear to keep you in place, when he begins to make unreasonable demands and refuses to answer your questions with reasonable answers, run for the jungle.”

These are the best of times for LGBTQ people.  After decades of slow and painful struggle, the tide is turning. Full equality seems well within our reach.  We deserve time off to celebrate the amazing victories of recent years. However, before we think we’ve won the war against ignorance and intolerance we need to recall Santayana’s warning “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Before we begin to forget the years of struggle that got us to this place, before our memories dim, it would be wise for us LGBTQ people to make a serious effort to preserve our own unique American history.  One powerful, permanent way to remember our past would be a National LGBT Museum built alongside the other great museums in Washington, DC.  I can’t tell you how many times museum visits have slapped me awake.

Have you walked through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC? No words can match the emotional impact of those collections of hair, shoes and eyeglasses removed from Jewish victims.  How important it is to remember that once a great nation was duped into insanity by a mediocre Austrian painter. Perhaps it is more important for people of faith to remember that most Christian leaders in Germany goose stepped with the Nazi deceivers. While very few Christian pastors and theologians risked their lives to condemn Hitler, men like Dietrich Bonheoffer were hanged for opposing Nazi tyranny.  Needless to say, memories of the Holocaust include thousands of our LGBT sisters and brothers who were cast into concentration camps under Paragraph 175 of the anti-sodomy law of the German Criminal Code.   When WWII ended, gay prisoners were the last to be released from prisons and Paragraph 175 was not officially revoked in Germany until 1994.

Have you visited the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama? One exhibit features an ordinary window looking out on an old, red brick church just across the street. It seemed like a strange non-exhibit until I read the simple plaque under the window: Birmingham’s 16^th Street Baptist Church. I stood there blinking back tears as I pictured Ku Klux Klansman Robert Chambliss placing dynamite near that very church stairway, lighting the fuse and watching from a distance while four little girls skipped into view.  How important it is to remember that our nation too has a terrible history of intolerance and injustice.  Perhaps it is even more important for people of faith to remember that not one Southern preacher, in fact not one Northern preacher, used his pulpit to condemn lynching during those terrible lynching years.  Of course there were exceptions; white preachers like the Rev. Robert Graetz and his wife Jean were ostracized, harassed, arrested and their home bombed twice because they supported Dr. King at every stage of his work in Birmingham.[ii]  Once again, history reminds us of the unjust suffering of gay men like Bayard Rustin, the genius behind King’s March on Washington, who was sacrificed by Dr. King and the other Civil Rights leaders because his homosexuality “might shame the movement.”

Museums like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, keep memories alive that relate, if sometimes only indirectly, to our lives as LGBTQ Americans.  It’s time we built a museum of our own to focus directly on our unique past. A repository for memories that could help guide us in the present (as we continue moving toward full equality) and protect us in the future (when once again our enemies gather to reverse the rights we have gained.)

Our National LGBTQ Museum might include the dramatic and rather terrifying early history of same-sex acts in Colonial America where British settlers arrived carrying King Henry VIII’s “Buggery Act 1533” making sodomy a capital crime. The Puritans landed carrying well marked Bibles they would misuse to arrest, try and even execute homosexuals.  The new Puritans are still misusing those verses against us. No one knows the names of the thousands of homosexual Americans who suffered shame, imprisonment and even death during those Colonial times.  But we can learn from history that our struggle for full equality began even then.

Thomas Jefferson has been vilified for making castration the punishment for sodomy in his   Criminal Code for Virginia (1777). “A woman guilty of sodomy,” Jefferson wrote, “was to be punished by cutting through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.”  For a moment I thought very badly of Thomas Jefferson; however ending the death penalty just one year after the Declaration of Independence makes Jefferson a kind of hero.  In fact, without even knowing it he was launching our seemingly endless struggle to overturn all same-sex sodomy laws. Those laws were not overturned until June 26, 2003, when the Supreme Court decided (6-3) that private sexual conduct is protected by the U.S. Constitution.  We get a new perspective on our recent victories when we remember that ending the sodomy laws took us 226 years.

In March 1778, General George Washington joined Jefferson in ending the death penalty for sodomy, this time in the military. The Commander and Chief of our Revolutionary Forces approved a military tribunal’s decision that a Lieutenant Enslin of Colorado’s Malcom’s Regiment should not be hanged for attempting sodomy on another soldier. Instead the General sentenced Lieutenant Enslin to be “drummed out of camp tomorrow morning by all the drummers and the fifers in the Army never to return.” That dishonorable discharge ended sodomy as a capital offense in the military, but such began our seemingly endless struggle to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. That didn’t happen until September 20, 2011, when “Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell” was finally set aside by the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  We get a new perspective on our recent victories when we remember that winning the right for homosexuals to serve openly in the military took us 233 years.

