It was during the summer of 1983 when I first heard about Gay Night at the Cotton Club, which is every Friday night. The information came from a social worker friend of mine who heard about it from a fellow member of a gay men's Christian group. I made a mental note to one day check the place out. However, for me, visiting such a place is more fun when you're around people you know and like and so I waited for the opportunity to go there with a friend or in a group. Such an opportunity finally came when it was announced in the newsletter of Black and White Men Together that they were planning to visit the club following a consciousness-raising session at the Washington Square Methodist Church in Greenwich Village.
Instead of meeting the group in the Village, I went directly to the Cotton Club in a radio cab. I stepped from the cab and into the plushness of the Cotton Club, which sits on 125th Street, in the shadow of the Broadway El, around 11:45. (The club opens for business at 11 p.m.)
As I checked my coat in, disco music greeted my ears. I paid the seven-dollar admission price and at the suggestion of the guy who collected the money, I signed my name and address to the mailing list. He asked me if I had ever been to the Cotton Club before. I replied no. He then began to tell me that the little yellow disc he had handed me was good for one free beer or glass of wine (however, Heineken beer, with the yellow disc, is $1.50, a dollar off the regular price.) Another employee, a waiter I assumed, came over to tell me where the restrooms and bars were. He led me to a group of tables and chairs, near the dance floor. I expected to see a crowd, instead there were only a handful of people present. My coat ticket might have been number 406, but there were obviously not 405 other people in the place. Oh, well, the night was still young and promising.
After the waiter, dressed in black trousers, black tie, and a white shirt took my order--a Heineken--I saw a couple of familiar faces seated at one of the tables--Lidell and his lover Mitchell from BWMT. Sitting at an adjoining table was a bearded, sandy-haired man who was introduced as Michael, a member of the D.C. chapter of BWMT. The four of us decided to head for the lounge on the second floor which we reached via a spiral staircase.
I came dressed for the occasion in a blue sport jacket, blue slacks, and a blue tie over a yellow shirt. The newsletter item stated: "No jeans or sneakers, please." But Lidell, Mitchell, and their guest were casually dressed, as were most of the patrons. Apparently they found out that the Cotton Club is not dress-code conscious.
We four sat at one of a cluster of little tables covered by a lavender tablecloth and topped by a pink rose in a short glass. The lighting there was subdued, the music, loud--super loud, really (you have to shout in order to be heard)--and the mood, romantic. The walls are burgundy-colored. On one wall were the stained glass likenesses of Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, a pictorial salute to the golden days of Harlem and the club's namesake (located at 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in the 1920s). The bar, shaped almost like a horseshoe, and made of polished wood, was surrounded by people either sitting or standing.
For about a half-hour, the four of us chatted about my work in journalism (Michael, I learned, is a computer programmer at the Washington Post), gay life in D.C., and music. I wanted to stretch my legs a bit so decided to take a tour of the club. The Cotton Club, unlike some other Harlem nightspots, is quite tame: no arguments, no cussing, no fistfights, not even the faint smell of marijuana. These patrons came out for a good time, not trouble. This was their opportunity to be among other black gay men in a hassle-free environment.
And although the club does not have a policy of discriminating against whites, one BWMT member, whose idea it was to come up to the club, sadly told me that no one he asked wanted to dance with him. (He eventually ended up being the only white person in the club. He said he didn't mind that but what hurt him were the numerous rejections. The other BWMT members--the few who bothered to come uptown--left about 2 a.m. Michael had a 9 a.m. train to catch back to D.C.; Mitchell, a lawyer, had some work to catch up on the next day.)
A few steps below the lounge , and about ten feet above the dance floor, is a narrow mezzanine lined with a single row of tables and chairs against a wall. I sat down at a table populated by an ash-flecked glass ashtray, a small round table lamp, and an empty glass. The lavender tablecloth was dotted by about three or four small cigarette burns.
Looking down at the crowded dance floor, vibrating with the bumping, grinding, and wildly gyrating bodies, I saw one guy take off his shirt, baring a smooth, muscular brown torso. He stuck the shirt in the front of his waistband and began to rotate his hips. The overhead strobe lights flashed red, then white, then returned us to the semi-dark. He stretched his arms vertically, dipped down, and slowly came up for air, while his hips continued to swivel seductively. For a second, my attention left him and focused on another dancer nearby. When I looked for the bare chested one, I was unable to locate him. I must say, he was quite a dancer.
I decided to go downstairs to get a better view of the action. I went up the four or five steps to the second-floor lounge, past the bar on the left and the tables on the right, and down the winding stairs. I walked across the edge of the dance floor to the sidelines where, on a long white vinyl couch sat some of the BWMT members, and others, resting from their terpsichorean acrobatics.
