A Forgotten Oral History

The following are first hand patinaed accounts from my grandmother:

*Back in the early days, Ebony magazine, an Afro American publication, featured a most eligible bachelor from Houston who was known to be openly gay among straight friends.

*In Houston, Texas back in the 1940s or 50s, the Afro American community hosted an annual Halloween ball attended by straight and gay folk who mingled amongst one another without incident. Many of the gay men in attendance dressed as women. According to straight observers, those black gaye men who chose drag as costume where beautiful.

*As early as the 1970s to 80s, again in Houston, it was a public knowledge that two Afro American female employees working in the local city hospital were a lesbian couple. The females, one butch the other feminine/lipstick were accepted without prejudice by their fellow Afro American co-workers, one which happened to be my grandmother who was at the time a pediatric nurse. By all accounts, the two lesbian sisters were "viewed" as a married couple. The feminine/lipstick partner had children from a previous heterosexual marriage who lived with her and her partner. To everyone's amazement, it was later discovered that the butch sister often physically abused her partner as her partner often showed up to work with visible bruising.

The following was left by future best selling author, wonderful brother, and cherished friend, "Gerard":

*I remember my parents talking about going to a jazz club to hear John Coltrane in 1964. In that club were two brothers who held hands during the set. My parents said it was the first time they saw two men holding hands. This isn't a story that would make any history book, but I like it, and it's one of many I've heard from aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends of, etc. who talked of men who loved men, and these stories were told without derision or judgement. I heard stories of men who were very much a part of thecommunities in which they lived.

Largely, the history of folks of African descent outside of Africa is oral. Anecdotes about blood relations, friends, and even distant acquaintances is generally passed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next. Mainstream history will often miss nuisances of the black experience to settle on one specific representative one. Black folk share a common experience up to a point, but this experience eventually becomes divergent and far from being monolithic as mainly white, and some black, historians seem to want to record it. And, the history of gay African diasporal brothers is no different.

I am ashamed of myself for forgetting this important facet of "our" culture. In my carefully allotted time, I will spend a few hours perusing gay history books. Most days I find nothing worthwhile to share. Metaphorically speaking, I had put all my eggs in one basket. The history of brothers loving brothers (and sisters loving sisters) is not yet in any tangible format for posterity. Rather, it primarily exist in the reminisces from “our” families and friends and most importantly those aged gay brothers, our elder statesmen, who keep their business to themselves for various reasons. All these memories and voices are disappearing to be lost forever with every new year.

It is the oral history of us within the larger black culture that is the foundation of knowledge to be mined. It is the memories of aged gay brothers who have loved brothers during vast cultural and political periods in their own time within the boundaries of their own community and country that must be recorded.

Interestingly enough, an oral history of brothers loving brothers as told by many straight Black folk in a nonjudgemenal way challenges the widespread perception of an entire black community governed by homophobia-- another forced fed lie like brothers not loving brothers.
Images: 1.Gay Afro American artist Richmond Barthe's Negro Looks Ahead; 2.Afro American artist Meta Warrick Fuller's Talking Skull; 3. random pictures of Afro American men from yesterday.
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Gerard, thank you.