Remembering the past gives us perspective on both the present and the future.  Imagine generations of LGBTQ people wandering through our National LGBT Museum, learning for the first time about our own martyrs and our heroes:  Seeing pictures of our ancestors who were arrested, put on trial and even hanged for simply loving someone of the same sex; Hearing stories of  LGBT Americans and our allies who risked their political careers to end the laws against sodomy and serving openly in the military; Discovering  what generations of activists (and frustrated LGBTQ people) have endured to gain the full rights and protections of marriage—rights and protections these young people might otherwise take for granted.  Without that Museum tour those same students might never know about our struggle for LGBTQ civil rights, a struggle that lasted centuries, a struggle that continues to this day.

They will learn about the Mattachine Society (1951), the first national gay rights organization, formed by Harry Hay, who is considered the founder of the 20^th century gay rights movement.  They will discover the Daughters of Bilitis (1955), the first lesbian-rights organization founded by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who are often called our movement’s founding mothers.  They will learn about the Gay Liberation Front, about Queer Nation and Lesbian Avengers, and about ACT-UP whose motto “Silence equals death” motivated so many of us to become activists. Their relentless (almost always nonviolent) protests on behalf of people with HIV/AIDS helped force political leaders and giant pharmaceutical companies to quit stalling and begin doing justice for people living with that disease.

The Museum could bring to life dramatic moments in our struggle for civil rights, for example: that first gathering of twelve in Troy Perry’s living room that became the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, still the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization (October 6, 1968); the Stonewall “riot” where our courageous “T’s” stood up against a police sting operation and helped launch a resistance movement that continues to this day (June 27, 1969).  The APA’s decision to remove homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders (1973). The arson attack on an MCC church meeting in a gay bar in New Orleans where 32 died and 15 were grotesquely injured (June 24, 1973). The swearing in of Harvey Milk the first openly gay man elected to public office (January 8, 1978) and his assassination by Dan White just eleven months later (November 7, 1978). The first National March on Washington attended by approximately 75,000 people (1979).  And just 14 years later, the March on Washington for LGB Equal Rights and Liberation attended by an estimated 800,000 to one million people (1993).

We have so many LGBTQ heroes whose stories need to be discovered by coming generations: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, James Baldwin, Evelyn Hooker, Truman Capote, Alice Walker, Noel Coward, Willa Cather, Larry Kramer, Barbara Gittings, Morris Kight,  Margarethe Cammermeyer, Greg Louganis, names that just begin the list of great LGBTQ people whose lives have had a positive impact on our nation. We also must remember how shame, homophobia, and fear drove people like Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hover to work against the movement and their own interests.

If I were invited to curate an exhibit in our brand new National LGBT Museum, it would tell the story of Christian fundamentalists and their war against LGBTQ Americans.  I have spent the last 30 years studying the rise of right wing Christians into places of political and religious power.[iii]   Now an integral part of the Tea-Party movement, they are doing it again, rallying their forces to reverse the progress we have made.  We should celebrate our victories but we need an emotionally powerful exhibit that reminds us of these words by Coretta Scott King: “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won.  You earn it and win it in every generation.”

In 1994 my husband Gary and I, along with a group of gay and lesbian friends, staged a seven day “Fast for Understanding” in the shadow of James Dobson’s massive “Focus on the Family Headquarters.” On the first day in a radio interview I invited families from Colorado Springs to visit us, to meet a gay couple, to discover that we are NOT in any way like Dobson describes us on his radio broadcasts.  By the third day dozens of families were streaming up the hill in our direction.

Late one afternoon a woman with two children in their early teens dropped by for a visit.  I greeted them but the mother remained silent.  After a rather long pause she said quietly, “Dr. White, I am not gay and I am not Christian.  I am a Jewish mother who brought her children to meet you.” I smiled and began to thank her when she continued. “This is not a social visit,” she said.  “We know Dobson lies about gays.  He lies about a lot of things.” Again she paused.  I could see tears forming in her eyes.  I had no idea what would happen next when she said simply, “Last time they took you first.  We must not let that happen again.”  She was remembering Hitler’s Third Reich and the sudden unexpected arrest of thousands of gay Germans.  No one knew it then, but Hitler was testing the general public to see how they would react to mass arrests and concentration camps.   When almost no one even noticed that gays were disappearing in the night, Hitler began his campaign to rid Europe of six million Jews.

