Throughout LGBT history, intersectionality has been an issue that has led to consequences that negatively affect marginalized communities. Intersectionality was especially an issue for black and gay men during the civil rights era. During this time, African American leaders were concerned about maintaining a morally upstanding profile which put black gay men who weren’t out at risk of losing their place in the movement should they come out or be found out.
At the same time, few black gay activists appeared in the front lines of the gay power movements which were inspired by the radical black power movements. Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald were some of the many black gay activists with complicated relationships with intersectionality between race and sexuality.
Bayard Rustin was a black gay activist and a huge part of the African-American civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. Rustin was openly-gay during his lifetime, but his identity as a gay man is largely ignored, or simply not talked about. His work for the LGBT community is rarely acknowledged because his part in the civil rights movement is often seen as more important. He mostly worked behind the scenes to build the civil rights movement and was the organizer of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech (Queer Black History).
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The fact that Rustin couldn’t be recognized as an important figure for both black power and gay liberation stems from society’s discomfort with confronting racism and homophobia at the same time. There is a societal belief that people can only be affected by one type of oppression. In the case of Rustin, he was a cisgender man with male privilege, but was also black and gay. Not only was he considered less than a white man, but he was also considered to be less than a black man because of his sexuality.
Another activist with a complicated relationship with intersectionality is Malcolm X. After Manning Marable’s biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, released in 2011, a controversy resurfaced over Marable’s decision to include the information that Malcolm X had engaged in homosexual relations. Malcolm X’s grandson made a public appearance to shoot down this portrayal of his grandfather and many speakers in public forums used the argument that every community needs their own icon as their justification for protesting Marable’s portrayal. Similarly to Bayard Rustin, it remained unexplained and unchallenged why Malcolm X couldn’t be an icon for both black power and gay liberation (Mumford).
Unlike Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X wasn’t an openly gay man. He disavowed homosexuality and identified as a moral conservative who advocated for straight black masculinity and heteronormativity. Despite this, his popular appeal and contrast to the puritanical Martin Luther King, Jr. incited a level of black gay identification. However, prominent black gay writers weren’t allowed to discuss the rumors of Malcolm X’s homosexuality out of fear that it would ruin his image as a black hero for black America. While Malcolm X was against homosexuality, the radical black power movements would eventually inspire gay activists to similarly fight for their own personal and political liberation. At the same time, these activists had to confront the contradiction of the black radical traditions that criticized activists like Rustin for their sexuality (Mumford).
Another black gay activist was Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald who fought for social change through religious organizations and eventually committed to and shaped the civil rights movement. Fitzgerald was determined to stay active in the black power movement at the same time that he fought against organizations that marginalized his sexuality.
The burden of having multiple identities pushed Fitzgerald to fight for intersectionality between black activism and gay activism, as well as to advocate for full social justice. Fitzgerald would face many struggles to reach this goal, however, his political visibility would increase as he became a national gay activist with a unique perspective as a devout, black, and gay man (Mumford).
As shown throughout history, multiple oppressive identities can play a huge part in setting people back in society. Therefore, intersectionality is important because when someone identifies as a certain minority, their experience does not represent all people’s experiences as that minority.
