BWMT'S Discrimination Documentation Project

Mitchell Karp, a 28-year-old white lawyer, is a member of Black and White Men Together/New York* and  its Discrimination Documentation Project is part of BWMT's efforts to fight racism in the gay community.

Karp is also a staff counselor at Good Old Lower East Side, Inc. (G.O.L.E.S.), a neighborhood preservation company that serves Lower East Side tenants.

Charles Michael Smith: What is your association with the Discrimination Documentation Project?
Mitchell Karp: As a member of Black and White Men Together [who] has recently taken on responsibility as co-chairman for the Political Action Committee, my affiliation is to oversee the Discrimination Documentation Project with the co-chair James Credle. But my other association with the [DDP] is that I serve as one of a number of attorneys that represent BWMT and the complainants  in litigation under the [DDP].

Anyone can be a member of BWMT and anyone can be a member of the project if they're willing to go through the procedure of coming to political action committee meetings. It's an open organization and we solicit input from all members of the gay community. People who call up to complain about racial discrimination are not solely members [of BWMT]. They've heard about it, they've read about it, their friends have told them.

CMS: How did the project originate?
MK: The project was originated by, I believe, the political action committee. At that time, the people that I know that were involved were Henry Wiemhoff, James Credle, and Glenn Rickles. Rickles is an attorney and I think he played a pivotal role in formulating a lot of the guidelines. It was modeled after the NAACP and HUD (Housing and Urban Development), I believe, housing testers. A lot of the same principles and practices were implemented. I was not involved when it was planned so a lot of my knowledge of the history of the project comes through word of mouth. It started in 1980, '81, I believe. The first documentation was at Circles which was a gay bar on the Upper East Side. Eight people were sent in sets of four couples. Two blacks, two whites, two blacks, two whites. All the blacks were stopped and told they had to fill out membership applications and while they were standing there writing out the forms which required information like bank accounts, three friends, names of other members, the four whites, both sets of couples, were welcomed in and asked if they wanted to be on the mailing list. And that was very successful because the first night that we set up the picket line the bar acknowledged responsibility, committed themselves to apologizing to the black members, made a five-hundred-dollar donation to the project and invited everyone in and went through the whole admission of discrimination. I think that was crucial to the success of the project. The bar then changed and became a straight bar called Gotham and then it closed. But we did follow up the project by returning to Circles about six weeks after the demonstration to test once again its policies and, sure enough, all the testers, both black and white, were admitted with no questions asked.

Note: The organization was later renamed Men of All Colors Together (MACT).


The above Q & A interview is an excerpt from an article that was originally published in the New York Native in 1983.