The people who followed Jim Jones into the jungles of Guyana and then almost without protest drank the Kool-Aid laced with cyanide thought it could never happen to them.  The German people heard rumors that Jews would be arrested and carted off to concentration camps but thought it could never happen to them.  At this moment, LGBT people know that fundamentalist Christians have a mandate from God to reverse those rights, silence our voices and drive us back into our closets or worse but we are confident that it could never happen to us.  I hope we’ll post over the entry of our new National LGBT Museum Santayana’s words: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As America celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, it is important to recognize the forgotten man behind Martin Luther King’s philosophy of nonviolent action.  Bayard Rustin was one of the twentieth century’s most talented civil rights advocates and organizers.  Although his career is often eclipsed by Martin Luther King, his role as King’s mentor is paramount to understanding the civil rights movement.  Rustin’s career was much broader than the March on Washington, encompassing fifty years of nonviolent activism. 

The name Bayard Rustin would be better known today, had it not been for a stigma that Rustin carried throughout his life: he was gay.  Public reactions to his same-sex attraction damaged Rustin’s career several times, preventing him from becoming a civil rights icon on the level of Martin Luther King.  However, his passionate advocacy for the civil rights of African Americans and the LGBT community must not be forgotten.

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER: AN ADVOCATE FOR NONVIOLENCE

Rustin grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and realized he was gay during high school.  Rustin matured during a time when most communities rarely spoke of homosexuality, aside from vocally discouraging openly gay relationships.  Rustin moved to New York and found an outlet in the city’s bars, clubs and theaters, which were friendlier to the gay community and allowed him to earn a living as a singer.

In 1941, Rustin joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a Christian-based pacifist organization, that emphasized nonviolence as a method for effecting political change.  A.J. Muste, a Dutch clergyman, ran the organization and became one of Rustin’s important early mentors. Rustin acted as a field worker, traveling across the country to spread the message of nonviolent resistance and civil rights. 

In a nine-month period, Rustin traveled 10,000 miles, speaking to college students across 20 states.  On the subject on nonviolence, Rustin told students the philosophy that embodied his career: “there are three ways to deal with injustice: one can accept it slavishly, or one can resist it with arms, or one can use nonviolence.  The man who uses nonviolence is prepared to be harmed, to be crushed, but he will never crush others.”  During a visit to Columbia University, Rustin met a student named Davis Platt and began his first committed relationship, as America’s involvement in World War II dawned.

A committed pacifist, Rustin resisted the Selective Service Act, telling the Justice Department that he believed war was inherently wrong, and he could not submit to a draft.  Indeed, in 1943 Rustin conducted an anti-war meeting where he encouraged men to burn their draft cards on stage.  Authorities arrested Rustin for refusing to register, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

While incarcerated, Rustin and Platt corresponded through letters, and they developed a code to hide their relationship from anyone who could access the letters: Platt simply pretended he was Rustin’s girlfriend.  However, in September 1944 the prison convicted Rustin of having homosexual relations with another prisoner, and placed him in solitary confinement.  When Rustin’s boss, A.J. Muste, learned of the incident, he visited Rustin in prison. Furious, he told his protégé that his sexual improprieties could be a liability at FOR should the public ever discover it.  For years thereafter, Rustin’s status as a gay man became known behind closed doors as “Bayard’s problem.”

Muste’s worries became a reality in 1953, when Rustin traveled on a speaking tour to Pasadena, California.  After the speech, local police discovered Rustin having sex with two white males inside a car, and police arrested Rustin on charges of lewd vagrancy.  A Pasadena court later sentenced Rustin to sixty days in prison, and Muste grew furious.  Funding for the FOR came primarily from wealthy religious donors, and Muste feared that news of Rustin’s arrest would jeopardize the movement.  Muste asked for Rustin’s resignation from FOR after twelve years of service, and Rustin resigned for the good of the movement.  However, the arrest would haunt Rustin’s career for many years.

MENTOR TO MARTIN: BAYARD RUSTIN AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Despite this setback, the pinnacle of Rustin’s career began in 1956, when he met a 25 year-old minister and civil rights activist named Martin Luther King Jr.  At the time, King served as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, and organized a boycott of the segregated busing system in Montgomery, Alabama.  Rustin traveled to Montgomery as a special advisor to King on nonviolent direct action, beginning a long and complicated relationship.

