LGBTQ+ Black History Month: Week 1
Happy Black History Month! I wanted to include a weekly post for this month to celebrate some of the most inspiring and innovative figures of the Black LGBTQ+ community. Each week will highlight 3 amazing individuals. Feel free to contact us or comment with suggestions for who should be included!
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman has been regarded as both a phenomenal singer/songwriter and social activist. Tracy's love for music began at a very early age. Despite not having a lot of money, Tracy's mother saw her passion for music and purchased Tracy her first ukelele when she was just three years old. By the age of eight Tracy was learning to play the guitar and writing her first songs!
Tracy's most notable works "Fast Car" and "Talkin' 'bout A Revolution" highlight ver
y important messages about social injustice and the struggles of poverty. In 1988, she performed in London as part of a worldwide concert tour to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Amnesty International. The same year Chapman also performed in the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, an event which raised money for South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Movement and seven. More recently, in 2004 Chapman performed (and rode) in the AIDS/LifeCycle event.
You can find Tracy's music on iTunes!
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American Civil Rights leader. He was born on March 17, 1912 and passed away on August 24, 1987. Bayard helped to lead the charge in desegregation, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was a leading activist of the early 1947–1955 Civil Rights Movement, helping to initiate a 1947 Freedom Ride to challenge, with civil disobedience, the racial segregation issue related to interstate busing. He recognized Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen King's leadership. Rustin promoted the philosophy of nonviolence and the practices of nonviolent resistance, which he had observed while working with Mahatma Gandhi's movement in India.
He also testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill. In 1986, he gave a speech "The New Niggers Are Gays," in which he asserted:
"Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "niggers" are gays.... It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change.... The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people."
On August 8, 2013, President Barack Obama announced that he would posthumously award Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award in the United States. The citation in the press release stated:
"Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights."
At the White House ceremony on November 20, 2013, President Obama presented Rustin's award to Walter Naegle, his partner of ten years at the time of Rustin's death.
Janet Mock
The former staff editor of People magazine's website, Janet Mock has become one of the most visible transgender icons following her public coming out in 2011. Mock released her first book Redefining Realness in February 2014 and pioneered the #girlslikeus campaign, a movement encouraging trans women to live visibly.
Janet Mock is an American writer, transgender rights activist, author and the former staff editor of People magazine's website. Mock was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in Hawaii and Oakland, California. She is of African-American and Hawaiian ancestry. At age 16, she was a sex worker. She was the first person in her family to go to college. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Merchandising from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Master of Arts in Journalism from New York University. She underwent sex reassignment surgery in Thailand at age 18 in the middle of her first year in college.
In 2014 Mock accepted an offer to become a contributing editor at Marie Claire. Also in 2014 Mock joined a campaign against a Phoenix law which allows police to arrest anyone suspected of “manifesting prostitution”, and which she feels targets transgender women of color, following the conviction of activist (and transgender woman of color) Monica Jones. Mock tweeted, "Speak against the profiling of #TWOC [trans woman of color], like Monica Jones. Tweet #StandWithMonica + follow @SWOPPhx [Sex Workers Outreach Project – Phoenix Chapter] now!"