Above us rotated the stardust ball, fracturing a shaft of green light. Periodically an almost blinding cascade of white light appeared from a distant wall, producing a flickered image of those dancing. One dancer, in loose-fitting trousers with his white shirt open down to his navel, moved from side to side. he threw his head back while he hugged both thighs. He turned around once very quickly and threw out both arms in swimmer-like strokes. A few feet away, a couple, one wearing a red and white knit sweater, the other in what appeared to be a white sweater of a synthetic material, both in black leather pants, swiveled and swayed to the pulsating reggae beat. A blue light from the wall near the staircase leading up flashed instantly and intensively, bathing those in its path with a bright glow as if from a UFO in a science-fiction movie. For several minutes, the leather-panted duo moved toward each other, then backed away. They circled and faced each other, doing quick two steps. They too sat down on the couch. As they did so, a curl of bluish-white cigarette smoke drifted past me like a cloud.
All hell broke loose during the playing of George Kranz's "Din Daa Daa." both on the dance floor and on the sidelines. The dancers from BWMT, both black, rubbed up against each other, in simulation of what looked like sexual moves. The smaller of the two draped himself over his stocky partner who later threw a leg over the other's back. They took turns gripping each other by the thighs from behind, while doing a bumping gesture. It was all totally, and refreshingly, out of hand. Those on the sidelines raised their arms while hooting and hollering, as the music drove them to a heightened state of ecstasy.
About 3:30 a.m., I headed upstairs to the bar and ordered another Heineken, my second and last of the night. (I have a low tolerance for alcohol.) The room was nearly deserted. I walked over to an open exit door that looked out onto Broadway which at that hour was as dark and deserted as the room I stood in. I walked gingerly down the staircase, carrying the bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. I excused myself as I walked through a small group of spectators and then between two gyrating couples on the dance floor. I sat down near an Hispanic-looking guy on the white vinyl couch; i resumed watching the "show."
One guy, who also sat on the couch beside me, told me that the crowd that night was smaller than usual. I found out from him that the club began attracting a gay clientele about a year ago when it came under new management. He pointed out the owner to me, a tall, slender young black man dancing on the floor. I stifled any desire to approach him since he, a few weeks earlier, in a telephone conversation with me, rejected my offer to interview him. I am researching a piece about the original Cotton Club in connection with the forthcoming movie and I wanted to compare and/or contrast the two clubs bearing the same name. The piece is for a straight news organization, and I assumed that the owner--or manager, as he was identified to me--turned me down because he was fearful of homophobic reactions.
My watch read 4:45. Fifteen minutes to closing. The house lights came on, the music stopped (leaving a stuffed feeling in my ears), and the crowd thinned out. The waiters came by and collected all of the ashtrays, bottles, and glasses.
Although I didn't do an ounce of dancing the whole night, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I looked forward to coming back. And when I do, I hope the place is shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow with magnificent bodies dancing the night away.
This article was originally published in the New York Native (1984).
Monday, March 5, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
An Actor's Plans
Darnell Williams, the popular black actor who at one time played Jesse Hubbard on the now-defunct daytime drama All My Children: "The actors can't bring about the change [in the TV image of blacks]. It has to be the producers. People behind the scenes with the money. Actors can only do their job. I think actors if they want to [bring about] change, they have to stop acting and start producing and directing. I'm going to do it. I want to direct. I want to go through the artistic end of it. I want to produce and direct eventually."
From an unpublished item I wrote for the now-defunct National Scene magazine's "Blacks in the Media" issue (1982). Williams's sentiments are still relevant in the 21st century.
From an unpublished item I wrote for the now-defunct National Scene magazine's "Blacks in the Media" issue (1982). Williams's sentiments are still relevant in the 21st century.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Sending Bright Kids From Harlem To Prep Schools
"No education and lack of preparation for the working world does eliminate competition. We are well aware of this, and we let those who criticize the program know it."--Edouard E. Plummer, Director, Wadleigh Scholarship Program, Harlem, New York ("Wadleigh Scholars: From Harlem to Hotchkiss," Independent School, February 1983)
This fall [1984] the A.B.C. (A Better Chance) Scholarship Program, at Harlem's Wadleigh Junior High School 88, will be 20 years old. During those years, the program, administered by Edouard E. Plummer, a Wadleigh math teacher and guidance counselor, has placed academically promising youngsters from the school in 68 preparatory--or independent--schools across the United States. "No school in the country," boasts Plummer with ample justification, "has sent as many people to preparatory school as we have at Wadleigh. Nobody." To prove the success of the program, Plummer points out that these students have gone on to major universities such as Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Massachusetts and enjoy careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, and so forth. "[W]e have lost no more than three per cent," he writes in Independent School magazine. "Because many of those who drop out do finish in public schools and universities, we do not consider them a complete loss."