Rustin immediately became an older brother figure to the young King.  King believed in nonviolence as a tactic, but Rustin, the more experienced political agitator, taught King the value of nonviolence as a political philosophy.  Rustin argued that if black protestors could resist the urge to strike back violently at their oppressors, they would begin a movement that would redefine the struggle for civil rights.

Rustin also convinced King that the Bus Boycott would only be effective if cities throughout the South embraced a similar movement.  His ideas formed part of the inspiration for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Martin Luther King’s most significant civil rights organization. However, in the middle of the boycott, Rustin’s previous lewd vagrancy charges became an issue, and, again, Rustin voluntarily left Montgomery for the good of the movement.  The Bus Boycott eventually succeeded with the Supreme Court of Browder v. Gayle, which declared segregated buses in Alabama unconstitutional.

Afterward, Rustin returned to King’s side to work behind the scenes at the SCLC.  The SCLC planned to protest outside the 1960 Republican and Democratic National Conventions because both parties refused to adopt a civil rights plank in their platform.  NAACP President Roy Wilkins heard that the SCLC planned the protest without consulting him, and learned shortly after that Bayard Rustin was in charge of the demonstration.  The antigay Wilkins immediately hatched a plan to remove Rustin from his place of influence.

Wilkins contacted Adam Clayton Powell, a black Congressman from Harlem and a key advocate for civil rights legislation in the U.S. House.  Powell was a rising star in Congress and needed the NAACP’s public support of his agenda.  Powell gave a speech to the press asserting that “immoral elements” existed inside the civil rights movement.  In private, he threatened Martin Luther King that if he did not withdraw from the convention protests and oust Rustin, Powell would announce that Rustin and King were engaged in a homosexual affair.  Afraid of the damage this slander would cause, King forced his mentor to resign from the SCLC, leaving Rustin feeling betrayed.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

By 1962, one of Rustin’s earliest mentors on nonviolence, A. Phillip Randolph, revived an idea: a march in Washington DC on issues of black unemployment.  Randolph had wanted to do such a march since the 1940s, and with the organizational strength of men like Bayard Rustin and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the time was now perfect to make the government hear the demands of the black community.  King developed a platform for the march based on desegregation of public facilities, jobs, and increased voting protection for black Americans. 

The historic march studied in classrooms would have been much different, had it not been for Bayard Rustin’s quick thinking.  King’s team decided to frame the march around pressuring the Kennedy Administration and Congress to pass the Equal Accommodations Act, which, in part, would have ended segregation in schools, the workplace and public facilities.  Kennedy learned of the march, and wanted to be in control of its message.  As a result, his administration requested that Kennedy speak at the Lincoln Memorial.  Rustin realized that the president’s participation would change the entire tenor of the march, making it about Kennedy himself rather than the civil rights movement.  Rustin concocted a story, telling the White House that march organizers had received threats of black violence should Kennedy take the podium.  The president immediately withdrew his interest, and watched the march on the evening news.

Despite this victory, “Bayard’s problem” resurfaced two weeks before the march.  Senator Strom Thurmond, a devoted Dixiecrat and defender of Jim Crow policies, attempted to discredit Rustin and the march by discussing Rustin’s criminal record on the floor of the United States Senate. Thurmond hoped the speech would be damning enough to force Rustin’s resignation.

However, Rustin’s value to the march was too great. Unlike his early career, when knowledge of his true sexual orientation caused his supporters to distance themselves, Rustin’s colleagues jumped to defend him after the Thurmond speech.  In a statement co-written by Rustin himself, A. Phillip Randolph stated unequivocally:

I am sure I speak for the entire Negro leadership in voicing my complete confidence in Bayard Rustin’s character, integrity and extraordinary ability.  There are those that contend that these incidents, which took place many years ago, void or overwhelm Mr. Rustin’s ongoing contributions to the struggle for human rights.  They seek only to discredit the movement.

With Randolph’s endorsement, Rustin continued planning the logistics of the march in earnest.  He had less than two months to orchestrate the largest rally the National Mall had ever seen.  Rustin planned every detail of the march, working out of a New York office that had too few telephones, typewriters and mimeograph machines.  He trained a group of college-aged volunteers on how to plan the logistics of transporting hundreds of groups from across the country.  He declared that every bus would be led by a marshall, identified with an armband, who would keep his group together while on the Mall.  Rustin also oversaw fundraising, and even booked A-list celebrities to appear at the Lincoln Memorial, including Bob Dylan, Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando.  To ensure a unity of message, Rustin declared that only six slogans could be used on signs carried by the marchers.

As August 28, 1963 drew near, Rustin trained an unarmed, all-black police force to maintain order on the Mall. Furthermore, amid rumors of white counter-demonstrations, Rustin convinced District of Columbia police officers to station themselves along highway exits in Maryland and Virginia, to stop any counter-demonstration groups from entering the city.  Rustin’s most important act involved Martin Luther King: he knew that after King spoke, the march would reach its crescendo.  To this end, Rustin decided that Martin Luther King would speak last.  His decision created one of the famous moments in American history.    

AFTER THE MARCH: RUSTIN AS AN LGBT ADVOCATE

Rustin, a man who found himself rejected throughout his career because of his sexual orientation, suddenly found himself on the cover of Life magazine two weeks after the march.  As a result of his masterful planning, Rustin became a well-known figure within the civil rights movement, and he transitioned from a behind-the-scenes organizer to a political power player.

In 1977, Rustin had a chance meeting on a street corner with Walter Naegle, who became his partner for the rest of his life.  Naegle helped Rustin finally come to terms with his sexuality after decades of struggle, and convinced him to start advocating for the LGBT community. A year later, Rustin returned to the nation’s capital to participate in the March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, and in 1986, a year before his death, he used his political clout to pass a bill in New York City banning public discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. 

In 2013, President Barack Obama recognized Rustin’s major contributions to the African American and LGBT civil rights movements by awarding him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

At the March for Gay and Lesbian Rights, Rustin noted a shift in the battle for human rights that had occurred in his lifetime:

Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people.  That is no longer true.  The barometer for judging the character of people in regards to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay or lesbian.

Twenty-five years after he uttered these words, Rustin’s wisdom, though now broadened for a more inclusive community, still rings true.

In April 2013, the world of professional sports buzzed with the news that Jason Collins, center for the NBA’s Washington Wizards, came out as gay.  What makes Collins’s announcement most remarkable is the culture within it was made, a culture where the majority of Americans now support gay marriage for the first time in history, a nation led by the first president to publicly support gay marriage, and a popular culture growing more accustomed to not only watching, but relating, to openly gay characters in television and film. 

However, how will Collins’s announcement affect the traditionally conservative world of sports, which is typically defined by traditional images of masculinity and virility?  The initial response from fellow athletes has proven overwhelmingly positive, as stars from Kobe Bryant to Steve Nash congratulated Collins on Twitter.  The Washington Wizards organization also showed its solidarity with Collins, stating that “we are extremely proud of Jason and support his decision to live his life proudly and openly.”  Indeed, the frequently outspoken Charles Barkley shared that he played with at least four gay players in his career, and reminded the public that athletes often know which teammates are gay, even if those teammates choose to keep their sexual orientation private from the media.

With the revelation of Jason Collins, the issue of homosexuality in sports is moving out of the locker room and onto the court.  Collins has inspired other gay athletes, such as professional soccer star Robbie Rogers, to play openly.  Rogers retired after the 2012 season, because he didn’t feel he “could be openly gay and play soccer simultaneously.”  Rogers also worried how his open sexuality would affect team dynamics, how the media would react to such an announcement, and whether he could perform at a high level amidst this potential controversy.  However, Rogers returned to the game after the positive public reaction to Jason Collins, and played his first professional game as an openly gay athlete in late May.

While the stories of Jason Collins and Robbie Rogers are courageous and deserve celebration, as journalist Allan Barra notes, the positive public reaction to their announcements “isn’t so much a breaker of barriers as much as an acknowledgement that the barriers have already been broken.”  To understand the place of these modern athletes in LGBT history, it is important to consider the gay athletes who came before them, and how popular culture and the media have impacted sexual identity in sports over the last forty years.

A discussion of sexual identity in sports since the 1970s must begin with the story of Glenn Burke.  Burke, a native Californian, entered Major League Baseball in 1976 as a centerfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers.  His coaches were immediately impressed with his athletic skill and baseball intelligence, as one Dodger coach, Jim Gilliam, called him “the next Willie Mays.”  Described by his teammates as the soul of the clubhouse, Burke became known for quoting Richard Pryor routines and imitating Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, by waddling around the dugout with towels underneath his shirt.  Burke’s natural charisma led the Dodgers to occasionally use him as the public face of the team, having him attend official press events and meet young fans before ballgames.