It all began in the summer of 1964 when Plummer (who came to Wadleigh in 1960) was vacationing in the South of France. He read an article in Time magazine about a scholarship program called A Better Chance, which had been set up by a group of preparatory schools to increase their minority enrollment. "I talked with a friend of mine," he recalls, "who taught at a preparatory school in Connecticut and I was going to make arrangements with him to get somebody in his school. He told me how to do it with scholarships. When I saw this article, it just put everything in perspective. I called Time magazine from the South of France [and asked them] to send me the information. When I arrived back in the city, everything was waiting for me. I read all this information and said [to myself], 'This is what I want.' I wrote to the people [at A Better Chance]. They sent me everything I wanted. After studying it, I asked my colleagues [what they thought about it] and they said they liked the idea."
When Plummer approached the principal with the idea, the principal's reply was "Do you think you can get these children in these schools?" Plummer, understandably upset by such a question, especially from a fellow educator, "looked at him and shook my head. All of my insides began to boil. All of my African, my English, my French, my German, and any blood I had in me. To me, he was underestimating his teachers and the pupils and the community. And that was a put-down. I said, 'I have never been in a flop in my life. I only have hits and I know I'll get someone in those schools.'" Plummer, by this time, had already gotten assurances from other teachers that they would sponsor a child by paying the seven-dollar fee for the secondary School Admission Test (SSAT). The test, now $21, is, says Plummer, "very important. Anyone who is going to a prep school must take that test. That score that you get can determine whether you're going to a prep school or not." By 3 o'clock that afternoon, Plummer, as he was about to leave the building, met the principal, who had changed his tune. "'Oh, Mr. Plummer, I like your idea,'" recounts Plummer. "'I'd like to support one of those children, also.' Every teacher that I named was black. So this thing about black power, I showed him where black was before the others knew it was chic."
Plummer's determination to see that the program survives and remains successful is rooted in his belief that "there is a conspiracy, overt and undercover, to sabotage our children. I had seen too many bright children just lost. They went no place afterwards. No one kept in touch with them. No one directed them. I said that 'This is going to change.' That's why I started this program."
To date, 210 kids have gone through the program from its inception. (There were 14 kids in the program during the 1983-84 term.) Out of a total student population at Wadleigh of between 500 and 600, those who become A.B.C. students is comparatively small. "We have worked with as many as 27. Some years we have had 20. We can accommodate 10 to 25. I'd like to have at least 25 children."
These young scholars, who are in the top five per cent, are selected because they meet certain tough criteria. "We look at their reading levels. We look at their math levels. We look at their academic potential, their attitude, and their response when we tell them about the program and the sacrifices they have to make. And if they have a great deal of drive, I-will, an ambition, have a positive attitude toward school, and a goal, a sense of direction, and willing to take advice, and willing to listen and to put forth extra time and effort when the others are out there playing. They sit in here twice a week, from three to five o'clock in an enrichment program: mathematics, English, skills in test-taking, discussing what preparatory schools were like, what it will be like once you leave this area and go to one of those predominately, or all-white, communities, white schools. How are you going to deal with this and things of that nature."
Prep school, explains Plummer, is equivalent to senior high school. The length of time one attends prep school can range from "three to four years, sometimes five."
Most of the A.B.C. students enter the program in the 9th grade. "Our first group [came in] in the 10th grade. We've had some who've gone in the 8th grade. They can spend one to three years here. If they leave after the 7th grade, that means they spend one year here. If they leave after the 8th grade, they spend two years here, after the 9th grade, they spend three years here. Some have left us and gone to high school in the 10th grade."
Plummer, has over the years encountered many parents who were unwilling to, let their children experience the "new demands, new challenges, and new avenues of learning" that prep schools provide. "I have a very good example," he says. "A couple of years ago, the mother of the top girl in the class refused to even talk to me. She wasn't going to let her daughter come here. Another young lady's mother sent her here. The number one girl who did not come here was sent by her mother to another junior high. She did not make Bronx Science or Stuyvesant. She's now in a regular high school. The other young lady who came to me is in a preparatory school. One parent had confidence in us, the other one didn't."
Teachers can also be stumbling blocks to the program and to the kids it tries to help. "There have been teachers who have been very supportive. There have been those who have not been supportive. They, white teachers, have hurt the program and do not care about hurting it. This is bad. I'm aware of this and the young people are aware of it. We know why they're doing it. We're here to serve the children. If you're not going to serve the children, get out. If you don't save them, what are we going to have for the future, especially for minorities? Why are they building more jails? Why aren't they building more schools, giving us more teachers? Who are they building the jails for? I can go to Rikers Island [a detention center in New York City] and have a class reunion of young people who attended this school. But I'd rather go to Harvard and have that class reunion."