However, Glenn Burke was different from his teammates in one important respect: he was gay.  Rumors began spreading around the Dodgers clubhouse when Burke began a close friendship with Tommy Lasorda, Jr., son of the Dodgers manager.  Teammate and friend Dusty Baker also noticed signs, such as when Burke always refused to go on dates with Baker’s female cousins.  While still a player, Burke made the courageous decision to declare his sexual identity to the media, and he knew this potential revelation would come as a surprise to his teammates: “I knew that when the other ballplayers found out I was gay they would go, ‘Glenn Burke, gay? I can’t believe it.’  I knew one day they would find out and it was going to be a shock to them.  I didn’t act the way they thought gay people act.”  Burke talked openly about his sexuality to reporters, but the press refused to print his admission.  As Burke later explained, “I think everyone just pretended not to hear me. It just wasn’t a story they were ready to hear.”    

Rumors of Burke’s homosexuality eventually reached Dodgers executives, and after the 1977 season, Team Vice President Al Campanis called Burke into his office. Campanis offered to pay $75,000 for a honeymoon if Burke would get married, describing it as a “helpful gesture” that the Dodgers front office frequently offered its players.  Recognizing it as a bribe immediately, Burke wryly responded, “I guess you mean to a woman.”  The following season, the Dodgers traded Burke to the Oakland Athletics for aging outfielder Billy North, whom many in the Dodgers organization agreed was an inferior player.  Campanis claimed to the press that the Dodgers desired a more experienced outfielder, but many of Burke’s teammates, including Dusty Baker, knew it was because of Burke’s sexual orientation, and the Dodgers’ fears of public backlash if the news ever became public.  As sportswriter Jon Mooallem noted, the Los Angeles press claimed the trade “sucked the life out of the Dodgers clubhouse” and a few of Burke’s former teammates cried at their lockers after hearing the news.

Knowledge of Burke’s homosexuality ruined his career once he reached Oakland.  His new manager, Billy Martin, referred to him as “the faggot,” and kept him on the bench.  Burke’s fellow Athletics even refused to shower with him.  After injuring his leg, the Athletics demoted Burke to the Minor Leagues, where he played 25 games before deciding to abruptly retire.  After his retirement, Burke came out in a 1982 Inside Sports Magazine article entitled The Double Life of a Gay Dodger, followed by an interview with Bryant Gumble on Good Morning, America.  However, his story received no further press coverage, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn did not release a statement in support of this revelation.  This is a stark contrast to the Jason Collins story, when NBA Commissioner David Stern immediately congratulated Collins on his openness and promised that the league stood behind him. 

In his post-baseball career, Burke enjoyed success at the first ever Gay Games in 1982, winning medals in the 100 and 220-meter sprints.  Unfortunately, his life then entered a downward spiral.  After moving to the Castro district of San Francisco, Burke became addicted to cocaine, which led to a prison sentence for drug possession.  Later, Burke was forced to panhandle in order to pay for his drug habit and medical expenses, which he incurred after his right leg and foot were shattered by a car in 1987.  Burke contracted HIV in 1993 and died of the disease two years later at the age of 42, a talented baseball player denied the chance to play the game he loved because of his identity. 

Despite his hardships, Burke died proud of the legacy he achieved as an LGBT American, even if those achievements were not widely known. In 1995, he told People Magazine, “My mission as a gay ballplayer was the breaking of a stereotype…I think it worked. They can’t ever say now that a gay man can’t play in the majors, because I’m a gay man and I made it.”  Indeed, Atlantic sportswriter Allan Barra has appropriately dubbed Burke the “Jackie Robinson” of the gay rights movement.

The media has frequently assisted in asserting a stereotypical view of masculinity, one which presents strength, toughness and athletic ability as the indicator of manhood.  Media coverage of athletes such as Glenn Burke suggest that homosexuality threatens traditional ideals of masculinity in the eyes of fans, while ignoring the fact that gay males can be just as masculine as their heterosexual counterparts.  A study by sociologist Raewyn Connell revealed that “men view televised sports as an extension of their world”, as televised sports provide social cues which men use to assert a classical — and often stereotypical — form of masculinity, which some men view as threatened when openly LGBT athletes enter into this extended world.

Other athletes besides Glenn Burke faced media scrutiny when knowledge of their sexual orientation became public, including tennis legends Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova.  While playing on the professional tour in 1971, King, a heterosexual, began an affair with her secretary, Marilyn Burnett, who outed King after her retirement as part of a lawsuit.  Meanwhile, 24-year old Martina Navratilova defied the wishes of the World Tennis Association and came out to the media as a lesbian, becoming one of the first openly gay athletes while still competing.  The news media vilified both athletes: Navratilova was ridiculed for her masculine appearance, and one columnist titled her coverage of a match between Navratilova and Chris Evert as “Good Versus Evil,” with Martina clearly cast as the evil of the pair. 

King and Navratilova also lost several lucrative endorsements and sponsorships, and Martina’s revelation made the World Tennis Association’s own sponsor, Avon, nervous.  As Adrianne Blue argues in the biography Martina: The Life and Times of Martina Navratilova, Avon’s commercial success depended upon the perceived femininity of the women they featured; a decidedly masculine, openly lesbian tennis star threatened that image.  The issue of endorsements further reveals a cultural shift in the acceptance of gay athletes since the 1970s, as many sports writers are hotly debating whether Jason Collins will gain endorsements because of his declaration.  With a buying power of $800 million, the LGBT community could be a prime target for advertisers who wish to feature Jason Collins endorsing their products.  However, as NPR’s Scott Neuman noted, the use of athletes to market to the LGBT community is a largely untested landscape, and the question remains whether companies will seek out Collins to endorse products marketed to other audience segments, especially straight males.

The life stories of King, Navratilova and other openly gay athletes reveal interesting differences between athletes in team sports and solo sports, and between male and female athletes.  As Jon Wertheim argued in a recent Sports Illustrated column, openly LGBT athletes in team sports face greater challenges than players of a solo sport such as tennis or golf.  Referring to Navratilova’s coming out, Wertheim observed that “she didn’t need to worry about being sabotaged by a homophobic coach.  She didn’t have to concern herself with team chemistry or locker-room dynamics.”  This allowed Martina to avoid the Glenn Burke scenario. 

When considering issues of gender, female athletes face a much different set of challenges from men when issues of sexual identity arise.  These challenges are epitomized by the story of WNBA player Brittney Griner.  Griner, a lesbian, came out to her team while a player at Baylor University, and wished to make her sexual identity known to the public.  Griner alleges that Baylor coach Kim Mulkey discouraged her from publicly declaring her sexual identity, because of the effect it might have on recruiting athletes.  As Forbes noted, Baylor is a private Christian university in the middle of Texas, and Griner told the magazine “the coaches thought that if it seemed like they condoned [homosexuality], people wouldn’t let their kids come play for Baylor.” 

Unfortunately, Griner’s situation is not unique in college sports.  Another high profile case came out of Penn State, where women’s basketball coach Rene Portland cut some players from her team because she assumed they were lesbian, leading to a former player to file a 2005 lawsuit for discrimination.  Portland felt that the presence of lesbian players — or the perceived presence of lesbians — would adversely affect team chemistry and distract them from achieving their goals.  This “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” approach, similar to the official policy of the military from 1993 to 2011, is present in sports culture among teams and the media alike.  For sports teams, it supposedly maintains team cohesion, while at the same time allowing the sports media to promote traditional ideas of masculinity.  Will the strides made by Jason Collins, Robbie Rogers and Britney Griner lead to a breakdown of this cultural practice?  The coming years may provide revealing answers to these questions.

Griner finally declared her sexual identity just days after the Minnesota Lynx selected her as the first pick in the 2013 WNBA Draft.  Interestingly, her declaration came a few weeks before Jason Collins turned the sports world on its ear; however, Griner received little media attention after her announcement.  One possible explanation stems from the cultural stigma that has surrounded female athletes since before the days of Martina Navratilova.  The masculinity and physical toughness of female sports stars has been regarded by conservative social commentators as circumventing traditional gender norms.  As a result of this prevailing criticism, many female athletes have made announcements or written entire books in order to declare their heterosexuality. 

When Griner came out as a lesbian, she seemed to affirm an assumption held by many in sports media about female athletes; however, when Collins came out of the closet, he circumvented traditional images of virility that surround male sports stars.  Indeed, his courage to make this announcement while still an active player makes this circumvention even more significant.  It took a male athlete, playing one of America’s four major team sports in the 21st Century, to begin a conversation about athletic sexual identity that should have been started when a humble Los Angeles outfielder told the press he was gay.

The reception of Jason Collins and Robbie Rogers illustrates a seismic shift in how the public and the media treat gay sports stars, while simultaneously revealing the distance our culture has yet to travel before openly gay athletes will be as commonplace as their straight teammates, and declarations of sexual identity will no longer produce a media firestorm.