Doris Brunson, an English teacher at Wadleigh and a longtime participant in the program, recognizes the "very powerful negative influences" of the area surrounding Wadleigh, despite the efforts of parents and educators "to turn all that negativism around." She also recognizes the unlimited, and untapped, potential of the young people she sees hanging out near the school every day. She, no doubt, taught many of them. "The youngster who can remember all the numbers for an entire block and whose number is the favorite one, isn't that child a math genius? You have children who are involved in the drug racket who can cut drugs and so forth. That's a future chemist."
These kids who, Plummer admits, are "envied and admired at the same time" by their peers, have become "an inspiration to all young people, especially minority children."
"Support within the community," writes Janice C. Simpson, a former A.B.C. student, in New York magazine, "slacked off during the heyday of black power. There were complaints that the Program was elitist, that Plummer was sending the best talent away from the community." In his Independent School article, he says he answered critics by saying to them: "'Do you have something better to offer these students?' To this we get no reply or anything to substitute for what the child has been offered."
He further states, in my interview with him, that the prep schools these young people attend are not elitist. "People made them elite. They never wanted that type of [label]. The people who did that could not get in and were jealous and envious of [those who did]. They [prep schools] downplay all of this. That's why they call themselves preparatory schools, not private schools. They prepare you for life. Everybody's the same up there."
Plummer sees himself as "their advisor, their teacher, and their friend." The 48-year-old bachelor instructs the students, past and present, that if they have a problem to "call me anytime they want to, 24 hours, and reverse [the] charges."
But Plummer is not their only friend. The others range from Lena Horne and Carol Burnett to ordinary folks [90 per cent of them white] who, hearing about the program, have sent financial contributions. (Lena Horne, who Plummer calls the "godmother of our program," has been a supporter since the program's inception.)
"I can get ten basketball players in one minute," says Plummer. "How many scholars can I get up in ten hours? We're looking for scholars, people of the future. We know all blacks can sing and dance. They can all play ball. We want to do something else. What about our mental ability? Why can't we use that and excel? These schools are going to make demands upon these young people. We have to be sure that we have children that can stand the pressure. It's not easy sending a child out there in that situation. It's easier now because others had gone and opened the doors for them and paved the way."
This article was originally published in the newspaper, the Harlem Weekly, in 1984.
This fall [1984] the A.B.C. (A Better Chance) Scholarship Program, at Harlem's Wadleigh Junior High School 88, will be 20 years old. During those years, the program, administered by Edouard E. Plummer, a Wadleigh math teacher and guidance counselor, has placed academically promising youngsters from the school in 68 preparatory--or independent--schools across the United States. "No school in the country," boasts Plummer with ample justification, "has sent as many people to preparatory school as we have at Wadleigh. Nobody." To prove the success of the program, Plummer points out that these students have gone on to major universities such as Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Massachusetts and enjoy careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, and so forth. "[W]e have lost no more than three per cent," he writes in Independent School magazine. "Because many of those who drop out do finish in public schools and universities, we do not consider them a complete loss."
It all began in the summer of 1964 when Plummer (who came to Wadleigh in 1960) was vacationing in the South of France. He read an article in Time magazine about a scholarship program called A Better Chance, which had been set up by a group of preparatory schools to increase their minority enrollment. "I talked with a friend of mine," he recalls, "who taught at a preparatory school in Connecticut and I was going to make arrangements with him to get somebody in his school. He told me how to do it with scholarships. When I saw this article, it just put everything in perspective. I called Time magazine from the South of France [and asked them] to send me the information. When I arrived back in the city, everything was waiting for me. I read all this information and said [to myself], 'This is what I want.' I wrote to the people [at A Better Chance]. They sent me everything I wanted. After studying it, I asked my colleagues [what they thought about it] and they said they liked the idea."
When Plummer approached the principal with the idea, the principal's reply was "Do you think you can get these children in these schools?" Plummer, understandably upset by such a question, especially from a fellow educator, "looked at him and shook my head. All of my insides began to boil. All of my African, my English, my French, my German, and any blood I had in me. To me, he was underestimating his teachers and the pupils and the community. And that was a put-down. I said, 'I have never been in a flop in my life. I only have hits and I know I'll get someone in those schools.'" Plummer, by this time, had already gotten assurances from other teachers that they would sponsor a child by paying the seven-dollar fee for the secondary School Admission Test (SSAT). The test, now $21, is, says Plummer, "very important. Anyone who is going to a prep school must take that test. That score that you get can determine whether you're going to a prep school or not." By 3 o'clock that afternoon, Plummer, as he was about to leave the building, met the principal, who had changed his tune. "'Oh, Mr. Plummer, I like your idea,'" recounts Plummer. "'I'd like to support one of those children, also.' Every teacher that I named was black. So this thing about black power, I showed him where black was before the others knew it was chic."