Shortly before his death, Glenn Burke summed up his life and career this way:

“I don’t really feel bad about my life…I’m no better than nobody [sic] and never wanted to be.  I played sports and…made a name for myself. But it didn’t really matter to me.  Material things didn’t matter to me.  I just wish the world was a better place to live in.”

Twenty years later, let us hope Glenn thinks we’re getting there.

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In 1953, Allen Ginsberg picked up a $13 Kodak camera in a Bowery pawnshop and began taking photos of himself and his friends – Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso. No one was famous yet. About thirty years later, Ginsberg found the snapshots, printed and enlarged the photos, and wrote down his memories of those days – people crashing at the flat, living on nothing, and trying to figure out one’s sexual identity.

Initially mounted by the National Gallery, this exhibit reminds us of how much cultural, sexual, and generational transformation was stimulated by a small group of Beat poets and writers on a few small blocks of the East Village in the early 1950s. The show is mandatory viewing for anyone unfamiliar with gay culture’s Beat ancestry.

It documents the very beginnings of young, broke, and ambitious talents committed to rebellion on their terms – publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and creation of Queer, the novella that Burroughs wrote way back then, but not published until 1985. Ginsberg documents his first meeting with Peter Orlovsky, who became his lifelong companion, his “psychic marriage” with Burroughs in 1953, and his friendships with Larry Rivers and other art celebrities during the 1980s.

For this show’s New York run, NYU Grey Art Gallery interns developed a walking tour of East Village haunts, including sites of former gay bars and nightclubs. Download the PDF tour inside the Beat Memories site and walk the walk the next time you’re in New York.

If you can’t get to either show, poke through the online photos with Ginsberg’s commentary at either the Grey or the National Gallery sites.

About the author:

Susan B writes an arts and culture blog, ItsNewsToYou.me, and contributes posts here about exhibitions around the US that prompt discussion relevant to the history and culture of the communities that the National LGBT Museum seeks to reach.

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This is the jumping off point for the glittery gallery housing a major art retrospective at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York: Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt: Tender Love Among the Junk.

Like any other broke, emerging artist, Lanigan-Schmidt created from what he knew. From his years of Catholic schooling and altar-boy duty, it wasn’t a stretch to use his street stuff to create glimmering duplicates of chalices, patents, and other altar accouterments. Or to work in the occasional high-school or East Village gay-life reference.

Soon, dozens of precious tin-foil creations were filling his walls. Why not go for an entire transformation? He hung diaphanous painted veils, dressed in drag as a “Czarina Tatlina”, and began to offer tours of his Gilded Summer Palace to friends. Word of this trash-to-fantasy performance spread, and he soon had a group of fans, including downtown theater innovator Charles Ludlam and famed Metropolitan Museum curator Henry Geldzahler.

By 1972, uber-dealer and star-maker Holly Solomon was selling his work in her gallery, giving him commissions, and encouraging him to do more.  Looking back on his transformation from taunted high-schooler to gallery artist, Lanigan-Schmidt says, “To survive, those on the bottom must transform these materials into one art form or another to express self-worth in a society that considers them almost worthless.”

It’s appropriate that PS1 houses this retrospective, since it occupies an old public school building. Indeed, it’s filled with a recreation of the Czarina’s Gilded Summer Palace, his Sacristy of the Hamptons (1969), famous gold-foil Rats, the wall-sized Iconostasis (a1978 work on loan from a German museum), Daphne and Apollo in an American High School Play (1989), and many old, inspirational workbooks from school days.

But perhaps the most important thing in this show is the historical context that Lanigan-Schmidt provides. As soon as you walk in the door, you are asked to take a copy of a piece of paper that says, “Please Xerox a few copies and give to friends.” It’s a copy of his 1989 essay “1969 Mother Stonewall and the Golden Rats”, his first-hand recollection of the night that made history – the night of the Stonewall raid. Feel free to reblog.

For a visit with Lanigan-Schmidt’s studio today, take a look at this MoMA video. And check out images of his work (including the golden rats, saints, and embellished lasagna pans) via the Pavel Zoubok Gallery.

The MoMA PS1 show continues in New York through April 1, 2013.

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About the author:

Susan B writes an arts and culture blog, ItsNewsToYou.me, and will contribute posts about exhibitions around the US that prompt discussion relevant to the history and culture of the communities that the National LGBT Museum seeks to reach.