Plummer's determination to see that the program survives and remains successful is rooted in his belief that "there is a conspiracy, overt and undercover, to sabotage our children. I had seen too many bright children just lost. They went no place afterwards. No one kept in touch with them. No one directed them. I said that 'This is going to change.' That's why I started this program."
To date, 210 kids have gone through the program from its inception. (There were 14 kids in the program during the 1983-84 term.) Out of a total student population at Wadleigh of between 500 and 600, those who become A.B.C. students is comparatively small. "We have worked with as many as 27. Some years we have had 20. We can accommodate 10 to 25. I'd like to have at least 25 children."
These young scholars, who are in the top five per cent, are selected because they meet certain tough criteria. "We look at their reading levels. We look at their math levels. We look at their academic potential, their attitude, and their response when we tell them about the program and the sacrifices they have to make. And if they have a great deal of drive, I-will, an ambition, have a positive attitude toward school, and a goal, a sense of direction, and willing to take advice, and willing to listen and to put forth extra time and effort when the others are out there playing. They sit in here twice a week, from three to five o'clock in an enrichment program: mathematics, English, skills in test-taking, discussing what preparatory schools were like, what it will be like once you leave this area and go to one of those predominately, or all-white, communities, white schools. How are you going to deal with this and things of that nature."
Prep school, explains Plummer, is equivalent to senior high school. The length of time one attends prep school can range from "three to four years, sometimes five."
Most of the A.B.C. students enter the program in the 9th grade. "Our first group [came in] in the 10th grade. We've had some who've gone in the 8th grade. They can spend one to three years here. If they leave after the 7th grade, that means they spend one year here. If they leave after the 8th grade, they spend two years here, after the 9th grade, they spend three years here. Some have left us and gone to high school in the 10th grade."
Plummer, has over the years encountered many parents who were unwilling to, let their children experience the "new demands, new challenges, and new avenues of learning" that prep schools provide. "I have a very good example," he says. "A couple of years ago, the mother of the top girl in the class refused to even talk to me. She wasn't going to let her daughter come here. Another young lady's mother sent her here. The number one girl who did not come here was sent by her mother to another junior high. She did not make Bronx Science or Stuyvesant. She's now in a regular high school. The other young lady who came to me is in a preparatory school. One parent had confidence in us, the other one didn't."
Teachers can also be stumbling blocks to the program and to the kids it tries to help. "There have been teachers who have been very supportive. There have been those who have not been supportive. They, white teachers, have hurt the program and do not care about hurting it. This is bad. I'm aware of this and the young people are aware of it. We know why they're doing it. We're here to serve the children. If you're not going to serve the children, get out. If you don't save them, what are we going to have for the future, especially for minorities? Why are they building more jails? Why aren't they building more schools, giving us more teachers? Who are they building the jails for? I can go to Rikers Island [a detention center in New York City] and have a class reunion of young people who attended this school. But I'd rather go to Harvard and have that class reunion."
Doris Brunson, an English teacher at Wadleigh and a longtime participant in the program, recognizes the "very powerful negative influences" of the area surrounding Wadleigh, despite the efforts of parents and educators "to turn all that negativism around." She also recognizes the unlimited, and untapped, potential of the young people she sees hanging out near the school every day. She, no doubt, taught many of them. "The youngster who can remember all the numbers for an entire block and whose number is the favorite one, isn't that child a math genius? You have children who are involved in the drug racket who can cut drugs and so forth. That's a future chemist."
These kids who, Plummer admits, are "envied and admired at the same time" by their peers, have become "an inspiration to all young people, especially minority children."
"Support within the community," writes Janice C. Simpson, a former A.B.C. student, in New York magazine, "slacked off during the heyday of black power. There were complaints that the Program was elitist, that Plummer was sending the best talent away from the community." In his Independent School article, he says he answered critics by saying to them: "'Do you have something better to offer these students?' To this we get no reply or anything to substitute for what the child has been offered."
He further states, in my interview with him, that the prep schools these young people attend are not elitist. "People made them elite. They never wanted that type of [label]. The people who did that could not get in and were jealous and envious of [those who did]. They [prep schools] downplay all of this. That's why they call themselves preparatory schools, not private schools. They prepare you for life. Everybody's the same up there."
Plummer sees himself as "their advisor, their teacher, and their friend." The 48-year-old bachelor instructs the students, past and present, that if they have a problem to "call me anytime they want to, 24 hours, and reverse [the] charges."
But Plummer is not their only friend. The others range from Lena Horne and Carol Burnett to ordinary folks [90 per cent of them white] who, hearing about the program, have sent financial contributions. (Lena Horne, who Plummer calls the "godmother of our program," has been a supporter since the program's inception.)
"I can get ten basketball players in one minute," says Plummer. "How many scholars can I get up in ten hours? We're looking for scholars, people of the future. We know all blacks can sing and dance. They can all play ball. We want to do something else. What about our mental ability? Why can't we use that and excel? These schools are going to make demands upon these young people. We have to be sure that we have children that can stand the pressure. It's not easy sending a child out there in that situation. It's easier now because others had gone and opened the doors for them and paved the way."
This article was originally published in the newspaper, the Harlem Weekly, in 1984.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Una Mulzac & The Gay Book Controversy
Recently an unsigned letter was circulated among black gay men which called for a letter-writing campaign against Harlem's Liberation Bookstore because it "steadfastly refuses to stock any books by black lesbians and gay men," books that would offer a "positive artistic depiction."
Instead, continued the letter, some of the titles the store chooses to carry "reinforces negative stereotypes." thereby giving the black community reasons to believe that black gay men and lesbians are not a legitimate "part of African-American culture and history."
However, Una Mulzac, Liberation's owner, disputed the letter's claim. "I'm not anti-gay. I've never attacked gay people publicly. I have books in here by gay people." She then cited examples: James Baldwin, poet Audre Lorde, and the lesbian-feminist anthology Home Girls.
The letter-writing campaign came about when a young black gay man visited the store and asked for a copy each of The Road Before Us (which will be published in October) and Brother to Brother, both black gay anthologies. According to one source, Ms. Mulzac told the visitor they didn't carry gay books because they didn't sell well.
Ms. Mulzac confirmed the visit. She added that "the brother's manner was so aggressive, a strong-armed kind of thing. He wanted us to make another category for black gay men and women. We have about 40 categories. It's a small store. We are jammed to the hilt. We specialize in African history and culture. That means every aspect of it that we can. We can't make another category. After 24 years I am not going to start a new category and particularly now when they've put out a letter condemning us. I really don't appreciate the strong-arm tactics. There was a magazine we had in here for over a year, Other Countries. I put it in a prominent place; it did not sell at all. People do not come here for gay books. If it's about that subject, they do not buy it. I've had that experience."
Since the young man's visit, Liberation Bookstore was sent a letter from a feminist publisher who informed Ms. Mulzac that she was told the store didn't "need her books in here. We never said anything like that. How can she say that when we have her books in here." Ms. Mulzac went on to say, "It's my preference that we have what we have--James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes, who one brother told me was also gay. You can't accuse us of discrimination against gay writers. What they want and what I want as a bookseller is not for them to say. Censorship is entirely different from being selective."
Ms. Mulzac concluded the phone interview with this warning to those behind the letter-writing campaign: "If there's going to be a public outcry against this store, they are the one who are going to be criticized for telling lies on us. This is harassment for nothing. When they attack this store publicly, they're starting something."
This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (September 12, 1991)
Una Mulzac died January 21, 2012 (see "Una Mulzac, 88, Bookseller With Passion for Black Politics, New York Times, February 5, 2012.)
Instead, continued the letter, some of the titles the store chooses to carry "reinforces negative stereotypes." thereby giving the black community reasons to believe that black gay men and lesbians are not a legitimate "part of African-American culture and history."
However, Una Mulzac, Liberation's owner, disputed the letter's claim. "I'm not anti-gay. I've never attacked gay people publicly. I have books in here by gay people." She then cited examples: James Baldwin, poet Audre Lorde, and the lesbian-feminist anthology Home Girls.
The letter-writing campaign came about when a young black gay man visited the store and asked for a copy each of The Road Before Us (which will be published in October) and Brother to Brother, both black gay anthologies. According to one source, Ms. Mulzac told the visitor they didn't carry gay books because they didn't sell well.
Ms. Mulzac confirmed the visit. She added that "the brother's manner was so aggressive, a strong-armed kind of thing. He wanted us to make another category for black gay men and women. We have about 40 categories. It's a small store. We are jammed to the hilt. We specialize in African history and culture. That means every aspect of it that we can. We can't make another category. After 24 years I am not going to start a new category and particularly now when they've put out a letter condemning us. I really don't appreciate the strong-arm tactics. There was a magazine we had in here for over a year, Other Countries. I put it in a prominent place; it did not sell at all. People do not come here for gay books. If it's about that subject, they do not buy it. I've had that experience."
Since the young man's visit, Liberation Bookstore was sent a letter from a feminist publisher who informed Ms. Mulzac that she was told the store didn't "need her books in here. We never said anything like that. How can she say that when we have her books in here." Ms. Mulzac went on to say, "It's my preference that we have what we have--James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes, who one brother told me was also gay. You can't accuse us of discrimination against gay writers. What they want and what I want as a bookseller is not for them to say. Censorship is entirely different from being selective."
Ms. Mulzac concluded the phone interview with this warning to those behind the letter-writing campaign: "If there's going to be a public outcry against this store, they are the one who are going to be criticized for telling lies on us. This is harassment for nothing. When they attack this store publicly, they're starting something."
This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (September 12, 1991)
Una Mulzac died January 21, 2012 (see "Una Mulzac, 88, Bookseller With Passion for Black Politics, New York Times, February 5, 2012.)
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Essex Hemphill, Black Gay Bard
Essex Hemphill, revered by many in the black gay community and considered the foremost black gay poet in America died November 4, 1995 at the age of 38 in Philadelphia, where he lived.
His untimely death due to complications from AIDS silenced an influential literary activist whose poems and essays are uncompromisingly frank about what it means to be black and gay in a racist and homophobic society. "I have not chosen to isolate myself from my friends and community," he wrote in an essay in Essence magazine. "There are valid reasons for doing so, but I feel that would contribute to the absence of visible, positive homosexual images...."
To the late filmmaker Marlon Riggs, in whose controversial PBS documentary on black gay life, Tongues Untied, Hemphill appeared, Hemphill's poetic talent was "Astounding." Riggs further stated that "No voice speaks with more eloquent, insightful, thought-provoking clarity about contemporary Black gay life."
Those are the characteristics that struck a chord with Steve Langley, a young African-American poet/singer from Washington, D.C. When he first read Hemphill's poetry he was riding the Metro, D.C.'s subway system, and the words "brought tears to my eyes. here was finally someone who was writing about my life. As a writer, he was a role model. He encouraged me [through his example] to write."
Don Jackson, a writer from Durham, N.C., is another individual Hemphill inspired. "We spent many occasions on the phone talking about books, [James] Baldwin, music, and our lives. It was an electrifying experience. He gave me a surge of confidence."
Hemphill, Chicago-born and D.C.-raised, began writing poetry at age 14. In an interview with Joseph Beam in Au Courant, a Philadelphia gay newspaper, he revealed what led him to poetry. "I was a loner and I am still very much a loner." he attended "a predominantly black, urban high school rife with all kinds of problems--gangs, drugs, etc. My quietness probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. I had friends, but the kinds of things I needed to communicate, or say to someone else seemed best said to myself on paper, so I started writing poems."
At the University of Maryland, he met a young woman named Kathy Anderson. She turned him on to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka). They later co-founded and published Nethula Journal, a black cultural magazine.
Over the years, Hemphill was widely anthologized and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Library Association's New Authors in Poetry Award for his book of prose and poetry, Ceremonies (Plume) and a Lambda Book Award (Lammy) for Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (Alyson), which he edited.
In addition, Hemphill was selected in 1993 by the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities in Santa Monica, California to participate in its Visiting Scholars Program.
If Hemphill had been a speaker at the Million Man March in Washington in October 1995, these words from his poem, "For My Own Protection," would have been appropriate as well as uplifting: "I want to start an organization to save my life./If whales, snails, dogs, cats, Chrysler, and Nixon/can be saved,/the lives of Black men/are priceless/and can be saved./We should be able/to save each other."
Hemphill--who, at the time of his death, was survived by his mother, three sisters, and a brother--was buried in Washington, D.C.
This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (November 18, 1995).
His untimely death due to complications from AIDS silenced an influential literary activist whose poems and essays are uncompromisingly frank about what it means to be black and gay in a racist and homophobic society. "I have not chosen to isolate myself from my friends and community," he wrote in an essay in Essence magazine. "There are valid reasons for doing so, but I feel that would contribute to the absence of visible, positive homosexual images...."
To the late filmmaker Marlon Riggs, in whose controversial PBS documentary on black gay life, Tongues Untied, Hemphill appeared, Hemphill's poetic talent was "Astounding." Riggs further stated that "No voice speaks with more eloquent, insightful, thought-provoking clarity about contemporary Black gay life."
Those are the characteristics that struck a chord with Steve Langley, a young African-American poet/singer from Washington, D.C. When he first read Hemphill's poetry he was riding the Metro, D.C.'s subway system, and the words "brought tears to my eyes. here was finally someone who was writing about my life. As a writer, he was a role model. He encouraged me [through his example] to write."
Don Jackson, a writer from Durham, N.C., is another individual Hemphill inspired. "We spent many occasions on the phone talking about books, [James] Baldwin, music, and our lives. It was an electrifying experience. He gave me a surge of confidence."
Hemphill, Chicago-born and D.C.-raised, began writing poetry at age 14. In an interview with Joseph Beam in Au Courant, a Philadelphia gay newspaper, he revealed what led him to poetry. "I was a loner and I am still very much a loner." he attended "a predominantly black, urban high school rife with all kinds of problems--gangs, drugs, etc. My quietness probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. I had friends, but the kinds of things I needed to communicate, or say to someone else seemed best said to myself on paper, so I started writing poems."
At the University of Maryland, he met a young woman named Kathy Anderson. She turned him on to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka). They later co-founded and published Nethula Journal, a black cultural magazine.
Over the years, Hemphill was widely anthologized and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Library Association's New Authors in Poetry Award for his book of prose and poetry, Ceremonies (Plume) and a Lambda Book Award (Lammy) for Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (Alyson), which he edited.
In addition, Hemphill was selected in 1993 by the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities in Santa Monica, California to participate in its Visiting Scholars Program.
If Hemphill had been a speaker at the Million Man March in Washington in October 1995, these words from his poem, "For My Own Protection," would have been appropriate as well as uplifting: "I want to start an organization to save my life./If whales, snails, dogs, cats, Chrysler, and Nixon/can be saved,/the lives of Black men/are priceless/and can be saved./We should be able/to save each other."
Hemphill--who, at the time of his death, was survived by his mother, three sisters, and a brother--was buried in Washington, D.C.
This article was originally published in the New York Amsterdam News (November 18, 1995).
Friday, February 3, 2012
Finding Literary Treasure On Upper Broadway
It's amazing how things happen unexpectedly. I recently put in my pink and lavender Gay & Lesbian loose leaf binder this quote from gay author Gavin Lambert: "In movies then [the 1950s], you had to be discreet [regarding one's homosexuality]. You still have to be." I copied that quote from the book Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2005).
The next day I found a yellowed paperback edition of Gavin Lambert's Inside Daisy Clover (Bantam, 1964, 75 cents) among a pile of discarded books at the corner of 113th Street and Broadway, near Columbia University. (The book was made into a movie, released in 1965, starring Natalie Wood, who co-starred in Rebel with James Dean and Sal Mineo.)
If I had been looking specifically for Lambert's book, I probably would have had a tough time finding it since it was published more than 40 years ago.
The next day I found a yellowed paperback edition of Gavin Lambert's Inside Daisy Clover (Bantam, 1964, 75 cents) among a pile of discarded books at the corner of 113th Street and Broadway, near Columbia University. (The book was made into a movie, released in 1965, starring Natalie Wood, who co-starred in Rebel with James Dean and Sal Mineo.)
If I had been looking specifically for Lambert's book, I probably would have had a tough time finding it since it was published more than 40 years ago.
Black & Blue At Blue's
Letters
Village Voice
842 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
October 8, 1982
Dear Editor:
The vicious police raid of Blue's, a black gay bar in the Times Square area, last week (September 29) showed New York's Finest at their very worst. As reported by WBAI and the Village Voice ("Black Tie and Blood," October 12), this raid involved the beating and robbing of patrons, the destruction of bar property, and the use of anti-black and anti-gay language--by the men in blue.
I think an immediate investigation should be initiated by Police Commissioner Robert McGuire. And those officers found guilty of abusing their authority during the raid should be dismissed from the force as unfit. We are not yet a police state.
One officer quoted in the Voice piece said that "Blue's is a very troublesome bar. There are a lot of undesirables who hang out there." That may be so, but lashing out at the bar and its patrons with such brute force is not the way to alleviate the problem. And it certainly isn't the way to win the police department any friends among the black gay community. This sort of police abuse, if it is allowed to go unchecked, will lead to an eventual bloodbath. People will tolerate only so much abuse.
If the higher-ups in the department ignore what happened, it is a clear message to the community at large as well as to the cops on the street that police abuse of gay men--especially if they're black--has been given official sanction.
How can the police department apprehend civilian gaybashers with a clear conscience when many of its own people are no better? Fortunately for both sides there were no deaths. But what about next time?
Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith
(An unpublished letter-to-the-editor.)
Village Voice
842 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
October 8, 1982
Dear Editor:
The vicious police raid of Blue's, a black gay bar in the Times Square area, last week (September 29) showed New York's Finest at their very worst. As reported by WBAI and the Village Voice ("Black Tie and Blood," October 12), this raid involved the beating and robbing of patrons, the destruction of bar property, and the use of anti-black and anti-gay language--by the men in blue.
I think an immediate investigation should be initiated by Police Commissioner Robert McGuire. And those officers found guilty of abusing their authority during the raid should be dismissed from the force as unfit. We are not yet a police state.
One officer quoted in the Voice piece said that "Blue's is a very troublesome bar. There are a lot of undesirables who hang out there." That may be so, but lashing out at the bar and its patrons with such brute force is not the way to alleviate the problem. And it certainly isn't the way to win the police department any friends among the black gay community. This sort of police abuse, if it is allowed to go unchecked, will lead to an eventual bloodbath. People will tolerate only so much abuse.
If the higher-ups in the department ignore what happened, it is a clear message to the community at large as well as to the cops on the street that police abuse of gay men--especially if they're black--has been given official sanction.
How can the police department apprehend civilian gaybashers with a clear conscience when many of its own people are no better? Fortunately for both sides there were no deaths. But what about next time?
Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith
(An unpublished letter-to-the-editor.)
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